Ch. 8 Reflection

I think coaching is a great way to build student success in a smaller ensemble. Unfortunately, if there is a class of 100 students, a teacher might find it a little difficult to involve coaching in the classroom. Fortunately, as music teachers, we have the capabilities to that when it comes to composition. A student-centered approach will help the teacher engage with students directly without giving the students the “preconceived notion”. Students being allowed to do their work on their own time while the teacher walks around the classroom and answers the students’ questions is a great way to have the students build on personal creativity. The negatives would be that allowing students without much problem has the potential to cause more bad than good. Students given the opportunity to create with absolutely no idea of what it is to sound like before hand may have a negative effect on a student because they may not feel confident or they are just a person who absolutely needs something to grasp on to before they hit the ground running.

Yes, composition is about creating from nothing, but some students just don’t carry that attitude. A way to justify this is to create something for specific students who want it. If they want it, you can put a recording on your phone and let the student listen to it on headphones from your phone. That way no one else can hear it and they aren’t using their own phone or having to leave the application the assignment is on.

The technology I would use to teach the tune Frere Jacques is a recording sample of a theme and variation and what it is meant to sound like. I would use music writing software such as Musescore, and (to rob Keith’s idea) I would like to use a smartboard so they can “touch” the notes and move them around so they can have a literal “hands-on” approach when it comes to music composition.

Ch. 15 Reflection

Folk Song Setting is a good lesson to share with the students. This gives students the actual chance to compose music for themselves. The idea is to find a folk song, find the sheet music, put down the melody and add your own harmony line. This really gets students involved in the writing process and also works ear training to get them listening to chord structures that may sound better than others at certain points.

The lesson that comes to mind is New Clothes for an Old Tune which is a lesson where you get piece from the baroque or classical period and arrange it in a popular style. This lesson really gets the student involved in how to arrange and orchestrate this music and will help their ability to take their ideas from the world in which they grew up in and take masterworks from generations before and add it to the style in which they know.

I think the clean look of typeset music notation affects people who compose a great deal. Handwriting music can become incredibly messy if you do not have the skills to write cleanly. With notation software, everything is in front of you and in the cleanest possible way so everything can be seen and even played back if you want to.

Ch. 14 Reflection

Cut, Copy, Paste, Split, Move is a great lesson for the students because this is all about editing. I think learning the skills it takes to edit is a great lesson for the students to learn so they can really dig in to changing up what they are creating.

A lesson that comes to mind is the My Favorite Things podcasting lesson. Podcasting generally takes a lot of editing to make it clear and learning the editing skills from the Ch. 14 lesson could help a great deal in making a successful podcast.

Ch. 13 Reflection

The Lesson Do-Re-Mi (or 1-2-3) Editing: Cut, Copy, Paste is an ideal starting place for a technology assignment. The assignment requires students to go to a music writing software and take a pre-written work and split the sections up and copy-paste them to keep the notes intact, but change up the entire composition into something entirely different. I do not teach any of these lessons already so the second half of the question does not refer to me.

Percussion Sound Improvisation comes to mind with a project I could teach to my students. This is a project which students can learn improvisation through percussion instruments. This unlocks creativity because the majority of the students are using instrumentation that they have no experience with and the percussion students i the class get a chance to use instruments that they normally wouldn’t get to use in the classroom.

Ch. 11 Reflection

“Hands-on Timbre” is a lesson which I’ve taught to a class and I can describe its strengths by explaining that this is a lesson which teaches students all about timbres of the different instruments. It teaches what each instrument sounds like so they may have a better idea of how they are supposed to sound within an ensemble. This lesson also helps by giving students the chance to mess with different sounds and even put their hands in the most basic forms of orchestration.

Some good reasons for creating self-made materials for creative musical activities are that doing this can teach students about so much more in the field of music than just concert music. With this idea students have creation at their fingertips without having to take 5 years of theory and aural skills classes. Technology puts composing in its simplest form which allows students the opportunity to create and put their creativity out in the world for others to hear.

Hands-On Timbre

Rubric Description and Instructions

Students are to take “Amazing Grace” and change instrumentation and add additional features to boost the final composition.

Score (No Score)

Max Score:
Min Score:

	Proficient100 Points	Emerging75 Points	Beginning50 Points
Final Performance( )	Presentation was completed with all required elements Clean performance	Presentation was incomplete with most required elements Performance had moderate issues	Presentation was incomplete with several elements missing Unclear performance with many blatant errors

Ch. 10 Reflection

Technology broadens the definition in the fact that with technology any person can create and perform it anywhere they want. A traditional performance is “the act of staging a play, concert, or any other form of entertainment. Now that technology exists in the arts performance do not require being staged and can be done virtually anywhere and at a moment’s notice. The advantage of technology assisted performance is that anyone can create through technology and perform it for a class or larger group. The disadvantage is it gives students the idea that they may not have to learn an instrument if they can just use technology which has the possibility of students losing interest in their current instrument. Another disadvantage is that there are so many different things to choose from that it can easily be overwhelmed and the field of technological performance can become very saturated.

