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Module 3


This week opened my eyes to technologies that assist students in creating musical compositions. The reading from Bauer (2020) reminded me of a heated debate that I observed in my undergraduate studies that argued sound versus sight for music learning. I believe in sound-before-sight pedagogy, which strengthens students' audiation and allows them to think more musically and less rigidly. Having strong audiation enables students to "think in music" and become fluent, capable musicians before learning standard notation. While composition software has the potential to support musical literacy, teachers must ensure that their lessons use technology to enhance concepts and further student growth rather than create shortcuts that inhibit musicality. 


For example, suppose students do not have strong audiation skills before exploring some of the technologies mentioned in the chapter. In that case, they may not be able to use technology to compose high-quality, coherent musical works. If students cannot hear their composition in their mind as they compose, they will find it challenging to embellish their theme, create a form, and add details like articulation deliberately and purposefully. Audiation is particularly important when revising an original work. Students must be able to audiate their vision for their composition to make edits that match their original ideas. Therefore, teachers must ensure that their students have experience listening to and speaking about music before diving into programs like Noteflight that use the symbol-to-sound approach.


Teachers should aim to use music software to enrich students' musicality. For example, technologies built for composition allow students to manipulate and play with sounds to create expressive pieces of music. Teachers can scaffold these experiences to optimize students' experience with composition and reinforce previously learned musical concepts. Teachers can scaffold these experiences by providing constraints and guidelines that help students get started. Because composition technology allows for immediate playback, students can engage in peer and self-evaluation to critique and revise their work. Programs like Google Classroom allow for ease of sharing and evaluating classmates' compositions.


During this module, I also developed an understanding of the difference between MIDI and digital audio. Although it uses a lot of storage space, digital audio is a fantastic option for recording student work because it can capture the "acoustic complexity" of sounds. Another advantage of digital audio is that the quality of the sound remains the same when copies of each file are made. Musicians can manipulate digital audio in programs like Audacity, Garageband, and BandLab.

My favorite part of this module was experiencing BandLab and creating my "Electric Fun Train" composition. I was excited to be able to create a professional-quality product without any prior experience using the program. The loops displayed graphic notation that made it simple to audiate the song in my head. Additionally, the program's tools made it simple to manipulate sound and create precisely the musical effect I envisioned. Powerful tools like this are compelling to me as an educator. I am already picturing my students using this program to create music outside of school, which is one of my goals as a teacher.


Reference:

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


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