Music Tech Week 2

This week, the focus of the reading was creating music and the importance creating music has in music education.  Two ways in which a teacher can teach students to be creative within music education are composition and improvisation.  Bauer (2014) notes that according to Bloom’s revised taxonomy, creativity can be viewed as the highest level of cognitive complexity.  Bauer goes on to write, “if the purpose of schools is to provide a well-rounded education for students that will enable them to function in the many different roles they may encounter in life, the ability to think creatively should be a high priority” (Bauer, 2014 p. 48).  If this is true, shouldn’t music teachers make creating music a high priority in their classes as well? 

For the purpose of this blog, I will define creating music as composing or improvising.  While technically students “create” music when playing music that has already been written, it is a different process than actually creating unique music through composition or improvisation.  In talking with colleagues who are music teachers, I find that many of them do not do any activities that include creating music, with the exception of their jazz band classes if they have them.  While the students become very proficient at recreating what the composers of their sheet music wrote, coming up with new music on their own is something that is rarely, if at all addressed.  Some of this is due to the idea that the teachers don’t have enough time to begin teaching creative projects or units because they are more concerned with preparing their ensembles for performances or teaching their general music students about music history, appreciation, or teaching them basic music performance skills.  I find this to be sad because all of these aspects of a music education are important, but leaving out creative projects is not allowing students to get a comprehensive music education.  Creating is one of the four National Core Arts Standards, and music teachers should make an effort to address it, even if this means their ensembles won’t sound quite as good, or they won’t get as high a rating at a festival.

Composing is a wonderful way to incorporate creativity into a student’s music education.  There are many ways for students to compose, which makes composition possible in all music classes.  Bauer (2014) lists many different activities that allow students to compose, and they do not all require knowledge of music theory or how to read or write notation.  Activity one is to create a loop-based composition.  Since loops are pre-recorded, students do not need to be able to actually play the instruments or make the sounds they want to use in their composition, but they can arrange these loops in different patterns to create unique compositions.  The use of Incredibox and other websites or sequencing software provides anyone the opportunity to create unique compositions.  This type of composition might not meet the musical objectives of the traditional Western European music education model followed by much of the United States, but it can allow students to be creative within the subject of music.

Another activity mentioned by Bauer is creating or utilizing alternative notation.  This is a great activity for students who do not know how to read traditional notation and allows these students to write their own music or soundscapes using notation that makes sense to them.  The point of notation, after all, is to be able to recreate a musical idea based on what the musician sees written.  Notation could include pictures, colors, shapes, etc. as long as it communicates to the musician what sounds are to be made when.

Improvisation is another aspect of creating music that many teachers avoid or intentionally skip as part of their curriculum.  This is unfortunate, especially in the United States, where jazz is widely accepted to be the first American art form.  Colleagues I have talked with have expressed concern that they don’t know enough about improvisation to be able to teach it to students.  As Bauer points out in this week’s reading, there are many forms of improvisation, some of which could be taught by any music teacher if they want to include improvisation in their curriculum.  Bauer describes Kratus’ seven-level sequential model for developing improvisational abilities well.  Level one is “exploration” and in this stage students experiment with various sounds without any particular structure.  Any music teacher is able to guide this type of improvisational activity because there are no preexisting rules or defined outcomes that need to be followed or met.  This type of improvisation allows students to begin to gain basic audiation skills, which can help them in their musical future, no matter what type of music they engage in.  Even though this sounds very basic, this should be the minimum amount of improvisation students learn in school.  Level two is “process-oriented improvisation” which is more complex, but still easily teachable by music teachers with the most basic knowledge of improvisation. 

While music teachers might not feel comfortable teaching improvisation because they think they’re not good at it, have never been taught how to, or think that it is not applicable to the kind of music their students perform, it is still an important part of musicmaking that students should have some experience with in a comprehensive music education. 

Creating music is an important part of a well-rounded, comprehensive music education.  While not all music educators might see the value in doing very basic composition or improvisation, all students should have at least the most basic knowledge of how these activities are carried out.  Your students do not have to become the next Bach or Beethoven, they might not even be able to notate their compositions using correct traditional notation, but the experience of being creative with music is important to their learning.  Anyone is able to teach these concepts in their music class.  As Bauer writes, “music educators might explore both formal and informal approaches to creative activities as appropriate to specific learning outcomes, the learning environment, and the students involved” (Bauer, 2014 p. 51).  

Reference

Bauer, W. I. (2014).  Music learning today: digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.