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Current Events & Copyright

Today in my secondary general music methods class we discussed how one can use current events as a springboard for classroom discussion and lessons. In the spirit of that discussion I figured  I’d write about a recent set of issues relating to the discourse of copyright and the presidential election. I’ve written here about copyright several times before and I always look forward to updates on James Frankel’s “Copyright or Copywrong” series because it’s an issue that I think plays… Read More »Current Events & Copyright

Hip Hop In the Music Classroom? Discussing Rap & Misogyny

One reason why many music educators are hesitant to integrate rap music in the classroom or even discuss it, is the misogyny present through much of the commercial rap music and videos that the general public and many students are familiar with. The difficulty in navigating through the complexity of this and other issues leads to many music educators avoiding the topic all together. On September 25th of 2007 Congress will be holding a hearing focusing on media and “”stereotypes… Read More »Hip Hop In the Music Classroom? Discussing Rap & Misogyny

Potsdam People Article & Using American Idol in the classroom…

It was fun to read the recent write up in the Potsdam People that spotlighted me however, I was a little concerned about the way it discussed my use of American Idol in the classroom. These two sentence in particular were inaccurate: “Tobias also had his class compose music, and he would have the students judge the compositions like on American Idol..” & “Yet at the same time, Tobias had his students use American Idol-style judging when students composed their… Read More »Potsdam People Article & Using American Idol in the classroom…

Pre-mixing Rjd2

 Pre-Mixing Rjd2 I’m a big fan of musicians allowing people to remix their music. Hip Hop musician Rjd2 is currently allowing people to pre-mix his music. Unlike a remix in which one works on a piece of music already created, Rjd2 has provided people with samples from a track yet to be released and inviting people to create their own music from the samples. Rather than providing loops he has provided samples as hits. It will be interesting to see… Read More »Pre-mixing Rjd2

Meaningful Music Theory

I was interested to read about Roger Bourland’s approaches to teaching music theory and making it more meaningful to his students. One of the approaches that stood out as a great idea was having the students bring music they are working on to his class to analyze. This makes so much sense! What types of approaches do you use to make theory meaningful to your students? Is there collaboration in your department between the theory and ensemble aspects of the… Read More »Meaningful Music Theory