Research
Music Educators | Inquisitive Thinkers
The music educator must always be seeking to expand their mind. A well-prepared educator should ponder every aspect of their lesson or rehearsal plan to the point where they can already anticipate mistakes or questions students may have. In addition, the educator should always seek new knowledge so that they may be able to come up with new and effective ways to teach their students.
What Kind of Music Course Can Address All Students?
MUE 415
Upon reading Chapter Six of Teaching General Music, I realized that there really is so much more in regards to incorporating technology into the music classroom that I now feel is overlooked. I’m sure that the notion of incorporating technology and digital media into classes would not be objected by most in the education field, but how can this be achieved besides simply bringing iPads into class one day and letting students run free. Surely, this type of activity can be put to good use when done in a careful and well-prepared manner, but after pondering the arguments that Dr. Tobias made in his article I realize now that in order for technology in the classroom to truly work – and for it to truly be of value to both the students and the teacher – the instructor must be able to adapt their curriculum to include technology as a vital part of the classroom, even if that means totally scrapping an already existing curriculum and starting from ground zero. The thought of a hybrid classroom, one in which technology and music become inseparable, has now become very attractive to me.
In this such context, hybrid classrooms differ from traditional music courses such as band or music theory in that they do not necessarily follow a standard or linear curriculum, and instead opt for raw exploration of knowledge and techniques. As put by Dr. Tobias, this such approach to teaching “fosters classrooms that mix aspects of general music and ensembles; mobile devices and acoustic instruments; or music from multiple genres, eras, and cultures” (Tobias, p.152). When in the hands of a capable instructor, hybrid classes allow for students to focus on content matter that they are interested in, while at the same time giving the instructor a chance to teach subject matter to everyone when needed so that everyone is on the same page (again, when needed). Whereas one student may want to use Logic Pro X to create loops and tracks, another may want to use the same program to record their guitar soloing over the tracks that the previous student made. This type of learning facilitates inquiry through curiosity, sparking a type of learning that is rarely seen in standard music classes.
All this being said, I can see why it may be daunting for educators to adopt this hybrid approach. The idea of not having a set curriculum may be terrifying for some, especially those that may teach “core” classes such as math. It also doesn’t help that administrators often gauge the skill of a teacher by the scores or awards that their students receive, things that might be seen as irrelevant by hybrid instructors. I am very interested to see ways the many different ways that hybridity can be applied to various levels and areas of music, whether it be band, orchestra, theory, etc., and how I can utilize hybridity to truly integrate technology into my future music program.
Example of students interacting with technology in non-traditional settings:
How might music educators leverage technology and media to support students’ musical engagement and learning?
MUE 415
Some of the key points that I took from this article by Dr. Tobias is that when using a hybrid approach in a music classroom setting, it is important to use technology beyond mere tools for the students to learn to use. The technology should not be the focal point of any lesson or class, but should instead by thought of as a vessel or medium for the students’ learning. For example, a hybrid teacher’s objective should not be “Today we are going to learn how to edit sound clips using Audacity” and should instead look something like “Today we will record different sounds that you find around school and then select the sounds that you think would best fit into last week’s trap beat we made.” This way, students are still learning how to trim and edit audio clips with Audacity (or any other software, for that matter) but are then able to shift their attention away from the software and again onto the music they are working on. The focus should always be on the sounds/music being made, never on the technology being used. This kind of approach allows for a much more thorough exploration of music through technology, and let’s students create what they want to create by applying the knowledge and skills that they’ve learned along the way.
When messing around with the Roli Sound Keyboard, I wasn’t thinking “I need to learn how to use this,” and was instead thinking “I want to know how I can use this to get the sounds that I want.”
When taking Digital Hybrid Lab, I don’t think I fully realized the processes that were going on. To be quite honest, I wasn’t really thinking about the applications of technology in the projects we were doing – I was just having fun exploring the different software and hardware that was available to me. Upon reflecting on all of the material up to this point in this semester, I realize that the class was the textbook definition of hybridity as described in our readings. While we all received the same instruction, we were allowed to take that information and do what we wanted with it. This kind of instruction is something I absolutely see myself doing in my future classroom.
How might we facilitate musical learning and understanding?
MUE 415
As we wrap up this article by Dr. Tobias, one of the most resonating ideas that I took from the reading was that, as an educator in a hybrid classroom, “one’s pedagogy must be contextual and flexible to meet students needs” (Tobias p.173). In other words, the teacher must be willing to set aside their ego and accept that they, too, are in that classroom simultaneously learning with their kids. Through an ever-developing technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge, a successful teacher will be able to adapt their teaching strategies, lesson plans, and curriculum in order to fit whatever particular group of kids might be in front of them at any current time. Another key point that I understood was the idea of utilizing a student’s “Zone of Proximal Development” (ZPD), which is a reference to ensuring that any and all information being provided is just the right amount of difficulty to properly engage students’ learning. According to Vygotsky, “a student is in his or her ZPD when the challenge of a particular situation meets his or her understanding and skill level without being to difficult or easy with assistance from others” (1978). Acknowledging students’ ZPD will enforce consistent learning, while also eliminating sentiments of “Why are we still on this topic?” “This is too easy.” “Can we move on already?” Teaching around ensures that no student is ever left bored, tired, or uninterested in the classroom.
