Music Education @ UMass Lowell

Summer Music Workshops and Courses at UMass Lowell

2011-03-27T11:01:00.004-05:00

Introduction to Audio - 18 PDPs - June 20-22 & August 1-3.

This 3-day hands-on workshop will guide music educators through the fundamentals of recording, sound reinforcement, and sound systems. Sessions will include experiences in choral, instrumental and popular recording and reinforcement, fundamentals of acoustics and their impact on audio systems, and digital audio recording and editing.

Creative Music Technology Projects - 12 PDPs - June 30-July 1 & August 4-5.

This 2-day workshop will engage music educators in exploring and designing creative technology projects for music learning and teaching. Sessions will take place in UMass Lowell's iMac lab, with a focus on freely available software and mobile iPad technologies.

Taking the Mystery Out of Woodwind, Brass and Percussion Repairs - 18 PDPs - June 27-29.

This 3-day hands-on workshop will cover how to evaluate instrument problems and perform simple repairs. Ares of discussion and demonstration include: woodwind key structure, pad issue, corks, brass valves, restringing, water keys, stuck slides, replacing percussion heads and snares, pedal tuning, preventative maintenance and tools and supplies every music educator should have.

MICCA Summer Institute and Instrumental Music Workshop - July 14-15, 2011 at Hopkinton High School.

The UMass Lowell Music Education program is partnering with the Massachusetts Instrumental and Choral Conductors Association (MICCA) in providing graduate credit for attending the 2^nd Annual MICCA Summer Institute and Instrumental Music Workshop. Clinicians this year include John Culvahouse – Kennesaw State University and Anthony Maiello – George Mason University.

Registration and more information at http://miccamusic.org.

Special Topics: Technology, Arts & Learning - MWTRF July 12-29 - 3 graduate credits

This course will explore educational and creative processes at the intersection of music, visual art and technology. Participants will interact with local artists, musicians and culture bearers, and engage in hands-on experiences making, creating and learning with technology. Drawing on the processes of digital curation and production, participants will work collaboratively using mobile and creative technologies, such as iPads and Flip video cameras, to collect, organize and produce learning materials, developing skills in mutual learning, reflective practice, and creativity. This course is offered as part of the UMass Lowell Summer International Institute drawing students from all of the world.

Registration information and full brochure can be downloaded here: http://db.tt/Q9SesOb.

If you have any questions, please email Alex Ruthmann at Alex_Ruthmann@uml.edu.

Professor Jeanne Bamberger in residence at UML Nov. 12-14, 2009

2009-11-02T21:45:00.002-05:00

Click on image to enlarge.

UMass Lowell Music Education Sessions at the 2009 Massachusetts All State Conference

2009-03-27T08:04:00.005-05:00

Teacher-Student Feedback Loop for Technology Training in the Classroom
* Dr. Gena Greher & Dr. Alex Ruthmann - UMass Lowell
* Pat Fitzpatrick - Lowell High School
* Thursday, March 26 - 12:15-1:15pm - Beacon Hill 2 & 3

UMass Lowell Alumni Reception
* Thursday, March 26 - 8 to 10pm - Beacon Hill Complex

Preparing the Next Generation of Music Educators: How Well do Colleges do the Job?
* Dr. Gena Greher - UMass Lowell
* Dr. Rhoda Bernard - Boston Conservatory
* Dr. Sandi Nicolucci - Boston University
* Friday, March 27 - 3-4pm - Harborside Room

Technology, Composing and the Arts: Student Projects from the Classroom
* Dr. Alex Ruthmann - UMass Lowell
* Tony Beatrice - Pentucket Regional Middle & High School
* Saturday, March 28 - 11:45am-12:45pm - Waterfront 1A

Session handouts will be posted here shortly!

Conference details can be found at http://www.mmeaonline.org/.

UMass Lowell Music Ed students work with local middle school students

2009-03-27T07:39:00.001-05:00

Over the past year, senior music education majors have been taking General Music Methods I and II with Dr. Gena Greher and me at UMass Lowell. Since October of 2008 these students have spent Wednesday mornings teaching 3rd, 6th and 7th grade classes at the Bartlett Community Partnership School here in Lowell, MA. Last week one group of our students invited the 7th grade class from the Bartlett School to spend the day at UMass Lowell recording a song the class arranged in the UMass Lowell recording studio.

