Catalysts & Connections - Evan Tobias

For a while now I’ve been keeping track of Web-based listening/music discovery/remixing etc. applications that I believe have positive implications for and uses in music classrooms. I alluded to some possible uses in a presentation I gave at the New Directions in General Music Conference at MSU earlier this year.

Today the Listening Post featured an interview with the creator of Muxtape one of the applications included in my del.icio.us collection (click on the link in the first paragraph to access it).

I thought this part of the interview was particularly interesting:

One thing I added recently was Amazon affiliate links, and the conversion rate has exceeded my expectations. People are buying music they’re discovering on Muxtape, which is exciting. -Justine Ouellette

While we don’t have statistics, hard data or empirical evidence of what role online listening applications have on music sales, the notion that people will no longer buy music that they can hear for free online can be problematized. It would be interesting to find out how many students use these various applications and what ways they are using them.

Do you use any of them in your classroom?

On April 24th MENC posted an announcement regarding changes in future national conferences. Here’s a copy of the announcement:

MENC Leadership Sets New National Conference Schedule

In April, the MENC National Executive Board (NEB) voted to replace the association’s long-standing national biennial conference with an annual national event or series of events.

According to MENC President-Elect Barbara Geer, who becomes president July 1, the new format, still in development, aims to give members experiences that are even more focused and more in-depth than previous conferences. MENC leadership, she said, will develop an annual national conference “to meet the needs of our diverse membership.”

“After all, we serve members from general music to higher education and research and everything in between, so we will work with leaders from each segment of that community to provide the best possible structure with the best possible content,” Geer said.

An annual national conference, she adds, will also include major performance events that focus attention on the role that music education plays in the society as a whole and offer additional advocacy opportunities for members.

Plans call for a summer 2009 event in Washington DC and a full-scale event in 2010. The NEB meets in June to solidify planning for the future.

What do you think constitutes meeting the needs of our diverse membership?

Jay Rosenblum alluded to this question in a comment on a previous blog post when he asked:

“Is there something that MENC should be doing to serve its members that it’s clearly not doing now?”

According to the announcement the MENC National Executive Board (NEB) will be meeting in June to “solidify planning for the future.”

It might be beneficial to MENC and our field if we begin speaking with our colleagues about what might meet the needs of our diverse membership and what MENC is not currently doing to serve its members. This is a potential opening for your input if you have ideas about the direction in which you think MENC should move. After having these conversations it might also be helpful to share highlights of the dialogue with our representatives on the National Executive Board.

While you are at it you might want to take a look at MENC’s Strategic Plan to get a better idea of what issues might influence decisions about what future conferences might look like.

If you don’t know who your regional representative is you can take a look at the MENC Leadership structure site.

Your state music educators association should be able to point you in the right direction for providing feedback to your regional rep.

The MENC 61st National Biennial Conference is just around the corner, taking place from April 9th-13th in Milwaukee, WI. You can take a look at a preliminary schedule on the conference website. It looks like it’s going to be a fabulous conference! It will be interesting to compare the sessions available at the conference this year to the findings of Price and Orman in their recent study comparing four major conferences (including MENC National) during 2002 and 2004. The study “Content Analysis of Four National Music Organizations’ Conferences” in the Summer 2007 issue of Journal of Research in Music Education is fascinating to read and points out the growing number of industry related sessions at MENC National conferences.

If you’re curious about some of the latest research taking place in music education make sure to attend some of the sessions sponsored by various Special Research Interest Groups (SRIGs). Many of the SRIGs have their own websites and send newsletters periodically throughout the year. I’ve always found it exciting to attend research sessions and then consider the implications for the classroom and how the research can inform practice. The conversations that take place after the papers are also a wonderful part of these sessions.

Regardless of one’s interests, attending the MENC National Conference is sure to lead to some revitalization. Hope to see you there!

James Frankel is encouraging people to post about their preference between the notation programs Sibelius and Finale. If you use one of them and have an opinion you would like to express, head over to his post and add a comment. If you have been thinking about using a notation program and are curious what other people think it might be interesting to read the comments that have already been added. I’ll throw in an extra question and ask:

“How do you use notation software from a curricular and/or pedagogical perspective?”

Happy Spring!

Thanks to a recent announcement on the Gender Research in Music Education list I found out about a great new resource which will feature and celebrate a woman instrumentalist twice a month. Created by Susan Fleet, this website offers students a great way to learn more about women instrumentalists throughout history. I remember my first year of teaching when one of the first things I hung up on my wall was a New York Times article about percussionist Susie Ibarra ( if you read the article make sure to read Marian Mcpartland’s response). Fleet’s website would have been a great resource to keep updating the articles on my wall! Take a look at the May 1992 issue of Music Educators Journal for some articles that addressed the issue of womens’ presence in available music education resources. Hopefully resources such as Susan Fleet’s “Featured Woman Instrumentalist” can assist in helping students learn more about women musicians. If you are going to MENC national and are interested in gender issues in music education, make sure to check out the GRIME Special Research Interest Group sessions.

Congratulations to Daniel Truemen and Perry Cook for their Mobile Musical Networks project as well as the other winners of the HASTAC Digital Media & Learning Grant Competition! The following is a description of the Mobile Musical Networks project:

Project Description:

Mobile Musical Networks will build an expressive mobile musical laboratory for exploring new ways of making music with laptops and local-area-networks. Students will collaborate in designing these technologies. In the process, they will learn about a variety of subjects, including musical acoustics, networking, instrument design, human-computer interfacing, procedural programming, signal processing, and musical aesthetics.