The connection between “sharing oneself” and “employing performance” is that sharing oneself is the beginning of employed performance. No one can employ performance if they never share their work so “sharing oneself” paves the foundation for “employing performance”.

Consider the lesson plan “Hands-on Timbre”. All Eight Principles for Unlocking Musical Creativity can be incorporated to this lesson because this gets you out of a comfort zone and forces you to create something that you may have never created before. A student would learn a lot through this lesson about timbre and even basic orchestration by listening to how other instruments sound in the music. Students can perform their final project in front of the class and take the lesson and build upon it for a better performance. If they take the idea and create enough music to make a CD they can employ performance in that manner.

Ch. 9 Reflection

Some ways to teach students to respond positively to criticism is to teach them at the earliest age possible that criticism is the only real way in which people can learn. To be criticized, especially by a teacher, is just another way to be taught that it can be done better. Another way to teach students to respond eagerly toward criticism is by practicing criticism in the classroom using student to criticize others work by saying one good thing about the project and one thing they think could have been done better.

Some precautions a teacher must make when posting student work and commenting on a class blog is that the teacher must make sure to not have negative comments. All comments must be put in a positive light so as not take make a student feel singled out or come off as a bully.

Ch. 7 Reflection

I believe one’s experience learning an instrument can have a big affect on the comfort level of improvising.

Improvising is incredibly challenging to those faced with it for the first time. The challenge is magnetized if they have little experience on the instrument that they have. Of course, an argument can be made that it doesn’t matter how much experience you have because in my own case I have been playing the french horn for 14 years and my improvisation skills can be compared to the taste of sour milk.

Absolutely horrendous.

BUT, if a student is learning an instrument with a goal of becoming a skilled improviser one day, then as they learn the instrument and practice improvisational skills, I believe the student will become more and more comfortable as time goes on.

Technology can be used to inspire improvisation because one can experiment with improv by creating a basic chord pattern on a loop and use a midi keyboard to improv on top of it. They can experiment as much as they want in any given key and then they can just translate what they’ve learned on to their instrument.

The third question can be answered in my previous paragraph. I believe no student can be too inexperienced to improvise as long as they have a teacher that will dedicate at least a little time to teaching the basics of exactly what improvising is and the basic concept of how to do it.

I think that if a someone were to play around with a midi keyboard while there is a loop of chord progressions going, then that person will begin to do things that makes sounds that they like. What starts as messing around playing whatever they want becomes more enjoyable as they create patterns that sound better and better as they continue. The more they do that, the more improvising they do which could turn into more concrete ideas and lo and behold the basic building blocks of composing have be unlocked.

I think if they were to have the experience of improvising with a friend could have a positive affect because now ideas can be shared and new sounds can be heard which lead into better use of composing.

Ch. 6 Reflection

In the text, Authentic Creativity is defined as “The communication of the true creative ideas inside the student”. To me, this means that authentic creativity is exactly was being authentic is. To something to be authentic, it must be completely new a a brand new idea formed without the help of involvement of anyone. Authentic creativity is creativity without rules or stipulations to bring the creativity to life.

If a student is told by the teacher to write a piece of music and plays an example for the student, then already the student is a prisoner of stifled expression because by using an example, the student has received guidelines by writing a piece that is similar to the example.

Had the teacher just ask the student to write a piece and leave it there, no matter was is created from the student, good or bad, it is authentic and is considered authentic creativity.

Technology can foster free, genuine expression from less experienced musicians by giving them more of an opportunity to create without necessitating talent on an instrument. There are some people who physically can not find success on an instrument due to some sort of physical limitation. The students can now create sound from their hands and ears and never have to worry about coordinating their hands, fingers, and breath. They can create whatever they want whenever they want.

Some way that technology itself might prove to be a distraction to students engaged in creative musical activity is that it can be difficult to keep a student on track with all the social media and video streaming sites out there. One teacher may find it difficult to keep their eyes on 20+ kids computer screens at one time so they students can sneak away from the assignment to play games or what have you.

I believe this distraction can be avoided by having the students always work in a group, or use certain tools that allow the teacher to see all the screens at once from their own screen. They could utilize a seating position where the teacher can see all the screens because the screens are facing him/her.

Ch. 5 Refection

The first question asks if I have ever been in a situation where constraints or guidelines forced me to create something you otherwise would not have.

As a music education major in undergrad, I have been forced several times to create something I otherwise would not have. Specifically, in Orchestration class Dr. Mobman (discretion) asked us to orchestrate a piece from a popular tune for brasswinds. Technically I didn’t “create” it, but it is something I arranged that I would never have tried had it not been an assignment.

The next question states that there are some believe that students should have a chance to create with no limitations and without interference from the teacher and others believe the opposite and asks what my thoughts are.

My thoughts are that in my experience kids will be kids with whatever you give them. With no limitations they will sit there confused and keep asking questions until a teacher is forced to interfere and give guidelines. I think that students, no matter the age, need instruction in everything they do until they grasp and understanding for themselves. Once they have an understanding, they can choose to lift the barriers of limitations at their leisure.