Cognitive Processing in Digital Audio Workstation Composing

Music teachers have been thrust into a new world where digital learning is the new normal and use of technology has become more necessity than an added extra. While there are many new resources available, sometimes reexamining those more familiar can help repurpose them for digital learning. This article unearths the cognitive processes that occur when students interact with digital audio workstations (GarageBand and Soundtrap) both in classrooms and through online learning. The contents explicitly identify how cognitive processes might manifest in students’ learning, engagement, and work produced from two such programs: GarageBand and Soundtrap. The intent is to provide music educators with a practical and accessible resource to help guide an electronic composing curriculum.

Scott Joplin: A Guide for Music Educators Part III—Ragtime Spaces

Scott Joplin was an African American composer and pianist of singular merit and influence. This article is the final entry in a three-part series considering the biographical, artistic, and cultural contexts of Joplin’s life and work and their use in K–12 general music education. “Ragtime Spaces” focuses on cultural globalization and the modernist entertainment aesthetic which supported Joplin’s work. Scott Joplin’s creative and entrepreneurial activities embodied humanism, racial uplift, and craftsmanship at a time when society became increasingly racially segregated and dehumanized. The discussion is followed by suggested student activities written in accordance with National Association for Music Education’s 2014 National Music Standards.

“But When Are We Going to Learn the Real Do?” Toward Learner-Centered Pitch Practices in U.S. Music Classrooms

While the field of music education is rife with participation in methodological debates around “best systems” for learning about pitch, the authors in this article explore the possibilities of learner-centered approaches to teaching pitch among students with diverse music backgrounds. Specifically, the article highlights several challenges faced by the students with fixed pitch backgrounds in U.S. music classrooms: confusion around solfège syllables used to represent both movable and fixed pitch systems, and difficulty in transitioning between fixed and movable systems regardless of the symbolic language used. The authors offer a variety of research-based recommendations for deepening students' understandings of pitch in light of these challenges and emphasize the necessity for a learner-centered approach to pitch pedagogy in U.S. music classrooms. The purpose of this article is to (1) help practicing teachers understand more deeply and empathize with the nature of confusion students with fixed pitch backgrounds might experience in American music classrooms, and (2) develop pedagogical strategies that are sensitive to the experiences of these students while working to deepen understanding of pitch.

Una Noche de Música: Sustaining Our Students’ Culture

Students in the music classroom are more culturally and linguistically diverse than ever before. Latinx students are the fastest growing population. Often, these students are neglected through deficit-based pedagogical practices with regard to their cultural and linguistic practices; however, other research into asset-based pedagogical practices such as community cultural wealth and culturally sustaining pedagogy can allow for more equitable and just music education. Accessing community cultural wealth with regard to aspirational, navigational, social, resistant, and especially familial and linguistic capital can lead to better outcomes for students. Incorporating a Noche de Música [Night of Music] at a school allows for families to demonstrate their capacity to cocreate music-based and language-based literacies among faculty, students, and their families. This can include culturally sustaining pedagogical practices that lovingly affirm and sustain students’ language, culture, and history through folk songs, folk tales, and multimodal approaches to communication.

Performing Without Sound: Using Sign Language to Teach Expressive Qualities of Music

Performing can be taught in more ways than just with singing and instruments; sign language is also a legitimate option for teaching students about the expressive qualities of music through performance. Using sign language as a performance option serves to promote differently abled musicians. It also is a way to use Universal Design for Learning principles to create learning opportunities in a variety of modalities for all students

Teaching Music Online: Using Microsoft Stream and Forms to Share Prerecorded Lessons

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools have been teaching music online. This is the second column of a two-part series exploring this topic. In this column, I discuss how general music teachers can share prerecorded lessons that contain interactive questions using Microsoft Stream and Forms.

Meaningful Collaborations: An Introduction to Music of Jamaica

The purpose of this column is to explore a meaningful collaboration between a classroom music teacher and an expert from a music culture. Dr. David Aarons from Jamaica worked with a music educator and a class of 5th grade students. They explored dance traditions, steel pan performance, singing games, and stories. They also discussed sociocultural and sociohistorical meanings of the lyrics, instruments, and hybrid nature of many of the current traditions.

Developing 21st-Century Musicianship: Tablet-based Music Production in the General Music Classroom

Increased availability of tablets at home and in classrooms provides educators access to a powerful tool for music instruction. Music production lessons on tablets offer alternate approaches to developing music literacies while teaching valuable technology skills. These activities are ideal for general music education because they align with contemporary music practices and are adaptable to a variety of learning environments (in person, remote, and hybrid). This article will present a model for tablet-based music production instruction in the general music classroom that aligns with the National Core Arts Standards and accompanying process components grounded in five essential skills: sequencing, recording, editing, effects processing, and mixing.

Imagine the Postpandemic Classroom

In this column, I direct the readers’ attention to issues that deserve to be addressed in the postpandemic classroom. While recent reports identified that learning loss, social isolation, political turmoil, and social upheaval have put an enormous strain on students’ mental health, I invite the readers reflect on your own experiences and consider pedagogical shifts that would help us meet the students where they are. I propose that topics like uncertainty, flexibility, and versatility should also be taken into serious consideration as we plan for the next school year. I end this column with a few curriculum ideas and suggest that we make space for uncertainty in our classroom and create space for what could yet become.

Thinking Vertically: Facilitating Transition for Students With Disabilities

Within special education, transition is a required part of a student’s Individualized Education Program, specifically the transition from school to postsecondary life. Recently, special educators have begun to investigate best practices of transition at all levels—early intervention into school, elementary to middle school, and middle to high school. Yet in music education transition is not widely discussed for students with and without disabilities. This article includes an overview of best practices of transition in special education and provides ideas on how to implement these practices in music education to better facilitate transition between schools to postsecondary life for students with disabilities.