Music-ITE

The module is presented in eight phases and these can be adapted to suit individual settings. Hyperlinks are included to supporting video and sound files, web sites, electronic texts and downloadable materials. In each case, the users should be careful to check the authenticity and security of these resources.

Each of the phases contains a stimulus, such as a video extract, key readings, key questions and discussion points. Tutors should not see this resource as being definitive but as a resource for exploring and questioning practice. Each phase also includes an activity that should enhance the students’ musical awareness, technological skill, pedagogical understanding and critical thinking. It is worth isolating these elements in order to ensure subject discipline and academic rigour.

This module will focus on

1. (Pedagogy ) How ICT can support the teaching of primary music?
2. (Resources) The specific opportunities offered by a piece of recording and sound processing software.
3. (Progression) Progression and continuity within a short project.
4. (Strategy) Challenges and strategies for using ICT in the primary classroom.
5. (Repertoire) Developing opportunities for using ICT.
6. (Assessment) Evaluating technology in children’s musical learning

Begin by discussing with the students how they think ICT can support the teaching of Music. Share experiences and discuss fears and limitations. Discuss software and encourage them to think about how young people use music technology at home – mobile phones, Ejay and other composing software, karaoke, notation & sequencing software, keyboards.

Consider this quote from Tim Cain (2001): Curriculum change is necessary if the world of the classroom is to keep pace with the world outside. Is school music at risk of being out of touch with music in the wider world? Is it already? Discuss.

In How can IT be done? ICT in the Primary School, David Wheway points out that there are many teachers who lack confidence in teaching music, and there are teachers who lack confidence in using ICT. It is therefore likely that, for many teachers, the idea of bringing both music and technology together is particularly challenging.

Ask:

• What do the students know of electronic music?
• What technologies are available?
• Do they feel excited at the prospect of exploring music through ICT or thoroughly sick?

Reassurance should be given but it is worth noting that children may have similar responses to new activities.

The video materials included involve a group of children working on a project related to the QCA unit ‘Journey into Space’. Spend a little time with the students looking over the planning overview PDF. Discuss where they think the project is going and what their initial responses to the ideas are. Look at each of the session plans and note how progression features over the four weeks. Watch video clip 1. Here the children are exploring sound sources to work with for their Alien Voices work.

Ask:

• Are the children engaged with the sounds they are making?
• Are they exploring a variety of ways of making the sounds or are they simply responding to the physical characteristics of the objects?

Invite the students to explore making sounds with a range of sound sources.

Ask:

• Which do they like and why?
• How could they describe the sounds?
• What conditions are necessary to really hear the sounds?

Encourage the students to speculate on the sound and musical potential of the objects. Such ability to speculate internally is a feature of more mature exploration whereas very young children respond principally to the physical characteristics of a sound source.

Watch video 2. Here one group of children are encouraged to explore short and long sounds using regular instruments, as indicated in the group activity of the week one plan.

Ask:

• Is this achieved?
• Are the children listening carefully?
• How could they be guided to create more interesting and better quality sounds?

The students should note the teacher’s questioning. Discuss how this supports the children’s thinking and if it could be enhanced in any way.

Spend a little time with the students discussing the common process of creative work in the arts. Ask them to consider the cycle of work an artist goes through when creating a new work: exploring, forming, presenting work in progress, performing, evaluating, reforming, and responding. This isn’t necessarily cyclic – artists could begin at any point. Invite them to consider this in the context of children’s art work in school.

Ask:

• How much time is there for play and exploration?
• Is this important?
• Are they asked to form and create before they’ve had time to explore?
• What are they responding to – a serious issue or a lesson plan which is of no personal interest.

Discuss.

Watch video 3.

Ask:

• How are the children being encouraged to play here?
• Is there enough ‘space’ to freely explore?
• Is such exploration of value?
• Do they see a problem with this in their own classrooms?

Watch video 4. Here a group of children are exploring changing sounds using a keyboard.

Ask:

• How does the instrument support their decision making?
• Are they listening to the sounds they are creating and are they making conscious choices about the sounds they want to keep.
• Is this important?

Encourage the students to explore and experiment with simple sound recordings using Audacity which is freely downloadable. At this stage it would be enough to explore the following:

• Recording their voices, body sounds (!!!) or other sound-sources on a single track.
• Try highlighting the track and copying it to a different location
• Explore the range of effects – focus on changing pitch, tempo, adding echo, repeat and track reversal.
• Notice how the graphic image represents the sound and provides a stimulus for exploring patterns and sequences.
• Explore muting a track when recording or playing back multiple tracks.
• Save as Audacity files, and as WAV files or MP3 for use in other situations such as midi or cd recording.