Students spent the morning rehearsing their arrangements and taking turns leading peer-conducted free improvisations. Once rehearsed, they spent the balance of the morning laying down the vocal tracks, classroom instrument and guitar tracks followed by the piano accompaniment.

The rehearsing and recording was facilitated by UML graduate sound recording technology major Tim Brault and UML music education majors Jo Price, Lindsey Sherman and Zach Cooper.

After the recording session, the Bartlett School students experienced a rare treat... a live lecture demonstration of vintage Edison wax cylinder recording. UML Sound Recording Technology Professor Alex Case made arrangements for Gerald Fabris, curator of the Edison National Historical Site in West Orange, NJ, to visit and present the lecture/demo. Virgin wax cylinders were flown in from the United Kingdom and UMass Lowell SRT major Brian Corey composed a piece to be used in one of six live takes directly to wax cylinder.

Each of the takes were recorded directly to wax cylinder as well as digitally in mono, stereo and surround sound mic-ing. After each take, the composer listened back to the wax cylinder performance and physically readjusted the placement of the musician's closer or further away from the recording "horn." We take for granted today that we can simply move a microphone to achieve a different sound. Back then you had to move the musicians!

I am told that all of the wax cylinder recordings from the session will be digitized and the audio will be posted side by side with the digital mono, stereo and surround sound versions on the Edison National Historical Site webpage in the near future. I'll be sure to post a link when that goes live.

Click here for the article and more information about the project in the Lowell Sun.

UMass Lowell CMENC Composition Festival deadline near!

2009-01-31T14:22:00.003-05:00

The University of Massachusetts Lowell Collegiate Chapter of the Music Educators National Conference is proud to announce our Ninth Annual K-12 Composition Festival. We are inviting you to send in audio recordings of your students’ compositions. Submissions from students in grades K-12 are once again eligible and encouraged.

Please send each composition on a separate CD recording. We ask that you limit composition lengths to ten minutes to allow us to include as many pieces as possible. Please also send four copies of the score on standard letter-size paper with the CD. Compositions will not be considered without scores. Four copies of the attached form should be included with each submission for each of our four adjudicators. Only one composition may be submitted per student. The Youth Composition Festival will be held in May of 2009 in UMass Lowell’s Fisher Recital Hall.

Send CDs, Scores, and Application Forms by February 1st, 2009 to:

UMass Lowell Dept. of Music
Dr. Gena Greher, Composition Festival
35 Wilder Street; Suite 3
Lowell, MA 01854

If you have any questions/comments/concerns, please contact Marissa Broe, the Composition Festival Chair, by phone at (978) 934-3881, or by e-mail at uml_menc@yahoo.com.

New Music Performamatics projects launched for the Spring 2009 semester

2009-01-31T13:01:00.003-05:00

During the Spring 2009 term, two music performamatics projects will be underway. As part of a National Science Foundation CPATH grant several faculty at UMass Lowell from the Music, Art, English and Computer Science departments are allied in collaborative interdisciplinary projects designed to attract more students to computer science majors through arts-focused experiences.

This semester music education professor Gena Greher and computer science professor Jesse Heines are collaborating on a general education course entitled Sound Thinking:

Course Description:

What is sound? How do we capture it, manipulate it, and harness it in the digital world? The field for multimedia applications is expanding, creating new challenges for artists, technologists, and educators as well as consumers.

This course will explore the intersection of the arts with technology, where students majoring in the arts will interact with those in computer science to explore the art and science of digital audio from the perspective of basic end-user applications. The specific applications to be examined will be chosen based on their abilities to promote creative expression and exploration. We will also consider the underlying code that allows these programs to run and function.

This course will use a learner-centered approach that emphasizes project-based experiences. It will provide students with multiple opportunities to explore, create, and solve problems with music technology. The concept of collaboration is integral to this course. As the workforce moves to a more collaborative structure, it is important that students learn to work in groups with others who may not share their skill sets and levels of expertise, and that they gain experience in problem-solving the myriad issues that arise when using technology.

