Hearing or Listening?

When it comes to music, it is common for laypeople to think of the capacity of our ears to aurally hear the sounds that comprise a given piece. But as our text for this week notes, there is a difference between the passive way we "hear" music and the active or engaged nature of "listening" (Bauer, 2014, p. 105). Passive hearing occurs when we have music on as background noise, or hear it playing in a restaurant or similar venue. With active listening, the music purveyor attentively discerns certain characteristics - the voicing, instrumentation, phrasing, and other aspects of musicianship. Indeed, it can even be said that active music listening is a creative realm of music in its own right.

One way to facilitate and develop students' ability to actively listen and respond to music is by encouraging them to keep "listening journals." This process can be utilized to help guide students through the listening journey, noting key aspects of music and how to pick up on them (and other aspects like form, meter, text, etc.). Using word processing technology and other software available to students can aid in this process from both the student and teacher perspective. Technology can also be used to show students various demonstrations of musical composition and performance, providing a listening guide of sorts, walking them through the listening process. This can be done through a combination of word processing and audio/visual presentations. Then, prompts (through the same media) can guide their own listening reflections and responses.

In some classes, I have effectively employed "sound maps," both as an aid for students who struggle with written projects, and to encourage all students to engage in a multi-faceted, multi-sensory approach to the learning process. However, these have typically been hand-drawn maps facilitated by verbal instruction. As I discussed in this week's discussion post, the idea of using "concept mapping software" and "drawing software" to further facilitate and enhance this process is something to consider(Bauer, 2014, p. 122). This would certainly be an effective tool for my middle school students, who each have access to school-issued Chromebooks, though it may be less so for the elementary students. Still, this technology could be utilized in terms of a group project of sorts, utilizing classroom feedback to create a sound map on a Smartboard or similar device, or utilizing computer lab time for individual work to this end.

Finally, we looked at software and other internet resources and learned how to evaluate and best use them for curricular and educational ends. To get a feel for how to properly evaluate music software technology, I reviewed Ars Nova's "Counterpointer." This is an example of a software that lets its users actively engage in the learning process (in this case, to develop and hone their counterpoint skills in the various species). This program demonstrated positives and negatives that I was able to effectively mete out using a product review. This is a valuable way to evaluate software for potential curricular use.

The online resource that especially piqued my interest this week was Spotify. I can certainly imagine the ways that this software could be used to guide students in the listening process. Spotify would be a valuable tool to aid students in selecting playlists that fit a certain genre or historical theme, as well as for me to provide examples to students of various concepts or historical content.

 




References

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