Musicing Identities
Part 1: Revisit and revise your music identity project from Social Foundations of Music Education. How has your identity changed since first-year? Consider the following questions: Who was I...Who am I...Who do I want to become.... as a musician? .... as a learner? .... as a performer? .... as a listener? .... as a composer? .... as a teacher? Create a 10 minute presentation (time yourself) using prezi to answer one of the following questions: (1) What roles do context, relationships, and activities play in the formation of my identities? (2) How do my identities intersect with my philosophy of teaching? (3) How can I share my musical identities with others (including my current or future students)?
Part 2: Present your revised music identity projects on the campus radio station during the semester. Write a one-page reflection paper about this experience.
Part 3: Choose a popular song from your top 10 list and arrange it for classroom instruments. Draw inspiration from your music identity top ten lists. Use the classroom examples (Everybody by Ingrid Michaelson, Viva la Vida by Coldplay, Just Dance by Lady Gaga, Wavin’ Flag by K’naan, and Wonderwall by Oasis) as models. Share or teach your arrangements with our class.
Part 2: Present your revised music identity projects on the campus radio station during the semester. Write a one-page reflection paper about this experience.
Part 3: Choose a popular song from your top 10 list and arrange it for classroom instruments. Draw inspiration from your music identity top ten lists. Use the classroom examples (Everybody by Ingrid Michaelson, Viva la Vida by Coldplay, Just Dance by Lady Gaga, Wavin’ Flag by K’naan, and Wonderwall by Oasis) as models. Share or teach your arrangements with our class.
Facing the Music
Part 1: Perform in Gamelan Gita Semara at Gettysburg College (Sundays 4-6PM)
Part 2: Research a particular musical practice. Ideas include but are not limited to gamelan, mande drumming, steel pan, batucada, etc. In a prezi, explain all the fundamental aspects of the music, ensemble, community, and transmission processes you would share with your students. Consider how you might include this information in a secondary curriculum. Reference your textbooks.
Part 3: Develop a lesson plan related to a musical practice. For example, if gamelan is the musical practice you are researching, then teach the class how to use the instruments and get them to successfully play a short excerpt together. The lesson should incorporate as many standards as possible. Teach us the main part, but explain how you would prepare and end the class.
Part 4: Choose a dance related to your research and teach the dance to the class. Develop a full lesson plan that: (1) explains the dance and musical style, (2) is connected to a specific culture and history, and (3) is routed in music concepts. Use interactive media to help aid your lesson.
Part 5: Drawing upon the ideas presented and explored in Facing the Music, reflect on your own experiences as a musician in one of two ensembles and write a three-page essay. What did you learn about yourself as a musician, as a learner, as a teacher? How will this new knowledge impact you as a future music learner and teacher?
Part 6: Now that you know more about a particular topic from performing in a non-Western ensemble and from conducting research on the particular practice, develop a course description for a semester or year-long curriculum that implements the fundamental aspects of the musical tradition you would like your students to experience. Start by asking yourself what you want or expect your students to do and know when they finish the class/experience you are designing. Fully conceptualize a class that could be offered on a rotation schedule every couple of years that focuses specifically on one musical practice/tradition or the intersection of two musical practices/traditions. The outline of this class should be flexible enough for anyone in the class to adapt or embed it as a focal point for a larger 7th or 8th grade music curriculum, i.e., in 8th grade you might focus the entire general music class on a number of standards and musical concepts but through the lens of a Western-Art period (like the Romantic period), an American musical genre (like Musical Theatre or Jazz) AND a non-Western musical practice (like gamelan, Karnatak music, or Mande drumming) or you might consider offering this as a special topics course at a high school to be in rotation with or an additional offering to Mariachi, Rock Band, Piano Lab, Music Technology, Music History, Music Theory, and/or Jazz Band, etc.
Part 2: Research a particular musical practice. Ideas include but are not limited to gamelan, mande drumming, steel pan, batucada, etc. In a prezi, explain all the fundamental aspects of the music, ensemble, community, and transmission processes you would share with your students. Consider how you might include this information in a secondary curriculum. Reference your textbooks.
Part 3: Develop a lesson plan related to a musical practice. For example, if gamelan is the musical practice you are researching, then teach the class how to use the instruments and get them to successfully play a short excerpt together. The lesson should incorporate as many standards as possible. Teach us the main part, but explain how you would prepare and end the class.
Part 4: Choose a dance related to your research and teach the dance to the class. Develop a full lesson plan that: (1) explains the dance and musical style, (2) is connected to a specific culture and history, and (3) is routed in music concepts. Use interactive media to help aid your lesson.
