The 21st Century Music Program

I've written about it already: Music Education must shift (as most of what we do in Education must shift now). But I haven't given a prescription for the shift. I'll focus on music education first since it's where I've spent most of my career.

Once upon a time, as the world was changing and going digital, music was right out front as one of the game changers. Since people love music, they wanted music. As digital formats and broadband increased so did the possibility that music could be made available for next to free. A huge demand ensued. Enterprising individuals with some coding know-how made it possible for people to find music online. That's the beginning of the story and how P2P networking changed the world. The rest is known to us. Napster and other websites that allowed free sharing of music and other copyrighted material were targeted by the RIAA and the copyright wars began.

Now, new modes of distribution and consumption are in place, money is paid to the artists and the world is changed. Of course, the illegal stuff still happens and will continue to-until we radically redfine and de-criminalize file sharing. But it was larely a demand for MUSIC that inspired the whole digital-everything movement. And As Chris Anderson will tell you, once things are digitized, distribution costs are almost nill for a gizzillion copies of the same file (mp3, mp4, .mov, .avi etc..).

So where does secondary Music Education fit into this? Prominently, I think. Center Stage, if you will. Teens and music go hand in hand. They "do" music all the time. In these times, students are downloading, manipulating, re-mixing and listening to music daily. What happens when they come to music "class". What is happening in "General" Music Classrooms today? Do students ever hear "their" music? In a 21st Century Music Program, they should. Do they use technology, loop-based composition software to make their OWN music? In a 21st Century Music Program, they should. Do they get to create and remix music the way they do in the real world? Do they get to download and keep their music as Mp3 files? In a 21st Century Music Program, they should. Is You Tube ever used in music class? i-Tunes? In a 21st Century Music Program, they should be.

It's an important shift because in a 21st century Music Program, there is potential for many more students to be part of the program--shifting it from the old Band/Chorus paradigm and justifying it solidly to School Boards. When you turn all students into Artists, it's difficult to cut a program. That's possible in a 21st Century Music Program.

Music Education Must Shift

In the last post, I suggested a new paradigm for music education in schools. This paradigm would become less-band/orchestra centric and would have as its base teaching non-band/orchestra/chorus students the tools for music creation, mixing and distribution. Traditional performing ensembles should always have a place in school music programs. Instrumental and Choral Programs are often the public face of music programs. They provide good PR but I think it's also time to embrace a much wider conception of what performing ensembles could be in addition to changing the nature and focus of the "General" Music Program.

Increasingly, students are coming to us with skills on (electric) guitar, keyboards and other instruments (mandolin has become popular recently because of it's use by some mainstream pop artists). Students who don't play instruments are coming to us with much greater exposure to music specifically because of pop culture influences (Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Glee, video games, etc..). A 6th Grade student recently asked if we could play the theme to Halo, a science-fiction video game. Why not? It's perfectly decent music. If we don't do it at school, students are busy learning it anyway , despite the school music program! This is NOT a position we in Music Education want to be in. Imagine students dropping music classes because they don't do music there (or at least music they know). Unfortunately this happens every day in music programs everywhere. I know a student who won the local 'American Idol' contest but dropped Chorus at school. She didn't see the relevance. There are, of course Music Directors who get it, the one's who understand that connection is more important than coverage. So, to further expand the paradigm shift I am suggesting, here's what I think *secondary music programs should include now:

• A Music technology Classes (formerly called General Music) where students create, remix and share music (and, yeah, learn the basics, too)<---largest population of students. I suggest this for 100% of the school population if possible.
  

• Guitar "Clubs"<---if don't play guitar, have your students teach you. They would love to teach you how to shred a solo.
  

• Jazz/Rock-Pop Ensembles (any combination of instruments/voices)
  

• (World) Percussion Ensembles (mallet instruments as well as djembes, bongos, congas)

• Traditional Music Ensembles (Band/Chorus/Orchestras)
  

*Note that I am addressing secondary music programs, specifically. Elementary programs should, as most do, continue to incorporate movement, singing, Orff instrument playing, rhythm games and general "experimentation" with music.

Looking for Blues Resources?

7th grade students and I research the Blues each year. You Tube is part of that research. Many good resources (primary source material!) can be found there. This year we decided to make a list of You Tube users who have significant (and quality) blues resources in their playlists.
We imagine this list could serve as a short-cut for many teachers/students looking for more information about the Blues. Enjoy.

Here is a list 10 of those users.

• jemf999
• leoncalquin
• swinginglance
• tcblues
• paracite187
• truerhymer
• ashleyspencermusic
• 000nuetron000
• osir1s
• xakyxak

photo credit

Music Education Professional Learning Network Launches

Watch Out, Here We Come! The Music Education Professional Learning Network launches today, July 19th, 2010. The site is a "freely available public site specifically designed for Music Teachers, Educators interested in Music topics, and pre-service Music Teachers."

Users must register for an account, otherwise the site is free. The MPLN contains Forums, Groups and News/Info. links about aspects of Music Education. Pre-launch, the site had 68 members who Beta-tested the network. These members are among the top music education professionals with an online presence (music ed. teachers, conductors, clinicians, presenters, bloggers, etc..). One of the greatest attributes of the site is that is it is social media rich meaning that there are multiple ways to share information outside the network on different platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo and MySpace. I believe this attribute will insure the site's success. Interestingly, it is also possible to connect IN to the network. For example, by using the hastag #mpln on Twitter, the update will post inside the MPLN network. Nifty!

The launch comes at a time when social networks are becoming increasingly accepted as valid places, forums for learning. There have been a few attempts at creating social networks for music educators but none have achieved a wide membership/following. MENC has had a Mentoring Forum for years (of which I was once a Mentor) but it never quite evolved from the limited 'thread'.

I am convinced that the time is ripe for the Music Education Professional Learning Network. I believe that it will be widely used by Music Education Professionals to connect, discuss, debate, elucidate, elaborate, learn, grow and educate. Is the world ready for Music Education to finally, finally be transformed?

Musical Instruments for the Future

Use Flixtime to Post Student Creations Online

Everyone has photos. Everyone listens to music. But putting the two together in a polished way requires some knowledge of software that can create slideshows. An online solution to this is Flixtime.

I use Flixtime for a student composition projects.

1-Students first create loop-based compositions based on a theme ("the environment", for example)
2-Mixdown the music to Mp3 format
3-Find photos to accompany the music
4-Use Flixtime to organize all of the above.

Here's an example from an 8th Grader

The i-Pad in Music Education

by James Frankel

Well by now you have no doubt heard of the game-changing device from Apple called the iPad. As a huge fan of Apple products, I am always swept up in the frenzy over a major new product release, and the iPad is certainly something I would like to have in my ever growing collection of gadgets. While walking my dog in the woods this morning I thought about how the iPad could fit into music education, and education in general.

Read the rest of the post at James Frankel's Blog.

The Future of Music Is In The Middle

photo by wadem on flickr

There are claims that streaming music is not the future of music because:

1-wireless connections are unreliable
and
2-people like to "own things"

I would agree but does the future of consumer music need to be an 'either/or' proposition? There are many music professionals and enthusiasts who use both streaming and 'owned' music for different purposes in different contexts.

As Siddhartha learned and advocated, the answer lies in the middle. Hybrid models of digital products are the key to the future-especially in music. The reliability of streaming music will improve with better technology in the future and people will still want to own content.