This has some exciting potential for music education. The current related project taking place at Princeton is PLOrk (The Princeton Laptop Orchestra). Both James Frankel and I have written about PLOrk before and the exciting potential for similar types of ensembles in public schools. I also can’t wait for their upcoming performance at Northwestern University’s Sonic Divergence Music Festival!

It will be interesting to see how school music ensembles might evolve through the use of various technologies. An interesting blog discussion took place on this topic back in July of 2006 when the provocative question of “Are the traditional ensembles worth continuing?” was posed. Owen Bradley has recently been blogging about his students’ use of various electronic instruments as well as silent brass systems for some of his brass players. In 2006 at the International Computer Music Conference, Nathan Wolek and Virgil Moorefield co-chaired a panel discussion titled “The Laptop Ensemble as Pedagogical Tool.” Are technology based ensembles such as PLOrk, University of Michigan’s Digital Music Ensemble, MSUM’s Interactive Electronica Ensemble , Northwestern University’s Lucid Dream Ensemble or Steston University’s Mobile Performance Group, more common at the university level than at public schools? (While not all of these ensembles still exist they are interesting models for potential ensembles in public schools) If so why do you think this is? Should we have public school ensembles such as these? How would we go about creating them? How would they function in the typical public school music program?

Good luck to the Mobile Music Laboratory project! Perhaps it will spark some interest for similar projects in public school music programs.

Since for many, Valentine’s Day encourages expressions of love, why not address music’s power to do just this? Countless composers and songwriters have expressed their love for another or tried to capture the concept or feelings of love in their music. Contemporary composers such as Corey Dargel allow you to commission a love song after providing details which will end up in the lyrics of the song.

You can listen to a short program featuring some of Dargel’s past commissions on Studio 36o

 

 Standard Podcast: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Perhaps your students might wish to compose a musical valentine of their own? On the other hand some students might have other feelings they wish to express on Valentines Day. Music might be one medium for students to figure out and express their feelings on a day that may bring about a wide range of emotions. Whether using a computer, guitar, voice or  any other instrument students may one day receive their own commissions to write love songs for others. Who knows, perhaps in a couple of years you’ll hear a commissioned love song composed by one of your former students featured on the radio!

Happy Valentines Day!

Prior to being a full time student, when I was teaching in a public school, I remember being very frustrated with my lack of access to various music research journals. There was no way I could afford subscriptions to the wide variety of journals I now read and downloading one article could cost up to $40! (If you don’t believe me try checking it out yourself!)

While those of us at universities have almost unlimited access to countless online journals, the majority of educators do not. It is somewhat frustrating thinking about all of the great articles that may never get read by people who can’t afford subscriptions or do not have institutional access.

One solution to expanding access to research and scholarly work is the use of open access journals. While the use of open access journals is a contentious and complex issue, it is increasingly getting discussed in public.

This week Harvard faculty are voting on a measure to determine if they should publish their work open access. You can read Robert Darnton’s case for open access online. Some scholars such as Dana Boyd have even called for tenured faculty to boycott locked down academic journals and publish in open access journals instead.

Have you ever wanted to read an article but not had access? Would you read more literature if it were available for free online in open access journals? Should more music education journals be open access?

It will be interesting to see how the academic landscape continues to shift in terms of publishing scholarly work due to digital technology. In the meantime, the debate over whether or not to publish work in open access journals and what role they might play in music education might be a healthy discussion to engage in.

While watching Super Bowl XLII I was thinking about the role music played during commercials and the game. While it was interesting to think about the particular choices of music during commercials, I got the biggest kick from the “Mr. Oboe” commercial featuring Ephraim Salaam and Chester Pitts who, according to the commercial plays (or played) the oboe. While some might be upset that the narrative of the commercial could be read as saying that playing football is a more worthy dream than playing the oboe, I started wondering how many people might now know what an oboe sounds like and that it is a member of the woodwind family! Will students be asking to switch their instruments or sign up for the oboe in schools across America?! Will Chester Pitts be giving guest oboe recitals? Will there be a trend of finding out who else in major league athletics has played an instrument at some point in their lives? On the other hand, perhaps we’ll start hearing about professional musicians who gave up sports to pursue music! Since many students watch the Super Bowl it might be interesting to ask them if any music stuck out in their minds or what they thought of the “Mr. Oboe” commercial.

The NFL website has a copy of the commercial and the Houston Texans site has the behind the scenes making of it. At the end of the clip you can watch Pitts play a little.

Jonathan Savage has been writing an interesting series of posts on the cross curricular dimensions of the UK National curriculum. If you are interested in the design of curricula, or are curious about the types of things taking place in education in the UK, his posts offer a helpful look at how cross curricular initiatives can be approached in music education. So far he has addressed the following cross curricular dimensions: Identity and Cultural Diversity, Healthy Lifestyle, and Community Participation. It might be an interesting exercise to have discussions in our own music departments regarding connections we might make with these various areas. I remember having a conversation with colleagues once about a district wide initiative for all teachers to contribute to students’ “character development.” This was a couple of years after “writing across the curriculum” was initiated. Have you ever been asked how your music department can address a “cross curricular initiative” in your own school district? How would you approach the cross curricular dimensions in the UK national curriculum?