Music education professor Alex Ruthmann is also collaborating with computer science professor Jesse Heines as part of a synchronized course. Ruthmann's General Music Methods II students will be working together with students from Prof. Heines' GUI Programming II course on a project to develop online music composing software. Working together with middle school students at the Bartlett Community Partnership School in Lowell, MA music education and computer science students will collaboratively develop new online music composing applications for use by middle school students.

Graduate Student Tony Beatrice Featured in MENC Online Article

2009-01-31T12:39:00.002-05:00

Tony Beatrice (B.M. in Music Studies '08; M.M. in Music Teaching '09) was recently interviewed for an online article for the MENC (The National Association for Music Education) website entitled: What's Lurking in Your Online Profile, a special feature for the Future Teachers section.

While finishing his Masters degree in Music Teaching here at UMass Lowell, he is Director of Instrumental Music at Pentucket Regional High School and Middle School in West Newbury, MA. Check out his website and online student projects.

UML String Project Winter Concert

2009-01-25T12:36:00.000-05:00

Alex Ruthmann presents Keynote at Michigan Music Conference

2009-01-22T12:37:00.001-05:00

Keynote: Music Learning and Teaching at the Intersection of Creativity and Technology

Technology fluency and the ability to think creatively are two skills highly prized by employers in the 21st Century knowledge-based economy. As music educators, we are intimately familiar with the possibilities our music classes provide for developing these skills in ways that are personally meaningful and engaging for students. However, new developments in interactive online and portable computing are inspiring totally new cultures of engaging with and experiencing music. In a world where our children and students touch the screens of iPhones or move Nintendo Wii controllers in a whole-body approach to experiencing music, it is imperative that we take the time to understand these new modes of music making and to learn how to better connect to our students' increasingly complex techno-musical culture within our music classes. Today's technologies are enabling a more active engagement with music than ever before. This presentation will offer small glimpses into the musical worlds of today's students and offer insights into how we as music educators can support this culture within our school programs.

Presentation: Social Networking for the Music Classroom

Workshop: Designing and Supporting Composing Experiences with Technology

This extended, hands-on workshop will engage participants with area students in a variety of composing projects. This workshop will focus on how to develop an in-class peer-learning network where students along with the teacher support each other musically and pedagogically. In our dialogue with actual students, special attention will be paid to how the design of the composing experience can enable or hinder students' creative thinking and expression.

All links and presentation slides are available on Alex Ruthmann's blog at http://www.alexruthmann.com/blog/mmc-2009/.

Visiting Researcher & Curriculum Scholar - Pauline Sameshima

2008-12-10T11:29:00.002-05:00

Pauline Sameshima's research and art-making center on looking at both the official and the hidden curriculum. She is interested in learning system designs, technology integration, collaborative and creative scholarship, eco-responsive pedagogies, and alternative forms of knowledge production and acknowledgment.

Pauline teaches math methods for elementary teachers, arts integration, and curriculum theory. She is an exhibiting multi-media artist, lyricist, and designer. Her artwork has been included in three editions of Night of Artists Biographies and Works, a Canadian publication archived at the National Gallery of Canada. She combines her professional interests with her experience teaching elementary public school for 17 years with five years in administration.

Recent accomplishments

Sameshima, P., Vandermause, R., & Chalmers, S (with Gabriel). (in press). Climbing the ladder with Gabriel: Poetic inquiry with a methamphetamine addict in recovery. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.

Prendergast, M., Leggo, C., & Sameshima, P. (Eds.). (in press). Poetic inquiry: Vibrant voices in the social sciences. Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.

Sameshima, P. (2007).Seeing Red—a pedagogy of parallax. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press. REVIEWS

Sameshima, P. (2008). Letters to a new teacher: A curriculum of embodied aesthetic awareness. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(2), 29-44.

Sameshima, P. (2008). AutoethnoGRAPHIC relationality through paradox, parallax, and metaphor. In S. Springgay, R. L. Irwin, C. Leggo & P. Gouzouasis (Eds.), Being with a/r/tography (pp. 45-56). Rotterdam, The Netherlands: Sense.

