The Art of Songwriting, Andrew West (2016)

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-154
Author(s):  
Chapman Hill Stuart

The author reviews The Art of Songwriting, written by veteran songwriter Andrew West, who oversees a postgraduate course at Leeds College of Music. The book benefits greatly from the author’s encyclopaedic knowledge of songs and songwriters, and a rich variety of examples permeates the book. As a result, the book is not a simple ‘how-to’ volume, but rather captures the rich diversity of approaches and techniques professional songwriters employ. A different, tighter organizational scheme might help the book’s wisdom be digestible for the reader to consolidate and retain all the knowledge the book has to offer. Still, the book is a welcome contribution to an understudied field, especially as music education scholars seek to diversify the musics that define school music teaching and learning.

2020 ◽  
pp. 002242942095311
Author(s):  
Marshall Haning

The purpose of this grounded theory research was to investigate music teachers’ perceptions of the role and influence of performances in K–12 music programs and the processes by which these performances impact music teaching and learning. Three specific research questions informed this study: (1) What role do performances play in school music programs? (2) How are music teachers’ pedagogical decisions informed or influenced by their efforts to mount performances? and (3) What other aspects of the music teaching-learning process are influenced by efforts to mount performances, and what form does this influence take? Five themes emerged to describe the ways in which efforts to prepare and mount performances interact with the music teaching and learning process: community expectations, student motivation, time management, teaching strategies, and teacher views of performance. These themes were used to generate an emergent theory including two interlocking process cycles that illustrate the ways in which performances are situated within school music programs. Implications for the field of music education and for future research are discussed.


Author(s):  
Marissa Silverman

This chapter asks an important, yet seemingly illusive, question: In what ways does the internet provide (or not) activist—or, for present purposes “artivist”—opportunities and engagements for musicing, music sharing, and music teaching and learning? According to Asante (2008), an “artivist (artist + activist) uses her artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice and oppression—by any medium necessary. The artivist merges commitment to freedom and justice with the pen, the lens, the brush, the voice, the body, and the imagination. The artivist knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation” (p. 6). Given this view, can (and should) social media be a means to achieve artivism through online musicing and music sharing, and, therefore, music teaching and learning? Taking a feminist perspective, this chapter interrogates the nature of cyber musical artivism as a potential means to a necessary end: positive transformation. In what ways can social media be a conduit (or hindrance) for cyber musical artivism? What might musicing and music sharing gain (or lose) from engaging with online artivist practices? In addition to a philosophical investigation, this chapter will examine select case studies of online artivist music making and music sharing communities with the above concerns in mind, specifically as they relate to music education.


Author(s):  
Hui Hong ◽  
Weisheng Luo

Wang Guowei, a famous scholar and thinker in our country, thinks that “aesthetic education harmonizes people's feelings in the process of emotional music education, so as to achieve the perfect domain”, “aesthetic education is also emotional education”. Therefore, in the process of music education, emotional education plays an important role in middle school music teaching, and it is also the highest and most beautiful realm in the process of music education in music teaching. Music teachers should be good at using appropriate teaching methods and means. In the process of music education, they should lead students into the emotional world, knock on their hearts with the beauty of music, and touch their heartstrings. Only when students' hearts are close to music in the process of music education, can they truly experience the charm of music and realize the true meaning of music in the process of music education. Only in this way can music classes be effectively implemented The purpose of classroom emotion teaching.


Author(s):  
Jay Dorfman

Many authors have explored the ideas of philosophy and educational theory and how those ideas can serve as a foundation for teaching practices. Philosophy is a broad subject, and it is not the purpose of this book to create a new philosophy of music teaching and learning; however, we can beneficially draw on philosophical and theoretical works of others to form some foundations. By necessity, a theory of technology-based music instruction begins with a theory of music education. To deviate from this would be to neglect the important theoretical work that forms the guiding foundation of teaching in our chosen art form. The critical role of theory in this new method of teaching is to help technology-based music instructors develop dispositions that make this type of teaching less forced, more natural than it might otherwise be. The most successful technology-based music teachers are those who recognize the capacities of their students to engage with technology, to be creative, and who are willing to modify some beliefs—possibly long-held ones—to allow their students the freedom to explore and construct their musical skills and knowledge. These are difficult dispositions to develop. Understanding some important theoretical and philosophical work can help in treading that path by helping teachers acknowledge findings that have come before, and by letting us make critical decisions about the ways we teach and our students learn. The teacher in the following Profile of Practice has developed trust in his students and himself, assurance that he can promote students’ creativity, and confidence in his TBMI abilities. He knows that students come to his classes with unique worldviews, and with experiences, both musical and otherwise, accumulated over each of their lifetimes. While he does not place great emphasis on theoretical models of creativity or on articulating his own music teaching philosophy, his teaching reflects some of the most important philosophical dispositions found in effective TBMI teachers. Mr. E teaches middle school music in a relatively affluent suburb. He is fortunate to have experiences teaching music at many levels and has a wealth of formal training in music technology from both his undergraduate and graduate degree work.