Part 5: Drawing upon the ideas presented and explored in Facing the Music, reflect on your own experiences as a musician in one of two ensembles and write a three-page essay. What did you learn about yourself as a musician, as a learner, as a teacher? How will this new knowledge impact you as a future music learner and teacher?
Part 6: Now that you know more about a particular topic from performing in a non-Western ensemble and from conducting research on the particular practice, develop a course description for a semester or year-long curriculum that implements the fundamental aspects of the musical tradition you would like your students to experience. Start by asking yourself what you want or expect your students to do and know when they finish the class/experience you are designing. Fully conceptualize a class that could be offered on a rotation schedule every couple of years that focuses specifically on one musical practice/tradition or the intersection of two musical practices/traditions. The outline of this class should be flexible enough for anyone in the class to adapt or embed it as a focal point for a larger 7th or 8th grade music curriculum, i.e., in 8th grade you might focus the entire general music class on a number of standards and musical concepts but through the lens of a Western-Art period (like the Romantic period), an American musical genre (like Musical Theatre or Jazz) AND a non-Western musical practice (like gamelan, Karnatak music, or Mande drumming) or you might consider offering this as a special topics course at a high school to be in rotation with or an additional offering to Mariachi, Rock Band, Piano Lab, Music Technology, Music History, Music Theory, and/or Jazz Band, etc.
UkeTube Tutorials
Choose a popular song appropriate for secondary school students that uses four of the chords we have learned in class (four chord song). Imagine you are away from school someday and you need to teach your students in your absence. Create a lesson plan to be taught by someone who may or may not know how to play the ukulele. The lesson plan should describe the history and culture of the Ukulele. You should successfully model (by both singing and playing) on the ukulele. You should perform it in chunks for the class until you eventually piece the whole song together and can perform it in its entirety. Video record yourself teaching this lesson and post it to YouTube. Record it as if you were speaking directly to your class and giving them instructions. Think about camera angles and how they will get to see your hand positions, etc
Creative Bodies
Compose two 32-beat sections using stomps, pats, claps, and snaps. Teach these contrasting sections (A and B sections) to the class. Use the body percussion rondos from the Body Percussion Rondo Book by Jim Solomon for inspiration and guidance on how to notate one. Develop a lesson on form using your body percussion composition. Teach your body percussion rondo to the class. Write a teaching reflection.
Prune Your Creative Garden
Put yourself in contact with creative work. Prune and reorganize your MP3 catalog on your computer, reshelve your books, curate your instagram or your photos on your computer, rearrange these items or try to recreate the same arrangement.
"Don't imagine what you will become—imagine what you won't become"
Reflect on the above statement from page 33 of Creative Quest by Questlove. Create a musical way to represent what you won't become. Present it to the class.
DJ Your Community Heritage
Create a playlist that reflects your community’s heritage? Curate this playlist so that the music seamlessly transitions from one song to the next and takes us on a narrative journey. Match styles and tempi, etc.
Sampling Project
Develop a lesson on music history where you teach history backwards. Find a song that samples a song that samples a song that samples a song. For example, Outkast's "These Are a Few of My Favorite Things" from their 2003 album Love Below which samples John Coltrane's 1963 Newport Jazz Fest performance of the same piece, which in turn comes from the Sound of Music by Rogers and Hammerstein, which mirrors Wagnerian operatic forms, etc., etc., etc...
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Random Plucking
Step 1: "Randomly open up a dictionary to any page and stab your finger down on a word. No matter what word it may be, force yourself to have an idea about it. 'Archery'? Okay—that's easy—maybe it's a song about how the country keeps missing its target by making the wrong people targets. 'Look'? Okay—it's a simple command, one of the simplest, urging people to pay attention."
OR
"Take any book. Pick a number that's less than the number of pages that it has, then a second number between one and twenty, then a third number between one and ten. Go to that page, to that line, and to that word, and then use whatever word you've selected."
p. 80 Creative Quest
Step 2: Create music around the word you pluck. Create lyrics and an accompaniment of your choosing (i.e., piano, ukulele and/or, pre-recorded electronic music/loops from GarageBand). Song must be no less than one and half minutes. Record this song using ProTools, GarageBand, or Logic. Create a podcast that shares your inspiration for and the process of writing this song. Share the song with the class. Write a teaching reflection.
