All student work should go on the web

Well, it’s official. All of my students are now henceforth required to post all music assignments on SoundCloud. It solves so many problems! No fumbling with thumb drives, no sharing of huge files, no annoyances with incompatible DAWs. No need to mess with audio-hostile Learning Management Systems. Everyone gets to listen to everyone else’s music. And best of all, the kids get into the habit of exposing their creative work to the blunt indifference of the public at large. Students can comment on and fave each others’ tracks, and so can randos on the web. It really takes the “academic” out of academic work.

I have so far not been strict about insisting that student SoundCloud posts include all the metadata, but that will change next semester. Having to add tags, descriptions and images to tracks is a learning exercise unto itself. So is dealing with permissions and licenses.

This semester I didn’t require all writing assignments to go on public-facing blogs, but I will definitely be requiring that from now on. I’ve been having my NYU music education students put process videos on YouTube along with their music, which is good reflective process. I’m starting to think that the making of YouTube videos should be another across-the-board requirement. My Montclair State students have been doing a lot of in-class presenting, which is fine, but it would be even better if they did videos too.

I went to college before there was a World Wide Web, but I put all of my grad school work on the web and it helped me immeasurably. It feels good to send students into world with a whole portfolio of work on the open web that they can point to. If they’re planning to be performers or composers, they’ll get taken a lot more seriously if people can very easily listen to their music online. If they are planning to teach, having an online presence showing their musical abilities and sensibilities can be a significant edge. And for anyone in any creative field, it is super valuable to expose your ideas to the cold unfeeling scrutiny of strangers.

I find that putting music online makes me take it way more seriously. It doesn’t even matter if anyone listens to it; just the idea that they could means that I’m doing something real, not just an academic exercise. Plus sometimes strangers do actually listen to your music and like it, and then you get to meet new people. It’s a win-win. Here’s to breaking down the wall between schoolwork and real work!