One of the characteristics of strong music classrooms, whatever discipline, is constant evaluation and innovation. Technology provides music teachers ways to explore musical concepts and teach musical and performance skills in ways that have not before been possible. As I studied these ideas this week, I was delighted to make lots of connections to my real world work at the Pensacola Children's Chorus. Technology's ability to elevate our standard of performance and education is exciting!
Chapter 4 in Music Learning Today illuminated connections between performance skills and the technologies that can be used to teach them (Bauer, 2014). I was specifically drawn to the substantial passages devoted to musical practice, a skill set I truly lacked as a developing musician. While practice tapes have never been foreign to vocalists, I remember my high school voice teacher discouraging me from practicing to such tapes for fear I would develop unbreakable habits. On the contrary, the textbook suggests that "students generally prefer to practice with accompaniment" (p. 82), and that furthermore, "individuals have also indicated that they believe the computer is better than a live accompaniment for repetitive practice" (p. 82). In this specific light, I was interested to learn that SmartMusic features "intelligent accompaniment," (p. 84), where the software will actually follow the soloist as they play, similar to a live accompanist. Additionally, playing with an accompaniment or the full ensemble could also help improve a student's intonation (p. 83), since the accompaniment allows them to hear their part within the whole harmonic context of the piece. Technologies like Sing and See and Sightreading Factory have more singer-specific practice techniques.
In this light, I wonder how my students' individual performance could be increased with the use of accompaniment tapes. My once-weekly rehearsals are rigorous, and retention from week-to-week is high, but if I focused a bit more on practice education and provided technological tools to support them at home, I imagine our standard of performance would be elevated. I'm eager to test this in the coming weeks on my high school choir as we prepare for a summer choral festival (with limited rehearsal!).
Technology also provides many ways to create more effective ensemble rehearsals. I have used a camcorder in the past to record the expressions on students' faces while singing, only then to turn around the play it back live in class for students to assess their own performance. Dr. Bauer (2014) suggests that these types of recordings also "allow students to focus on listening while not playing," (p. 89) which is something that as a teacher I'm quick to forget. As the instructor, I'm constantly evaluating sound while it's being made, and I easily forget that developing musicians would respond better to separating the two activities. In fact, instruction could be catered to quicken the students' response to personal errors so that the need to "stop and fix" becomes less and less.
Technology has such wonderful implications for teacher education as well. I was intrigued my several of the videos hosted on Lynda.com. For instance, the concept of sound compression had been such a mystery to me. I had toyed with it on Garageband and similar technologies, but until watching an Audacity training video (Chow, 2015), I had never had a firm grasp of what it is. Being able to then toy with it in Audacity itself was a great real-life application. Though I must say, I would be eager to utilize what I consider more user-friendly technologies such as SoundTrap and Garageband. I found Audacity's interface quite technical. However, Audacity could prove useful in creating accompaniment tracks with its easy solo and mute features, as well as the ability to fine-edit live recording. Still, I would prefer to put workstations like SoundTrap and Garageband in front of my students for classroom applications before introducing Audacity's more technical interface.
It is difficult to ignore that technology, if used correctly and effectively, is quickly changing the scope and quality of education that can be offered to our students. As a teacher of a classroom that strives to be innovative, I hope I can use this deeper knowledge of technology and its implications in the music classroom to meet my students at a level in which they can more deeply understand the concepts we are working on. In the end, it helps build stronger, lifelong musicians.
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Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chow, D. (Author). (2015, August 14). Using compression. Learning Audacity. Video retrieved from http://www.lynda.com
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