In video 5 two groups of children are improvising a call and response piece. They have grouped the instruments according to how they are played: shaken and with a beater. Discuss with the students what is driving the improvisation: the physical characteristics of the instruments or the musical intentions they have conceived internally? This relates strongly to what Glover has called ‘Music Made as played’ (Glover & Ward, 1993. pp.145-149). There are signs that individual children in the video are beginning to have some preconception about what they are going to play. This highlights an important aspect of musical development, and it would be fitting to consider the implications of such kinaesthetically driven activity, as discussed by Glover in the passage indicated above.

Use this opportunity to classify and group the instruments. You could refer the students to Agogo Bells to Xylophones by Maggie Cotton (2005). Once the instruments have been classified, you could play a simple conductor game in which the students have the instruments and sit in groups, as sorted. A conductor, using a beater as a baton, then directs the group to start. It might be better to start with a simple pulse then, as other instruments come in, they can improvise rhythms over the pulse. The conductor can then make decisions about dynamics, texture, silence, solos & duets, and timbres featured. This could be recorded using Audacity and converted to Mp3 and distributed to the groups web space.

Once sounds have been digitally recorded they can be manipulated using processing equipment, as featured in Audacity. In Video 6 the teacher plays the children examples of their sounds, after she has manipulated them.

Ask:

• Who is doing the work here?
• Where is the main body of learning situated, in this kind of task?
• Where is the experimentation, the forming, the decision making, the reflecting, the learning about music and technology?
• What can the teacher do for the children, and what do the children need to do for themselves?
• Is the task is too complex for children: is it beneficial to their learning?

Following this discussion the students can record their own sounds and experiment with digital manipulation. Add echo and delay; try repeating up to 10 times, or running a loop. Combine sounds by layering tracks. The students could also load up the previously recorded rhythmic conductor-piece and explore adding echo and delay to this. Ask them to consider what effect such manipulation has on a piece and what opportunities this could offer for musical composition. They could think about theme tunes such as Doctor Who. In what ways are the sounds electronically manipulated here? The students might enjoy considering the difference between the three generations of Dr Who themes:

Doctor Who original theme

Doctor Who 1980-1985 theme

Doctor Who 2008 theme

Ask:

• What is the cross-curricular potential of such a project? Space is obviously a possibility, but what about Weather, Communication, Colour, Seasons, Journeys?
• Any others?
• How could the learning be seriously cross-curricular: composing in response to a poem, a story? Composing for a dance or drama?

Ideas should begin to flow. An insight into a reasoned approach to cross-curricular teaching can be found in Cross-curricular Learning 3-14, Barnes (2007).

At this stage, refer the students back to the conductor game, played earlier. Ask them to think how such a piece could be represented graphically. In particular, they should consider texture (layers), duration (lengths & grouping of notes) and possibly dynamics. Watch video 7.

Here the students are being introduced to a graphic sequencer. Encourage the students to note how the graphic indicates duration and texture. Using coloured strips, create a sequencer on the board. The students can experiment with this using their voices or body sounds. They should be encouraged to create their own sequences, then getting others to play for them. This could be linked to the conductor game, so that each part knows the rhythm pattern to be played on entering. Encourage the students to see this as an opportunity for decision making. It is a graphic approach to composing but that doesn’t mean that decisions shouldn’t be made about the music that is created. The strips can be moved, shortened, rearranged until the desired composition is realised

Refer back to video 7. How far were the children encouraged to consider the music they had made? Could you have developed this in any way, or was it appropriate to the topic on aliens?

Listen to the individual sound files for each of the alien voices:

Green Blubber:

Green Gismo:

Green Globber:

Green Rebel:

Green Tweety:

Ask:

• What effects have been added to the sampled sounds? Ask them to describe the sounds, using musical language such as the elements and more technical terms.What would children make of this activity?
• What age group would this be appropriate for?

The students should now watch video 8. Notice the children’s decision making.

Ask:

• What is the basis of their decisions?
• Are they considered and does it matter if they are not?
• Is it ok just to experiment and make decisions once an initial composition has been created?

When the piece has been completed are the children invited to comment on it, or do they simply accept what has been played back?

Ask:

• Does it matter ether way?

At this point it would be useful to allow the students to compose their own final piece. They will use Audacity and they can either use sounds already sampled or newly created ones. The piece should be given a title and perhaps a stipulation that it should last for no more than ninety seconds, possibly with the instruction to creae a new TV theme tune.

During the composing process encourage the students to share their work and to reflect on the process. They should share solutions to problems, reflect on the learning process they are going through, and consider how this informs their work as teachers. Opportunity should be sought for an official presentation of the piece. It could be uploaded to a virtual space, and other students could comment on it (NICELY!!!), making objective comments relating to the musical elements featured and the overall effect. Some opportunity should also be sought for the students to reflect on the entire process and to consider how this has impacted on their own musicality.