This chapter describes cases of music teaching and learning from Pre-K-12 schools. As a trait of book, instead of focusing on how-to instruction and technical aspects of music teaching, the author puts a special emphasis on music learning in a social context. Both music and music education consist of social interaction among learners, teachers, and community members. This process is especially unique to music because we always learn from each other and perceive music in a shared sense. The author wishes you also learn from these cases and implement the idea of your practice for students to learn from each other.


Author(s):  
Colwyn Trevarthen ◽  
Stephen Malloch

This article, which focuses on the early experiences of the young child and the ways these lay the foundations for playful and communicative engagement with music throughout life, discusses a theory of the beginnings of music; music teaching and learning; and creative musicality in action. It concludes that as our musicality is shaped by our particular cultural heritage, it can either be helped by sensitive teachers who walk with us along a path of mutual cultural discovery, or hindered by those who would see culture as something to be upheld and protected, separate from life. To trust that, with sensitive guidance, our ingenious musical creativity will find its own way within the rich, complex cultural worlds humans have created is the paradox which all teachers of music face.


1986 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Owens

This article is a revised version of a talk given by the author before an international symposium on music education in Hortos, Greece, in 1985. It considers the current state of modern music, suggesting that there have been some important changes in direction since the avant-garde styles of the 1950s and 1960s; and it reflects on some of the implications of these changes for secondary-school music teaching.Some proposals are made for factors likely to facilitate the success of contemporary music which children hear or perform. In the original talk these points were illustrated with recorded examples, indicated here by numbers in the text. The role of children as contemporary composers themselves is also discussed in terms of the method and motivation by which creative work may be encouraged.The educational writers on whom the author bases much of his argument are clearly acknowledged throughout the text. Otherwise, opinions derive from experience of teaching and writing music for children in England and in France.


2017 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-61
Author(s):  
Corin T. Overland

Today’s students live in the center of a rich, interconnected system of public, philanthropic, and for-profit entities that support the act of music teaching and learning. Students are not limited to the kinds of musical instruction available to them in their schools. Provided they have the means and the access, the musically curious can supplement or supplant their in-school musical lives with extracurricular and cocurricular activities, private studio lessons, community ensembles, or religious services. The for-profit music education industry in particular has grown in popularity and commercial success since the global recession, encouraged in part by what appears to be an increasing demand for instruction in popular genres that is not being met in the public schools. Corporate entities that sell music instruction have reached unprecedented levels of cultural saturation and student interest. With their successes have come a number of new teaching models, philosophies, and innovative ways for students to engage with music. However, these experiences may come at a cost, particularly to equal access by disadvantaged populations who might not be able to pay for said services. This article examines the popular music education (PME) franchise and its budding relationship with public school music education.


Author(s):  
Nasim Niknafs

Without access to official state-sanctioned, public music education, Iranian youth, specifically rock and alternative musicians, follow a self-organized and anarchistic path of music making. Expertly negotiating between the act of music making and the unpredictable situations they face daily, they have become creative in finding new ways to propagate their music and learn the rules of their profession. Meanings attached to assessment in these circumstances become redefined and overshadow the quality of music being created. Assessment becomes a local activism that countervails the top-down, summative model. This chapter provides some characteristics of assessment in music teaching and learning in urban Iran that follow Nilsson and Folkestad’s (2005) ecocultural perspective, consisting of four elements: (a) Gibson’s (1979) concept of affordances, (b) orality, (c) theories of play, and (d) theories of chance. Consequently, assessment in urban Iranian music education can be categorized as follows: (1) do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-with-others (DIWO), (2) interactive and decentralized, (3) local anarchism, and (4) lifestyle. This chapter concludes that the field of music education should take a “slightly outside perspective” (Lundström, 2012, p. 652) and proactive approach toward assessment, rather than the reactionary approach to music teaching and learning in which assessment becomes an end goal rather than an approach embodied within learning.


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