Sameshima, P. (2008). Pauline Sameshima’s story, “Seeing Red” (with Patrick Slattery, Howard Gardner, Elliot Eisner, Rebecca Carmi and Gregory Cajete). In Four Arrows aka Don Trent Jacobs (Ed.), The authentic dissertation: Alternative ways of knowing, research and representation (pp. 51-60). London: Routledge.

Section Chair: AERA Division B: Curriculum Studies, Interpretive/Qualitative Studies in Curriculum

Archived featured artist on the AERA Arts-Based Educational Research Site

Music, Creativity and Technology: An Example from Actual Practice

2008-11-13T15:20:00.002-05:00

Step 1: Find music notation scribbled on a bathroom wall.

Step 2: Take a picture of it with your cell phone camera and post it online to ImageShack:

http://img120.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1ix9.jpg

Step 3: Post a link to that photo on Reddit for others to see and discuss:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/7bqjc/music_found_in_the_toilet/

Step 4: Transcribe melody into Noteflight and create a custom arrangement of "Toilet Melody":

click on Noteflight logo to launch score at Noteflight.com

Step 5: Repost Noteflight arrangement back on Reddit for others to discuss:

http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/7bqjc/music_found_in_the_toilet/

Credits:
Photo = TrippingChilly
Music Arrangement = Skynare

If this is how young people are using technology in their lives, how can we draw on this in the classes we teach?

-Alex Ruthmann

Visiting Computer Musician & Researcher - Andrew Brown

2008-10-30T11:25:00.002-05:00

Andrew R. Brown in the Research Manager for the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID), teaches music and sound at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), and coordinates the Computational Arts Research Group at QUT. His expertise is in technologies that support creativity and learning, computational music and art, and the philosophy of technology. His current research focuses on the aesthetics of computational processes and adaptive music for interactive entertainment. He is an active computer musician, computational artist, and a builder of software tools that support creativity.

Here at UMass Lowell, we are using his book Computers in Music Education as a text for Technology in Music Education.

Visiting Music Software Developer - Joe Berkovitz

2008-10-28T11:31:00.003-05:00

Joe has been immersed in the software world for 30 years, and is also an active composer and pianist. Most recently VP of Engineering at the innovative e-commerce company Allurent, Joe was also Chief Architect at startup Ruckus Networks, and as a Senior Architect at ATG he led the development of a number of pioneering software products. Joe is a frequent and sought-after speaker at conferences on the Adobe Flash and Flex platforms and has contributed a substantial number of open-source projects to the Flex development community, ranging from pattern-based application frameworks to code coverage tools. Back in the misty dawn of time, he studied at New England Conservatory of Music.

Noteflight, LLC is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is dedicated to reinventing the way that people create, share and use written music. Our product doesn't merely improve on other music notation software: it lets written music take advantage of the full power of the web as we know it today. Noteflight is a powerful full-featured application to edit, display and play back music notation in a standard web browser, integrated in an online library of musical scores that anyone can publish, link to, or embed.

Using Noteflight.com in and outside of the music classroom

2008-10-27T15:17:00.002-05:00

Earlier this month Evan Tobias posted about Noteflight, a new online flash-based notation application available at http://www.noteflight.com/. Over the past few weeks I have been exploring this software with college students in my Technology in Music Education course and with high school students enrolled in a beginning piano class at Lowell High School (LHS). Those of you who know me know how apprehensive I am when it comes to using notation software with students in general music or other technology classes in K-12 schools. Most of my concern centers around the common conflation of "notation software" with "composing software." All too often I see teachers using notation software as a technological endpoint rather than as a means to the musical end of live performance. However, Noteflight is not your ordinary notation software.

What interests me about Noteflight is not the notation component. Instead, it is in the social tools that surround the notation engine. When you sign up at Noteflight.com (currently free) you create personal profile, just like you would at a social networking site like Facebook, MySpace or custom sites created at Ning.com. Once signed in, you can create a new score, view existing scores, or scores created by other users.