Following the activity the students should be encouraged to consider the pedagogical implications of the project. You might ask why teachers avoid using ICT:

• Subject Knowledge
• Pedagogical knowledge
• Classroom management
• Resources

Any other considerations? You might refer them to the article by David Wheway (2004), the extract from Glover and Young (1999) and to watch video 9, and possibly video 12, as a basis for discussion.

Video 9:

Video 12:

Ask the students to consider the progression of learning in this project. Refer back to session plans and the planning overview PDF. Comment on these regarding their detail and the nature of progression. Ask the students to consider projects of their own they might consider. Point them to the BECTA site and Jabberwocky, a unit of work that uses Audacity, at Tuned in.

You might consider encouraging the students to think about how children and young adults learn music informally, at home or in other social settings. How is this different to school music? Readings from Lucy Green (2002) on informal learning, and Keith Swanwick (1988; chapter 8) on ‘Instruction and Encounter’ would be fitting starting points here. Swanwick (1988:133) points to Murray Schafer’s comment that there are no such things as teachers, only a community of learners. How far do the students agree with this statement? What possibilities does it open up? What limitations?

Webster & Hickey (2006: 379) conclude that movement through any developmental model of musical learning is highly dependent upon enculturation and formal training. This, they believe, has further implication for how we set about using technology to support musical learning and composition. Are teachers the best facilitators of children’s enculturation into the twilight world of music technology. Do we help or hinder? Should we be looking for experienced musicians (adults or teenagers) to support our work and provide a model of what it is like to be a living muso-tek!! Webster & Hickey add that effective learning takes place in constructive, learning-centred environments, through activity that replicates, where possible, real-life situations. Clearly, technology now affords us our own sound studio at home and in school which is closer to a real-life situation than has ever been possible before. The job of the teacher now is to provide a context that is real to the children, valuable, affords independence, and is within their grasp, with just a little support from a more knowledgeable other.

Such technology appears to offer an opportunity for the development of children’s musical creativity. Yet, if we understand creativity, not as a pre-determined age/phase related aspect of child development but as a cultural phenomenon, that is rooted in situational and environmental contexts (see Bernard, 2006), then the potential of technology to support musical development is going to be limited to the teacher’s own lived-experience. Where this is weak, it may be that children grasp the new literacy of technology, quicker than, and despite, their teachers (see Hickey 2004). In such cases, an informal, child-initiated approach, where trial and error and peer-learning pervade, may offer greater potential for learning. For an in-depth discussion about informal learning approaches in music see Lucy Green (2002). Students may also be interested in the account of informal music learning among the Venda people, described by Blacking (1974).

Finally, we might want to consider the potential technology has for raising the profile of music education in school, especially among boys. Dibben (2005: 122) reports on the issue of gender, that the identification of music as a feminine subject is changing, largely due to the introduction of music technology into class music-making. Furthermore Jonathan Savage (2005:179) suggests that classroom music should attempt to remain current with the wider world of music making and that we ignore ‘at our peril’ the revolution in compositional practice that has taken place in the wider world. He states

By using carefully chosen technologies within the music curriculum in this way, pupils’ musical experiences can be more challenging, varied and educationally richer than those possible within a music curriculum devoid of ICT.

Web

1. Audacity – free download
2. Jabberwocky - unit of work that makes use of Audacity
3. BECTA – curriculum music support
4. Tuned in – music resources for teachers, by teachers

Academic Texts

Barnes, J. (2007) Cross-curricular Learning 3-14. London: Sage
Burnard, P. (2006) The Individual and Social Worlds of Children’s Musical Creativity in McPherson, G. (ed) The Child as Musician (353-374). Oxford: OUP
Cain, T. (2001) Theory, technology and the music curriculum. British Journal of Music Education 21:2 pp.215-221
Cotton, M. (2005) Agogo Bells to Xylophone: a friendly guide to classroom percussion instruments. London: A & C Black
Glover, J. and Young, S. (1999) Primary Music: Later Years. London: The Falmer Press pp.175-182
Green, L. (2002) How popular musicians learn: A way ahead for music education. London: Ashgate
Hickey, M. (2004) Music Technology in Schools – the garage bands of the future, cited in Webster, P. & Hickey, M. (2006: p391)
Savage, J. (2005) Working towards a theory for music technologies in the classroom: how pupils engage with and organise sounds with new technologies. British Journal of Music Education
Swanwick, K. (1988) Music, Mind, and Education. London: Routledge
Webster, P. & Hickey, M. (2006) Computers and Technology Creativity in McPherson, G. (ed) The Child as Musician (375-395) Oxford: OUP
Wheway, D. (2004) How can IT be done? ICT in Primary Practice in Ideas in Music out – Using technology in Music Education. National Association of Music Educators