Description:

     This presentation advocates for and demonstrates an experiential learning model in a secondary “music composition with technology” course. Students typically do not enter the classroom with a high degree of composition experience or with a deep understanding of the compositional process. Composition guidelines and methods can be dictated to students and will often produce results, but could also rob students of more interesting compositional ideas. Allowing students to imitate strong examples or discover creative ideas through musical play can allow for more diverse and varied possibilities. Once students have had these exploratory experiences, they are able to transfer them to more distinct concepts with the guidance of a music teacher. This presentation will demonstrate these ideas at work within my classroom and detail how this process works within the context of a larger composition curriculum. Actual student compositions from my middle school classroom will be shown to illustrate all of the concepts presented. Teachers that currently teach “music composition with technology” on iPads or in computer labs (using DAW’s) will benefit from this presentation as well as teachers/pre-service teachers who are considering starting a similar class.

Imitate – Discover – Create PPT