Built in to the web application is the ability to share your scores with other users. These scores can be easily embedded just like a YouTube video in a class website. The embedded score can be played back by clicking on the play button and additional interactive functions are being planned which could be helpful in guided listening activities. Coming from a constructivist perspective, this functionality enables teachers to give students the opportunity to share their musical understanding in interactive ways within and beyond class time. For example, a band director could post a Noteflight score without added articulation. Students could then be assigned to add their own articulations to the score. During the next class, the students and director could choose a few scores to play through. This approach gives students the opportunity to make creative articulation decisions as composers, rather than traditionally learning it through listening and performing.

A variation on this assignment could be to post an audio file of a musical line performed with different articulations. Below the audio file, a director could post the notation for that performance, but again without articulation added. As an assessment, students could then open the score and add articulations that in their mind matched the recorded performance.

Right now, there are some limitations to accomplishing this, but I've been assured by Joe Berkovitz, CEO of Noteflight, that these functions are currently in development.

This screenshot shows the "version" function for Noteflight. As you work on a score in Noteflight, it periodically saves a snapshot of your piece and gives you access to it as a different "Version." If you open your score up to be added to by others, their versions show up in this box as well. At any point you can go back (revert) to a prior version. This is a cool function, not only because you can go back, but as a window into your students' compositional processes. Though not a full account of their process, these snapshots can provide an opportunity to have discussions with your students about the changes they made in their composition and are great starting points for assessment.

Here's a short piece composed by students of Tony Beatrice, UML graduate student in music education as part of an art-infused composing project:

Right now, the interactivity is limited to simple whole piece playback and playback within measures (click above the measure). Soon, functions will be added that will enable the composer to add additional interactivity through scripting. Very cool. :)

My students and Noteflight

My college students have been using Noteflight with beginning piano students at Lowell High School (LHS) for the past few weeks. Students in my class created incomplete duets to be co-composed and performed with their partner students at LHS. The music teacher at LHS has for the most part have been using Alfred's Adult Beginner Piano book to structure the curriculum. My college students wanted to add a composing/creativity aspect to the lessons. To do this, they created simple piano scores with either a chord progression in the bass clef or a melody in the treble clef (or some combination of the two) as a compositional frame to help scaffold the LHS students. Because the scores are online and viewable by the LHS students and my college students, both can practice alone and make edits to their duet scores. Tomorrow, they will meet again in person for a final run through and performance for the class. I'll post some of the pieces and performances here soon.

Because Noteflight is an online application, the potential for collaborative work and learning with other students is high. I'm in the middle of planning a distance composing project with another school later in the term through Noteflight. Facilitated by a custom Ning.com social network, students at LHS will notate compositions in Noteflight and share them with other students at a distance site. Ning will enable them to post their files and provide peer comment and critique. This use is inspired in part by the work at the Vermont MIDI Project, but instead centers on the students as providers of compositional critique and feedback, rather than professional composers.

I'm very excited to see how this technology develops. If you are interested in collaborative projects using Noteflight with your students, drop me an email.

-Alex Ruthmann

New research published on composing and learner agency.

2008-10-01T12:48:00.001-05:00

A research paper entitled Whose Agency Matters? Negotiating Pedagogical and Creative Intent During Composing Experiences by UML Music Education professor Alex Ruthmann was recently published in the journal Research Studies in Music Education.

Abstract:

Drawing on observation and interview data collected from a case study of learning and teaching in a music technology lab, this article focuses on the nature of feedback and compositional intent during a soundtrack composing experience as viewed through the lived experiences of a teacher (Mary), a student composer (Ellen) and Ellen's peers. Tensions embedded in their shared experiences are analyzed for insights that may help other teachers of music composition in schools provide more successful feedback through valuing and responding to the student's musical agency and compositional intent. These insights illustrate the complex interplay among teacher feedback, learner agency and students' compositional intent, with particular attention to implications aimed at helping teachers to facilitate and design composing experiences in more inclusive ways.

The full article may be downloaded here.

Gena Greher and Jesse Heines present Performamatics research at the ATMI 2009 Conference

2008-09-25T15:04:00.003-05:00

Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Connecting Computer Science and Music Students to the Benefit of Both

Gena Greher--University of Massachusetts, Lowell
Jesse Heines--University of Massachusetts, Lowell

We present a hands-on, interdisciplinary project designed to help music education students think about how novices learn new symbol systems. The students design a musical instrument from a typical household object and create a musical composition for it. They then devise a notation system that others can understand well enough to perform their composition with little to no verbal or written direction. Given this notation system, computer science students create programs that implement it. The two groups of students interact during the "hand off" and when music students "try out" the programs developed by the computer science students. Both groups of students benefit from learning to communicate with others whose backgrounds differ significantly from their own and from understanding what it really takes to create a notation system and a computer program that can be used by people who don't share their perspective.