A vignette:
“I am a music educator in my own classroom. My beginning music technology students enter Monday morning having finished writing their own beats using software such as GarageBand or Logic Pro. Upon sitting down they discover that they will begin to learn how to edit sound clips. Instead of walking them through a powerpoint of how to use editing software such as Audacity, they are instructed to use the recording abilities on their phones/devices (or if budgeting permits, the classroom set of microphones) to record as many different sounds as they can find around campus with the ultimate goal of sampling these sounds and add them into their beats from last week. Driven by competition, the students scatter throughout the building and outside to see who can record the weirdest and most interesting sounds. Following this, they are then able to cut up and trim the sounds that they want to use to add them into their beat file.”
The goal of that scenario was to show the teaching of a new skill in almost a roundabout way. The students have learned to use new software to edit and export sound bytes by experimenting themselves with sounds they have recorded. This could have easily been an assignment where I provide a selection of generic audio files and I ask for them to submit a trimmed version of the audio file. With the incentive of being able to sample and insert the sounds into their music, though, they are immediately much more invested into the project than if it had been the former assignment. Yay project based learning!
How might we connect music programs with participatory and contemporary cultures?
MUE 415
The article this week by Dr. Tobias touched upon the idea of “convergence” and the “participatory culture” as they relate to music education. Henry Jenkins defines media convergence as “a situation in which multiple media systems coexist and where media content flows fluidly across them,” and then goes on to define the participatory culture of music as a type of multimedia engagement that represents a “public desire to participate within, rather than simply consume, media” (Music Educators Journal pg. 30). More specifically, Dr. Tobias goes into detail on the many varied ways that music can be interacted with that, unfortunately, isn’t usually available in a typical public school music classroom. Some of these practices listed are song covers, arrangements, parodies, mashups, among several others. Far too often, I’ve had disappointing conversations with many “classically trained” musicians who fail to see the merit of such practices because they often involve popular music genres such as pop, hip-hop, rap, R&B, etc. The skills and abilities learned through practices such as remixing and multi-tracking go beyond those taught in many traditional music classrooms, yet are of such a collaborative nature that it seems almost incredulous they are completely overlooked. As stated by Jenkins, music is of such a participatory culture that most want to participate in music in ways beyond buying their favorite album or streaming the latest pop single. People want to make music, and people want to make music with others who also share the same passion.
So why, then, are there not more opportunities to participate in music that go outside of ensemble playing? This is an issue that was brought up and discussed in the Kratus article from week 1; there is the sense of “academic” and “non-academic” music, and while students go to school and study about all types of famous musicians and masterpieces, almost none of what they learn is relevant to the music they listen to and interact with daily. “Academic” orchestral/classical music is but a small sliver of the types of musics that the majority of the world’s population are interacting with (or for that matter, are even interested in) on a day-to-day basis. It should go without saying that I am by no means trying to argue that there is zero merit in studying, listening to, and playing classical music – this type of study facilitates a much deeper understanding of the inner mechanics, such as rhythm, melody, and harmony, that makes a song so great – but what is to be said about the young musician who is fully studied up on Bach and Strauss, yet can’t name a single pop hit from 2018?
Tangents aside, incorporating such a participatory culture into music classrooms can be tricky, since many times educators might feel hesitant to veer from the traditional teaching models that they have known for so long, or they might not be sure which elements of their teaching to change and adapt to promote media convergence within their classrooms. The article highlights an example where the Berlin Philharmonic, one of the most well-respected orchestras in the world, hosted a remix contest of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. If an ensemble so embedded in traditional “academic” music is able to adapt musical practices of the 21st century, why shouldn’t teachers be able to? An important aspect to remember is that these contemporary practices absolutely do not have to override the tradition of classical music that so many educators know and love, but rather should coexist alongside these values. Dr. Tobias argues that remixing, covering, and creating mashups of existing music can most definitely take place in the same setting where they are creating and performing music, whether it be Mozart or Kendrick Lamar.
Such a project might ask for students to use digital software to remix a famous song into a completely different genre, or to create a mashup of two wildly different songs. The music educator can steer the project in a direction that addresses the relevant cultural aspects that come up when taking media from two completely different worlds, and incorporate a conversation that discusses such aspects.
One of my favorite example of this kind of work is a mashup I came across on social media that takes Dvořák’s “New World Symphony” and mixes it with The Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps.”
Have a listen 🙂