Module 2

This week, our course material discussed the processes teacher can use to engage students in creative music-making, including technologies that help facilitate these creative experiences. In particular, Bauer's (2020) text focused on improvisation. Bauer asserts that becoming fluent musically follows similar processes to becoming fluent in a language. First, teachers must give students small doses of improvisatory activities to build students' confidence and mitigate their fear of failure. Activities should begin with listening activities and simple echo patterns. Then, teachers should progress through various scaffolds like question-and-answer form, improvising variations, creating transcriptions, and group improvisation before students should be expected to improvise freely. While leading students through these scaffolds, teachers must emphasize the importance of learning by trial and error. Failure in the creative process is an inevitable and necessary step toward gaining improvisatory fluency in music.

Our cohort participated in a dialogue in our discussion posts that speculated why music teachers are uncomfortable implementing improvisation activities in their classrooms. As a group, we determined that if we received our musical education in the Western Classical tradition, we most likely did not encounter improvisation until a decade or more into our training. By that point, we had developed a sense of "right and wrong" in our technical musicality that made it hard to come to terms with "babbling" on our instruments like it was our first day learning to produce a tone. As a result, we became nervous, rigid, and inflexible in our musicality and avoided improvisation. However, I have personally come to love improvisation through teaching young children to improvise. Kratus's (1996) seven-level sequential model begins with exploration, which allows for playful foundational experiences that make students intrinsically motivated to continue playing with, listening to, and exploring their new and exciting understanding of music.

Technology makes musical experiences and creative development accessible to any musician, regardless of their skill level or experience. For instance, students have access to billions of songs and pieces of music through free streaming services. Listening to music is an essential step toward gaining fluency. Additionally, recording oneself during practice sessions can allow students to practice self-evaluation. Furthermore, students can upload recordings, share their practice progress, and collaborate on creative ideas. Students can also create music with electronic instruments, which are sometimes less inhibitive than their acoustic siblings due to their ease of sound production. There are unlimited possibilities for making music digitally, which is an exciting and daunting idea for a teacher.

I listed many affordances of music technologies but have yet to mention their constraints. From my perspective, the primary limitation of music technologies in school settings is the teacher's ability to become fluent in the target technology, then successfully connect and harness students' prior knowledge to inform a productive use of the technology. In other words, I struggle to focus on one source of technology long enough to use it in-depth with my students. I usually do not become fluent enough in the technology before introducing it to my students and therefore do not set effective constraints to allow for a focused assignment. Hallam (2008) lists sufficient time as one of the necessary components for implementing creative activities in the classroom.

One piece of technology I have yet to explore is MIDI. MIDI allows computers, software, and instruments to communicate. Some MIDI keyboards are inexpensive and open the possibility to help students learn music theory and piano techniques while allowing them to input notation and create their own music through notation software like Noteflight and Musescore and Digital Audio Workstations like Garageband. MIDI also enables students to create compositions by layering one track at a time, allowing students to develop complicated works without needing to master complex keyboard techniques. Two more important abilities of MIDI recordings can include their ability to be transposed and played back during live performances. Both capabilities open the door for even more advanced creative possibilities for beginning to intermediate students. Technology allows students to express and manifest their complicated creative ideas without technical proficiency on acoustic instruments.

References:

Bauer, W. I. (2020). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Hallam, S. (2008). Music psychology in education. London, England: Institute of Education, University of London. (Original work published in 2006).

Kratus, J. (1996). A developmental approach to teaching music improvisation. International Journal of Music Education, 26(1), 27–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/025576149502600103