Gena Greher and Alex Ruthmann present at the 2008 ATMI Pre-Conference on Social Computing in Music Education

2008-09-24T15:10:00.000-05:00

Social Networking as Professional Development
Gena Greher (University of Massachusetts-Lowell)

Conversations with recent graduates from our program revealed that while they don’t regret their career choice, they often feel isolated from their music education peers and overwhelmed by all of the administrative issues they need to deal with in addition to their teaching duties. Several alumni who are approaching the three year mark are starting to question what the future holds for them and are relieved to learn that there is research confirming that what they are feeling is actually normal. After last year’s pre-conference session, I created Ning networks for some of my partnership projects and found Ning’s many features useful. Setting up a discussion forum for these new teachers would help them to stay in touch, meet colleagues from other years, share ideas, discuss concerns, and vent frustrations. It is hoped that the participants will find the peer support that is often missing for music teachers who are often the sole music practitioners in their buildings.

Using Ning.com to Support and Extend Music Learning
Alex Ruthmann (University of Massachusetts-Lowell)

This hands-on session will focus on using NING to support college music courses. Beginning with an overview of NING sites I have co-developed with my students over the past year, participants will experience what it is like to interact with each other in a NING-moderated course. Specifically, strategies designed to foster communities of practice within music technology, music education, and professional development settings will be shared.

Attendees will have the opportunity to:

Variety in Music - The Alphabet

2008-03-09T16:43:00.009-05:00

Children's vernacular keyboard repertoire (from Eve Harwood based on data collected in the early 1990s):

Heart and Soul
Chopsticks
Lean on me
Snake charmer melody
Knuckle Roll song
Right here waiting for you - Richard Marx

Other keyboard songs I've heard students play:

Axel F
Clocks - Coldplay
Twinkle/ABC/Baa Baa Black Sheep
America
Happy Birthday
Ode to Joy

Alphabet Song/Twinkle Twinkle/Baa Baa Black Sheep/Ah! Vous dirais-je, Maman

One translated version of "Ah! Vous dirais-je, maman"

Ah! I shall tell you, mum,
What causes my torment.
Papa wants me to reason
Like an adult.
I say that candy
Is better than reason.

Off the beaten path Western pieces for exploring variety in music:

"The Alphabet" from Nonsense Madrigals - Ligeti; Performed by the Kings Singers.
"Variations on Ah! Vous dirais-je, Maman" - Mozart; Performed by the Swingle Singers.

"Variations on Ah! Vous dirais-je, Maman" - Mozart; Performed by pianist Heidi Brende.

(Online free sheet music to "Variations on Ah! Vous dirais-je, Maman")

"Variations on America" - Charles Ives; Performed by Leonard Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

"Greeting Prelude" (Happy Birthday) - Igor Stravinsky; Performed by Michael Tilson Thomas and the London Symphony.

"The BSO Forever" from Divertimento - Leonard Bernstein; Performed by Leonard Bernstein and the Israel Philharmonic.

"Manhattan Beach March" - John Philip Sousa; Performed by the United States Marine Band

"Ionisation" - Edgar Varese; Performed by Pierre Boulez and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

"Etude No. 1" - Philip Glass; Performed by Philip Glass.

"Violin Concerto" - Philip Glass; Performed by Gidon Kremer.

A sustained approach to composing through a Composers Workshop

2008-03-09T16:36:00.006-05:00

Applying the Composers Workshop approach in secondary general music

Teaching music using music.

