As popular music practices continue to evolve and expand in parallel with technological and social changes, popular music educators can engage in reflective practices that problematize the current curricular offerings and music-making experiences in relation to the ways people engage with music outside of school. My own particular interest when looking at popular music-making practices is to explore music-making and learning that blurs or disrupts disciplinary boundaries and silos. This chapter briefly introduces some of the ways people blur the disciplinary boundaries between popular music and computer science, which raises questions about the places and purposes of such engagement.
Read MoreAlthough many volumes exist on emergent music technology practices, few handbooks on music and technology consider educational milieu. The editors of Music, Technology, and Education: Critical Perspectives assist with filling this gap in literature. A quick glance at the subtitle of the book, Critical Perspectives, might lead to multiple interpretations of the word ‘critical’. Readers might take ‘critical’ to indicate a critique of music, technology and education. Another interpretation includes important perspectives on music, technology and education. The editors of this volume appropriately use both of these interpretations of the subtitle. Several chapters provide apposite critique of technology in music education practices, while other chapters provide valuable perspectives relevant to music, technology and education. I imagine readers interested in popular music education will consider many of the chapters in this book fit either interpretation of the word ‘critical.’
Read MoreThis short chapter provides an example of how to code a hip version of Hot Cross Buns using Sonic Pi.
Read MoreSince the introduction of music education within public schools, curricular offerings have not developed in parallel with the myriad of practices popular musicians engage with outside school contexts. In other academic disciplines such as computer science, curricula and practices are iterative in nature and are responsive to the ever-changing practices that people engage with outside educational contexts. Although popular musicians are using computer science practices for music-related purposes, such practices are seldom discussed within music education scholarship. This article begins with an exploration of such intersections by describing hardware practices popular musicians use to modify, design or build electronic devices for music-related purposes. The following section introduces coding practices that people use to create and modify music software, as well as to make music with code. The article concludes by unpacking potential implications and considerations for educators interested in the intersections of popular musicianship and computer science practices.
Read MoreThis short chapter provides an example of how to explore circuit-bending in a middle school general music context by experimenting with the electrical circuitry of children’s toys.
Read MoreRecent initiatives by for-profit corporations and funding measures instituted by governments intend to support the preparation of students for careers in computer science and technology. Although such initiatives and measures can indeed increase opportunities for students’ engagement with computer science and technology in K-12 schools, we question whose needs are being served, for what purposes, and at what cost. In particular, we ask whether music educators might be complicit in advancing technology that subordinates human needs—specifically students’ interests in making music in their own creative ways—to modes of production that benefit certain dominant commercial interests in society. After discussing how current computer technology narrows students’ choices, we counter this determinism by highlighting a music subculture that creates and appropriates music technologies for music-related purposes. Our example of the “chipscene” illustrates how music educators might reconceptualize “music making” through modification of existing music technology and thereby restore students’ freedom to “reclaim making” in the age of neoliberalism.
Read More"When considering the potential of technology for musical engagement, teaching, and learning, music educators can acknowledge a range of contexts and ways of being musical to inform their practice. Video games offer a compelling locus for musical experience and engagement. Video games are digital, interactive, and immersive multimedia or intermedia that people play, and often in a social context. Characteristics of play, interactivity, immersion, and social engagement are critical to understanding the popularity of video games in contemporary society and their potential in music education. Video games are not simply media objects, but designed experiences with rules and mechanics which create systems that often invite problem solving, creative and critical thinking, and meaning making (Squire, 2006).
Though video games are a popular and established form of media in contemporary society, scholarship addressing video games in relation to music teaching and learning is at an early stage compared to the corpus of research addressing other aspects of music technology such as music creation or performance (Finney & Burnard, 2007; Webster, 2011). Building upon existing discourse in music education, this chapter draws on scholarship beyond the immediate scope of music teaching and learning to address the following three areas: 1) video games and music education; 2) game-based learning and learning theories; and 3) music and musical engagement within video games. Throughout this chapter we refer to video games in their myriad forms along with the devices on which they are played such as console systems, computers, and mobile devices."
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