Re-imagining Creative Music-making

Within days of Vancouver locking down in March 2020, NOW Society’s artistic director, Dr. Lisa Cay Miller, crafted an imaginative means of engaging local and international improvisers in an online series, Creative Music Series #8 (CMS#8). The series showcased not only the musicians’ improvisatory skills, but their compositional abilities. Drawing upon conversations with musicians who took part in CMS#8, Parmela Attariwala reflects upon how the series shaped the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic for her and fellow improvisors involved in the series. She also considers the artistic potency enabled by the mode of creation developed for CMS#8.

The App Scavenger Hunt

The chapter focuses on projects designed to enhance student engagement with, and exploration of, mobile devices. Helping preservice teachers manage the often steep learning curve that goes hand in hand with connecting theory to practice is but one aspect of music teacher preparation. For the methods student and university professor alike, staying abreast of the current PK-12 school population’s musical needs poses unique conditions for curriculum development. Learning how to use technology while working with a diverse range of students presents challenges for all who are involved in teaching music with technology. The App Scavenger Hunt is an introductory project intended to foster collaboration by exploring the variety of apps available for later projects such as spontaneous musical jam sessions, group composition, and the (re)creation of cover tunes. These musicking experiences, in conjunction with field experiences in music methods classes, aided university students’ embrace of the potential for creative music making with mobile technology.

Creative Music Making at Your Fingertips

Hand-held mobile devices such as iPads, tablets, and smartphones hold potential for creative music making experiences within P-12 and higher education contexts. Yet navigating this technology and associated apps while embracing pedagogical change can be a daunting task. The book explores the enormous potential of rather small technological devices to transform the music-making experiences of students. The authors provide evidence for, ideas about, and examples of the role that mobile technology such as an iPad, tablet, or other hand-held device plays in the development of musical thinking and musical engagement of our students—in or outside of school. The promise of mobile devices for music education lies in their possibilities. In this book and on the companion website, the authors share strategies that will spark your imagination to explore digital musicianship and the use of mobile devices for your students’ musical engagement.

Teaching creative music in El Sistema and after-school music contexts

El Sistema music programmes have blossomed over the past decade, with the aim of fostering social development through intensive orchestral music instruction. Many scholars agree that creative music making can facilitate student agency development, increase a sense of belonging and promote creative expression by allowing students to bring their perspectives to the learning context. With these benefits apparent, it seems rational that El Sistema should incorporate creative music making into its curriculum. To build understanding of how creative music approaches function in some programmes, I used a multiple qualitative case study to examine eight teachers’ perspectives of creative music making within El Sistema and after-school music programmes in Canada and the United Kingdom. Findings revealed that teachers conceptualized creative music making as activities that develop agency through collaborative music creation, that have the benefit of creating a sense of belonging and that give students the opportunity to contribute to their community. Successful nurturing of creative music making seems to rely on connecting students to their wider community, which is achieved in part through incorporating students’ own musical tastes. Teachers’ experiences with creative music making in their own music education played a crucial role in preparing them to teach creative music.

Pedagogy of Fundamentals and Diatonic Harmony

The earliest levels of the undergraduate music theory core might be some of the more challenging courses to teach. Because students enter the undergraduate theory core with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and knowledge, instructors face the challenge of inspiring some students with new material while keeping the more experienced students involved. How can educators make this material both relevant and engaging for all students? Teaching the lower levels of written theory is more than just memorization of patterns and rules; it is an opportunity to engage students in creative music making from the very first day with an introduction that helps them understand why a certain element of music works. By participating in engaging and creative methods of learning scales, key signatures, intervals, triads, harmonic function, and voice leading, students are immersed in a music experience that is more than just printed notes on the page.

Pedagogy of Aural Skills

There is no academic class where the students and faculty can participate in an active musical experience like the traditional aural skills course. There is a new trend in aural skills pedagogy in that effective teachers are moving away from the focus on just sight singing and dictation to a focus on musical literacy. Topics such as improvisation and error detection are now being taught in the traditional aural skills core, and students are asked to engage with music through contextual listening and creative music making. Traditional methods of solmization and rhythmic reading are still considered to be effective in the aural skills classroom; however, instructors are using these systems in new ways, along with audiation, to create a musical experience that encourages sound before sight.

FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN’S SKILLS OF IMROVISATION AND COMPOSITION AT SOL-FA LESSONS

A lot of music researchers consider musical improvisation and composition to be a mutually supplementing processes (Alperson, 1984; Sloboda, 1988; Sarath, 1996). Improvisation actively stimulates the development of children’s creative abilities. It stirs the imagination, develops musical ear, emotional receptivity, and the skill of embodying images into new consonances, musical colors (Azzara, 2008; Solis & Nettl, 2009; Burton & Taggart, 2011). During the process of improvisation learners spontaneously express their musical ideas and interact with musical content, while during the process of composition it is possible to stop, to think everything over, to correct something and change it. Improvising and composing at sol-fa lessons are classified as kinds of creative music making. This paper is concerned with the analysis of the types of creative tasks at group classes on sol-fa, as well as with the comparison of different approaches to and methods of the formation and development of creative skills in improvisation and composition in the initial stage. Research aim: to determine and characterize the specific features of using improvisation and composition at sol-fa lessons in the initial stage. Research methods: the analysis of pedagogical experience, the comparison of contemporary methodologies for teaching improvisation and composition.

‘There is a shark coming, then there is a du-du-du-du-du…’: Mediating cultural tools in a Norwegian creative music-making project

This article reports on a case study in a Norwegian primary school where nearly 50 fifth-grade pupils took part in a creative music-making project. Facilitated by two professional artists, they created an original piece of music and performed their composition for an audience at the end of the project week. A substantial part of the data consisted of recorded sounds, notations, transcribed interviews and documentations of the process of music composition from the first ideas to the final performance. The analysis was conducted from a sociocultural perspective with a special focus on the mediating tools used in the community of creative musical practice. The findings suggest that the cultural tools used in the project were dynamic and interactive, employed by both the facilitators and the participants. The mediating tools found in the creative music making make up a complex toolbox the participants share and develop, consisting of both psychological and material tools. There were three main categories of mediating tools identified. First, the use of symbolic signs, such as graphic notation, was important from the initial stages when the participants developed musical ideas to the final performance. Second, the actions and interactions of music making, such as conducting gestures shared and developed through the project, were both founded on traditional conductor signs but also transformed and adapted to new ways of mediating musical meaning in this particular project. Third, the participants worked with ‘creative reworkings’ of experiences in this project. Through the transformation of previous experiences into the creation of new musical material, important mediating tools were identified as experiences and meaning in the creative musical practice.

Service Learning Within the Community Music Therapy Approach (CoMT)

The paper explores service learning as one of the pedagogical methods for music therapy students in supporting them to become professionals who can adapt and practice a holistic approach. Community music therapy (CoMT) is proposed as a conceptual framework that can guide the development and practice of music therapy service learning projects. Accordingly, a case example is presented of music therapy student service learning project based from a CoMT orientation. More specifically, this example reflects on participation in the Creative Music Making program as a service learning project for music therapy students. Creative Music Making is an annual collaborative music performance project conducted by the Maryville University Music Therapy Program, St. Louis Symphony, and St. Louis Arc, a non-profit organization that serves individuals with developmental disabilities. The paper outlines the details of the project and discusses the positive impact of the Creative Music Making project on the community participants, the over-arching community, and the music therapy students’ personal and professional development.