"Read like a teacher of writing" - Katie Wood Ray

Dimensions and Metadimensions of Music - J. Wiggins/Center for Applied Research in Musical Understanding (CARMU) - Oakland University

Composing Music Based on the Actual Processes of Composers

2007-02-23T09:02:00.000-05:00

In my middle school classes, my students often began composing after analyzing an existing piece of music to serve as a model or example to get their own compositional ideas. Because my students were working with loop-based software, I tried to find intriguing pieces of music that were based around loops or extended ostinati. When I was listening to the CDs that accompany the new Silver Burdett Making Music series, I ran across a track in Grade 2 entitled Fish Food by electric cellist Gideon Freudmann.

powered by ODEO
I tracked Gideon down on the web through his website and asked him about his process for creating Fish Food:

I recorded Fish Food with my electric cello and a Lexicon JamMan - a nice rack-mounted looper that has not been on the market for several years. Lately I have been using a foot peddle looper - the Boss Loop Station (RC-20). It's not stereo, but very easy to use and has some other nice features.

Fish Food is from my CD, Hologram Crackers which is an entire album of loop based electric cello instrumental tunes (all original. It's available, along with my other CDs at http://www.cellobop.com. Fish Food is an unusual tune in that the "verse" has three measures in 7 and one in 6.

The tune was recorded mostly in one pass with the looper - playing the the strum phrase first and then building the layers of the loop on top of it. Once it was all there I improvised some leads over the top - again, all in the one pass. When I mixed it down, I started the piece at a point where the loop with all the layers were established (as opposed to some other tunes where left in each layer as they get added) and at the very end I overdubbed a few of the weird atonal sounds. The big chord that begins and ends the tune came from another tune and those were the last sounds to be added." (personal communication)

powered by ODEO If 6 were 9 excerpt

Not only were my students informed by analyzing the recording of Fish Food, but they also were informed by Gideon's personal process of working with a stand-alone loop-pedal and production process in his studio.

I wish as teachers we had access to more stories of the actual production and composing processes musicians use to create music today. I did find a few older sources, such as writings by Igor Stravinsky (Poetics of Music) and Aaron Copland (What to listen for in music.) but what about more contemporary music and musicians?

In the bargain bin at a Tuesday Morning, I found a great book entitled: Off the record: Songwriters on songwriting by Graham Nash. This book and set of audio CDs includes interviews with Randy Bachman, David Crosby, John Lee Hooker, and others.

Another interesting book is Talking Music: Conversations With John Cage, Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and Five Generations of American Experimental Composers by William Duckworth. This book shares interviews and conversations with the above mentioned composers and others. I have found great quotes and descriptions of process in this book to share with my students.

For the most up-to-date examples of process, I have found Jon Savage's Sound2Picture resources to be most intriguing. In this resource and in his own personal blog, Jon shares detailed notes and videos of sound designer Andrew Diey. In these notes, Andrew talks about his composing process for each of the films and computer games he composed for in the Sound2Picture and Sound2Game projects.

Lastly, Sam Reese pointed me in the direction of a great article by University of Illinois composer Stephen Taylor entitled: Translating unapproachable light: How composers write music. This article describes his own process composing a piece entitled: Unapproachable Light. Lots of great insight here that should be shared with student composers.

If you are interested in listening to Fish Food or using it with your students, check out the following information:
Fish Food (click to listen to and/or purchase from iTunes)
Gideon Freudmann - http://www.cellobop.com
2005 album Hologram Crackers

Rite of Spring Project

2007-01-18T11:58:00.001-05:00

Listen to and watch the full performance

Aural Sculptures

2007-01-17T11:59:00.003-05:00

Musicians often approach composing with music software in an additive way--starting by creating music one layer, voice, or note at a time. We might lay down a bass or drum track, then a melody or another instrument as we build our compositions. Most music software is designed to facilitate this approach. However, what might happen if we took advantage of the design of loop-based software programs like Super Duper Music Looper, Acid Music Studio, or GarageBand by allowing students to compose in a subtractive way, similar to that of sculptors who start with a piece of rock or wood, removing portions to reveal the finished work? What might a piece of music sound like if we borrowed the process that sculptors use and applied it to composing?

To start the project, students viewed four Marshall Fredericks sculptures entitled Pony Express. These sculptures were created by sculpting a block of clay to reveal the images. A mold of the clay carvings was created which was then used to cast the final sculptures in bronze. The process that Marshall Fredericks used was a subtractive process--he removed portions of clay to reveal his final sculpture.

