Musical achievement during a lockdown: The parental support miracle

The quality of parental support is recognized as a crucial factor in the early stages of a student’s development, and particularly in instrumental music education. At the start of 2020, the outbreak of a global pandemic crisis posed new and unprecedented challenges to education, forcing families to stay at home to prevent contagion. This investigation was conducted during the period of a COVID pandemic lockdown in Portugal. We explored whether parental support, provided during the lockdown period, was associated with their child’s achievement as reported by their instrumental music teacher. For this study, 39 parent–teacher dyads of first-grade students of an instrument music course were recruited from two public music conservatories. Parents supplied information on the frequency in which they provided student-support-related attitudes and actions in the home context. Simultaneously, teachers provided information about the student’s achievement during the lockdown compared with the previous in-person performance period. Results indicate a strong relationship between parental support and musical achievement, with students who received higher levels of supportive parental involvement performing better than before the pandemic crisis. The findings are discussed in relation to the importance of parental involvement in a child’s instrumental music education.

Status of Band and Orchestra Programs in North Carolina

The purpose of this study was to examine K–12 instrumental music education in North Carolina. Specifically, we investigated course offerings, teacher demographics, teaching responsibilities, and music program funding. We administered a survey to the members of the North Carolina Music Educators Association listserv who indicated band or orchestra as their teaching area. Participants identified themselves as teachers of orchestra ( n = 44), band ( n = 173), or a hybrid of both ( n = 17). Of schools that offered instrumental music, 95% offered band and 36% offered orchestra. More than 20% of orchestra teachers were “very likely to retire within 5 years.” The majority of teachers relied on fundraising to provide adequate music education for students. Results of this study were analyzed and compared to national averages reported in the Give a Note Foundation’s 2017 report: The Status of Music Education in United States Public Schools. Implications for orchestra teachers, music programs, music teacher preparation curriculum, and future research are discussed.

Theoretical Framework for Facilitating Young Musicians’ Learning of Expressive Performance

Since communication and expression are central aspects of music performance it is important to develop a systematic pedagogy of teaching children and teenagers expressiveness. Although research has been growing in this area a comprehensive literature review that unifies the different approaches to teaching young musicians expressiveness has been lacking. Therefore, the aim of this article is to provide an overview of literature related to teaching and learning of expressiveness from music psychology and music education research in order to build a new theoretical framework for teaching and learning expressive music performance in instrumental music lessons with children and teenagers. The article will start with a brief discussion of interpretation and expression in music performance, before providing an overview of studies that investigated teaching and learning of performance expression in instrumental music education with adults and children. On the foundation of this research a theoretical framework for dialogic teaching and learning of expressive music performance will be proposed and the rationale explained. Dialogic teaching can be useful for scaffolding young musicians’ learning of expressivity as open questions can stimulate thinking about the interpretation and may serve to connect musical ideas to the embodied experience of the learner. A “toolkit” for teaching and learning of expressiveness will be presented for practical application in music lessons. In addition, a theoretical model will be proposed to further our understanding of teaching and learning of expressive music performance as a multifaceted and interactive process that is embedded in the context of tutors’ and learners’ experiences and environment. Finally, implications of this framework and suggestions for future research will be discussed.

Reports From the Field: Learning to Play the Guitar With the Novaxe Online Learning Platform

Recent advances in internet technologies are changing the way we approach instrumental music education. The diversity of online music resources has increased through the availability of experts and user-generated digital scores, video tutorials, and music applications. This report from the field explores how technological innovations are transforming musical instrument teaching and learning with new paradigms of cohesive, integrated, and blended learning experiences. It presents the emerging Novaxe online learning platform (OLP), which is designed as an online space where guitar teachers and learners of different expertise levels—particularly teenagers and adults learning to play pop guitar technique and repertoire—can interact and share learning resources. The OLP includes interactive and collaborative tools supporting teacher-to-learner blended learning and self-taught learning. This field report presents the conceptual ideas behind this Novaxe OLP and explores the potential usage of collective and artificial intelligence as pedagogical tools in the context of instrumental music education.

Jazz Ensembles

This chapter acknowledges the growth of jazz ensembles in instrumental music education and the value of preparing future music educators to teach jazz. It situates jazz pedagogy in an authentic, experiential framework, emphasizing the important role of the rhythm section and what it means to be culturally literate through improvisation. Topics such as jazz theory, swing feel, and jazz styles are examined. The chapter also discusses a paradigm shift in the conceptualization of music education, whereby an interpreter-performer perspective is replaced by a creator-performer perspective. Musicians’ roles as composers and improvisers in the jazz idiom suggest learning this art form is relevant for developing creative performers who may then be able to participate in a variety of other musical cultures.