Nurturing Student Self-Efficacy in Composing

A resounding theme in this week’s readings and discussions was the ways that we as music educators can engage with the “other 80%,” or students who do not participate in musical ensembles or traditional music classes. A related component of this is the interplay between non-music students and their peers  who are engaged in traditional music programs. And, in a more general sense, how we might reach out to both simultaneously. Technologies like the one we explored this week, Soundtrap, allow us as educators to instruct students from a variety of musical backgrounds using the same pedagogical medium. While the program itself does not change, Soundtrap is equipped to cater to the needs of expert musicians and novices alike. In my own experience with the program, it allowed me to dabble in a more modern compositional method (which is not my forte) for this week’s project, while at the same time imagining a number of classical applications for my own personal use.

This hearkens to another area discussed in this week’s literature, or the diversithy of thought on compositional pedagogy. On a basic level, there is some agreement on the benefits of composition in school curricula. Our reading cites five different rationale that make up these benefits, ranging from expanding children's understanding of the world, to developing direct understanding of musical concepts through experience, to encompasing a full breadth of musical knowledge in "a proccess that allows the child to grow, discover, and create" through "meaningful engagement with sounds" (Bauer, 2014, p. 59).

But academics are divided when it comes to how to instruct students in compositional theory. There are two basic schools of thought, one of which advocates the use of standard musical notation in composition as a demonstration of basic musical literacy. The text uses the anlogy of whether or not one can be said to be proficient in a language if he or she cannot read or write in that language (ibid.). Conversely, others advocate for composition without notation, specifically with the “other 80%” in mind. Resources like Soundtrap, as I discussed above, have the potential to reach out to both schools in providing an avenue for composition that can make use of both traditional theory and more sound-based methods. Still, it does not make use of notation, which may be a drawback for traditionalists.

A final aspect of this week’s module touched on the nature of MIDI and Digital Audio. This was particularly relevant in constructing our composition for this week using Soundtrap, as these were two of the three mediums available (and required) for use in our compositions. MIDI simply refers to stored information in binary that informs MIDI-capable devices of a specific sound or sets of sounds to be played. This file-type is utilized by sequencers to create musical sounds. Digital audio, in contrast, denotes an actual digitized recording of a musical performance, captured with a microphone or other recording equipment and transmitted as an audio file.

References

Bauer, W. I. (2014). Music learning today: Digital pedagogy for creating, performing, and responding to music. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.