Drawing on the sculpting process, students used Acid Music Studio to create their own “sound mass” similar to a block of clay, wood, or stone. Students were asked to create an Acid file comprised of 10 to 15 layers of different sound loops that lasted for a total of two minutes. The result was a screen painted solid with a variety of different sound loops, creating a cacophonous “sound mass.”

After students had created their sound masses, they traded them with their classmates. The task for the classmates was to use a subtractive process of removing or altering portions of the sound mass (parallel to the sculpting process) to create a music composition. Students could not add anything to the sound masses, however, they could use the erase tool to make changes to the the texture and form of the compositions. Students also transform the musical layers through the use of filter, key change, and tempo tools to create their composition.

Strategies for Assessing Musical Understanding in Composing Experiences

2007-01-17T11:58:00.005-05:00

As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to better understand how my students think as composer-musicians. I often ask myself questions like:

What are their conceptions and misconceptions about music and musical process?
What are their challenges in the composing process?
What are their musical intentions?

I have found the following three techniques to provide many insights that have helped me be a better teacher and more importantly, my students to be better peer-teachers.

Composers' Commentaries

When I watch a DVD, I have the option at the end of the movie (or even at the beginning) to watch the move with overdubbed commentaries by the director and often the actors who made the movie. These commentaries provide additional information and insight into the processes of creating the film. Because I wanted to learn more about what my students were thinking as they composed their pieces and what they thought was important to share with the listeners of their compositions, I ask my students to record an additional commentary track on each of their compositions.

When students are finished with their compositions, they save one version with the commentary, and another without it. Here is an example of a composition entitled Rock to the Beat by one of my 6th grade students, Jessica Walton:

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What insights do you have into her compositional process and musical understanding after listening to her composition?

Here is her piece with her recorded commentary:

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What insights do you have into her compositional process and musical understanding after listening to her composition with recorded commentary?

Emergent Encyclopedia of Composing

When I first discovered the Wikipedia website, I was intrigued by its underlying concept - a website where anyone could easily contribute and collaborate to create an online encyclopedia. One of the first ideas I had a music teacher was to adapt this concept for use to support my students classroom composing experiences. Wouldn't it be cool to have my students create an online encyclopedia of composing that contained their suggestions for what made a good piece of music and their own successful strategies for composing and working with our composing tools?

Click here to see what they created

Composition Logs

After reading a great online article by writing researcher and educator Katie Wood Ray entitled Read Like a Teacher of Writing, I decided to have my students create composition logs of each etude and composition they created throughout our middle school general music classes. When students start a composition, they begin to fill out their composition log. They revisit this log again when they decide to either abandon or finish their compositions. Here's a link to the composition log we use:

Our Composition Log

Seeing Sound/Hearing Art

2007-01-17T11:57:00.002-05:00

One of the challenges for art educators is to know how a student visually experiences a work of art. What do they notice first? What are the students' visual pathways through the artwork? More broadly, how do they see the artwork?

Similar challenges exist for the music educator in knowing how students listen to music and what they perceive during that process.

In my classes I have used Frank Jonas' Geoscape 6 as a way to better understand how my students see a work of art. A common conception that my students often have is that a work of art is static in that it does not change over time, unlike music which is almost always in motion through time. One way to challenge this conception is to challenge students to compose a piece of music that expresses their visual pathway through a work of art.

I have had students compose to Geoscapes 6 with both acoustic and computer-based instruments. When I present the painting to the students, I often ask them?

What do you see?
What did you notice first? Second? Third?
How might you represent what you see through sound?
What does this artwork sound like to you?

Whether students work together in small groups with classroom instruments or work alone or in small groups with loop software, I have found my students' pathways through this artwork to be very different from each other. Some students see the background squares first, then additional layers of "chaos" on top. Some view it holistically noticing "chaos" first, then moving "downward" through the artwork to the order of the squares. Others focus on the shapes or colors and try to represent those aspects of the artwork through their music.

Perhaps the most interesting has been our class discussions when sharing our compositions. My students always came away with a better understanding that not everyone sees an artwork in the same way. Also, they come to better understand how an entire class of students can create totally different pieces of music from the same visual artwork and the different techniques composers can use to express through sound.