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Project Ideas

Maker culture and music education: Programming a digital ornament with music and lights with MakeCode

How diverse are the forms of musical engagement that we support in music programs? I think music education, particularly in K-12 contexts could be much more expansive in terms of the types of musical engagement we include or address in music programs. Combining music education and maker culture as STEAM education has great potential. Here’s a post on combining music, computational thinking, and physical computing as a form of arts-driven STEAM education. TL;DR Last year (2018), I created a digital… Read More »Maker culture and music education: Programming a digital ornament with music and lights with MakeCode

Video Games & Music Education: The Potential of narrative & musical branching

What do you imagine in sound and imagery when thinking about video games and music education?

A theme I’ve explored throughout my writing and teaching related to video games and music education (O’Leary & Tobias, 2017; Tobias, 2012; Tobias & O’Leary, 2017) is that there are many more possibilities than focusing primarily on rhythm action games in connection to performing instruments.

Inviting students to create and perform dynamic and adaptive music for video games has so much potential. I have the sense that addressing this more non-linear approach to musical engagement is rare (at this point) in music programs. It is probably more common for students in music programs to perform arrangements of video game theme music in large ensembles than to create and perform their own music for video games.

When I saw this tweet by composer Austin Wintory, I wondered if the video clip he created could catalyze related projects in music programs:

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The Potential of StyleSwaps in Music Education

While looking up some info on Post Malone’s Better Now I came across Simon De Witt’s (AKA Blanks) 80s Version of Better Now. Here are both versions:


StyleSwap(s) and Music Education

De Witt (Banks) refers to his 80s vision of Better Now as a StyleSwap. In fact, Banks has a YouTube Channel of StyleSwaps I’ll post below. Whether you think of a StyleSwap as an arrangement, stylistic transformation, or creative cover or some other concept, from my perspective it has a lot of potential as a form of musical engagement for students in music programs.

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Making Positive Impact Through Music

Making Positive Impact Through Music Music educators have a role in facilitating responses, music learning and teaching in relation to hate and bigotry occurring throughout contemporary society.  Valerie Strauss suggests that “The first thing teachers should do when school starts is talk about hatred in America” and provides numerous resources for doing so. Music plays an important role in helping people make sense of, meaning, of, and respond to the world. Music programs can play an important role in supporting young… Read More »Making Positive Impact Through Music

Considering orchestration and arrangements with Laura Mvula’s Sing to the Moon

I often enjoy listening to multiple examples of the same song by the same artist. In addition to being enjoyable in and of itself, having multiple recordings of the same music can be a nice way to have learners listen to and discuss the decisions that musicians make when orchestrating or arranging music. Check out some of these recordings of Laura Mvula’s Sing to the Moon and maybe have students/learners listen and chat about the similarities and differences among the… Read More »Considering orchestration and arrangements with Laura Mvula’s Sing to the Moon