OR
"Take any book. Pick a number that's less than the number of pages that it has, then a second number between one and twenty, then a third number between one and ten. Go to that page, to that line, and to that word, and then use whatever word you've selected."
p. 80 Creative Quest
Step 2: Create music around the word you pluck. Create lyrics and an accompaniment of your choosing (i.e., piano, ukulele and/or, pre-recorded electronic music/loops from GarageBand). Song must be no less than one and half minutes. Record this song using ProTools, GarageBand, or Logic. Create a podcast that shares your inspiration for and the process of writing this song. Share the song with the class. Write a teaching reflection.
Research a Music Technology
Find a free app for the iPad that is specifically designed for music making or music learning. Explore the app, demonstrate the use of the app in class. Email the name and link for the app to the entire class by 8am. Everyone must then download everyone’s app before class. In class, lead us in a short presentation about the app and the features that exist. Briefly describe how you would use it or make a lesson out of it.
James Gee's Seven Questions
According to James Gee (2005, pp. 11-13), whenever we speak we simultaneously construct seven areas of reality: significance, activities, identities, relationships, politics, connections, and semiotics. Gee calls these the seven building tasks of language, and suggests that we ask the following seven questions to better identify and understand the discourse(s) in use:
1. How is this piece of language being used to make certain things significant or not and in what ways?
2. What activity or activities is this piece of language being used to enact?
3. What identity or identities is this piece of language being used to enact?
4. What sort of relationship(s) is this piece of language seeking to enact with others?
5. What perspective on social goods is this piece of language communicating?
6. How does this piece of language (dis)connect things; how does it make one thing (ir)relevant to another?
7. How does this piece of language (not) privilege specific sign systems or different ways of knowing and believing or claims to knowledge and belief?
These seven questions allow for one to consider the macro- and micro- contexts of discourse in relation to identity and language. Human beings use associations between language and various activities to identify themselves as a member of a group or social network. Gee refers to these associations as “Discourse” with a capital “D”; and reserves the word “discourse,” with a little “d,” to mean language-in-use or stretches of language, such as conversations or stories. The seven proposed questions can be used to recognize D/discourses at work in settings of music learning, revealing things about the people involved (identities, culture), the tools being used (materials, activities), the institution in which the activity is being conducted, and the policies, curriculum, and training that may influence decision-making regarding management, pedagogy, learning, motivation, and participation.
With this in mind, consider replacing James Gee's seven questions about language with ones about music:
1. How is this piece of music being used to make certain things significant or not and in what ways?
2. What activity or activities is this piece of music being used to enact?
3. What identity or identities is this piece of music being used to enact?
4. What sort of relationship(s) is this piece of music seeking to enact with others?
5. What perspective on social goods is this piece of music communicating?
6. How does this piece of music (dis)connect things; how does it make one thing (ir)relevant to another?
7. How does this piece of music (not) privilege specific sign systems or different ways of knowing and believing, or claims to knowledge and belief?
Locate a piece of music you would like to teach your students. Answer the questions above.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Gee, J. (2005). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
1. How is this piece of language being used to make certain things significant or not and in what ways?
2. What activity or activities is this piece of language being used to enact?
3. What identity or identities is this piece of language being used to enact?
4. What sort of relationship(s) is this piece of language seeking to enact with others?
5. What perspective on social goods is this piece of language communicating?
6. How does this piece of language (dis)connect things; how does it make one thing (ir)relevant to another?
7. How does this piece of language (not) privilege specific sign systems or different ways of knowing and believing or claims to knowledge and belief?
These seven questions allow for one to consider the macro- and micro- contexts of discourse in relation to identity and language. Human beings use associations between language and various activities to identify themselves as a member of a group or social network. Gee refers to these associations as “Discourse” with a capital “D”; and reserves the word “discourse,” with a little “d,” to mean language-in-use or stretches of language, such as conversations or stories. The seven proposed questions can be used to recognize D/discourses at work in settings of music learning, revealing things about the people involved (identities, culture), the tools being used (materials, activities), the institution in which the activity is being conducted, and the policies, curriculum, and training that may influence decision-making regarding management, pedagogy, learning, motivation, and participation.
With this in mind, consider replacing James Gee's seven questions about language with ones about music:
1. How is this piece of music being used to make certain things significant or not and in what ways?
2. What activity or activities is this piece of music being used to enact?
3. What identity or identities is this piece of music being used to enact?
4. What sort of relationship(s) is this piece of music seeking to enact with others?
5. What perspective on social goods is this piece of music communicating?
6. How does this piece of music (dis)connect things; how does it make one thing (ir)relevant to another?
7. How does this piece of music (not) privilege specific sign systems or different ways of knowing and believing, or claims to knowledge and belief?
Locate a piece of music you would like to teach your students. Answer the questions above.
__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __
Gee, J. (2005). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.