Gestalt means "gestalt" and "whole". This school denies that the understanding of psychological phenomena is equal to the understanding of various elements of its decomposition, emphasizing that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and its research interests are mainly focused on intuition and problem solving.

Gestalt psychology believes that animals and people perceive and learn from each other, and the relationship between things, such as size, color depth, up and down position, presentation time, etc., is the key to perception, learning and memory.

In music teaching, we can use the method of "whole first and then part" to find out the structure of the subject, and then we can find out the internal relationship between a series of individual facts and skills, which is conducive to students' memory and knowledge transfer, and will become easier in future study, so as to master the necessary subject materials in a limited time.

For example, in the teaching of chorus, the traditional teaching method is to teach and learn from one voice to another, and each voice should try not to communicate with each other when singing. All parts should sing together when learning, and ask all parts not to listen to the chorus of other parts to avoid interference.

Under the guidance of holism in gestalt psychology, teachers are required to help students understand and master the combined audio-visual images of all parts, and each part is required to listen to other parts at any time when singing, so as to achieve consistency on the basis of understanding other parts.

In instrumental music teaching, the traditional teaching method is to learn step by step and then play together as a whole. However, the holistic teaching method requires the teacher to tell the overall style of this piece of music first, and then explain it in sections, in which we must pay attention to the differences and connections between sections, and finally explain it in sections. In the process of learning, students will pay attention to the relationship between paragraphs and handle the corresponding emotional changes in the process of paragraph transition.

If we follow the traditional teaching method, we will cut off the connection between music paragraphs, and lack the integrity and macro understanding of music in performance. The concept of "wholeness" in vocal music art refers to the whole display of people's thoughts and feelings and the whole operation of singing energy. For example, clear pronunciation and mellow voice is the effect that singing method and emotional expression, voice color and singing style are in place at the same time.

Thoughts and feelings refer to the singer's handling of songs' emotions and artistic sublimation. Singing energy refers to the singer's singing skills, such as singing breath, articulation, resonance, sound intensity, timbre brightness and so on.

The whole concept of vocal music teaching does not refer to a single whole. We summarize it as a whole composed of many parts, which are independent, restrictive and interlocking, and the effect of the whole teaching is not just the sum of all the parts.

Vocal music teaching under the guidance of holistic and local theory requires us to treat all links in vocal music learning as a whole. Although there are steps, plans and emphases in every level and stage in the teaching process, it is not advisable to train the singer's voice, language and emotion separately. One-sided emphasis on a certain performance of vocal music will often hinder the progress of vocal music training.