Digital Content - CME Assignment 2

Click here to access created digital content along with reflection (which is already down here anyways).

ABOUT THIS ENTRY

In the past week, I was looking at a playlist on my phone with a couple of my favourite songs. After hearing each one individually, I felt more convinced with Michael Jackson's Bad and saw it to be an excellent compositional model. The reason being on my desire to prepare students "for composing longer pieces that might involve the working out of several musical ideas" (Guderian, 2011, p. 9) through use of mini activities.

I just got a little confused with the task outline - was unsure as to whether "musical work" was referring to an instrumental or song. Seeing that the choices for this assignment may affect the direction towards Assignment 3, I decided to maybe place my focus on the actual instrumental (background accompaniment) of the song rather than include lyrics. Lyrics can be included at a later stage.

I also had a look at the readings and began to really think about the digital content I want to create. I am definitely considering on creating worksheets or a workbook, a PowerPoint presentation with instructions and song as a model to refer to. Assume that students do have reading ability.

There will obviously be lessons that focus on the ability of students to understand terminology such as ostinato, dynamics, contrast, variety, interest, texture (or layers) to lead up to this stage of composition.

REFLECTION

According to Beston (2004, p. 28), "composition is clearly defined as a creative behaviour incorporating critical appraisal, experimentation with different technologies, analysis, improvisation, invention, discipline and thoroughness." What really inspired me to create a mini workbook as well as a PowerPoint presentation, also came from Beston's (2004, p. 29) belief that classroom time needs to be allocated "for the production of responses, to monitor student composing efforts through supervision, to guide students in composing processes, and to judge the success of products."

Analysis of the song was very time consuming, yet it played a significant role to the way in which I would teach in the future - which is to take the role of a facilitator. Composing for me has been something I've done for years whether it was for my fun, or for Church services and functions. Music-making is simply both meaningful and useful (Campbell, 2004, p. 125). This experience I guess gives me the confidence and reaffirms Deemer's (2016, p. 41) statement: "To be able to effectively teach their students how to compose, music educators need to have both experience and comfort in the creative process of composing."

I did not want to heavily rely on instruction by having everything in that workbook - hence the reason why I created a PowerPoint. It's about 'show rather than tell.' It's also about offering solutions of how to start especially when students find this to be a major problem (Randles & Sullivan, 2013, p. 52). Students develop their skills when they are provided with many opportunities to theory or learning (via instruction - in my case a workbook and PowerPoint presentation) into practical creative ways (Guderian, 2011, p. 6) when left off to experiment with instruments and notate their ideas in workbook.

I tried to incorporate a strategy in both my workbook and PowerPoint, which was to give students that open space, giving them many ideas and possibilities. In doing this, "students can then, by engaging their imagination, add to, subtract from, and work to transform those ideas" (Randles & Sullivan, 2013, p. 52).

Reference List

Beston, P. (2004). Seminar student composition: An investigation. Research Studies in Music Education, 22.

Campbell, P. (2004). Teaching music globally: Experiencing music, expressing culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Deemer, R. (2016). Reimagining the role of composition in music teacher education. Music Educators Journal, 102.

Guderian, L. V. (2011). Music improvisation and composition in the general music curriculum. General Music Today, 25.

Randles, C., & Sullican, M. (2013). How composers approach teaching composition: Strategies for music teachers. Music Educators Journal, 99.