I applied for something that asked for a ten page summary of my doctoral dissertation. Maybe you would like to read it, rather than the full 300 pages? Learning Something Deep: Teaching to Learn and Learning to Teach Hip-Hop in New York City (summary) Image: Toni Blackman leads a middle school songwriting workshop In this …
Category Archives: Autobio
New Orff arrangements with Heather Fortune
Heather Fortune and I are delighted to announce the publication of 5 Pop Grooves for Orff Ensemble, available now from the good people at F-flat Books. If you teach elementary music, you should check them out! We discuss the process behind and purpose of this music on F-flat’s podcast: The arrangements grew out of a …
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Musical Borrowing syllabus
This fall I’m teaching Musical Borrowing from Plainchant to Sampling at the New School for the first time. Here’s my syllabus. It will probably evolve as we go, but this is the initial plan. This course on “non-original” music explores how frequently existing compositions have been appropriated and adapted into new works, and how these …
Technology in Music Education – updated syllabus
This fall, I am teaching Technology in Music Education at Western Illinois University. The students are in-service music teachers who are working toward masters degrees. Here’s my syllabus. I have left out administrative details and university boilerplate. Feel free to use any of this as you see fit, but if you do, please tell me, …
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I made some music using modes of the harmonic series
It’s a cliche to say that the harmonic series is the basis of all of music. It is true that the first five harmonics are the basis of Western tuning. The first seven harmonics are a possible basis for the blues. You don’t tend to hear much music based on the higher harmonics, but they …
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The final day of the Song Factory course
Last week we brought my first New School Song Factory class to its conclusion. I have taught songwriting many times before, but it was always as a means to learning something else: music theory, production, progressive pedagogical methods. This was my first opportunity to teach songwriting for the sake of songwriting. The final session ended …
A nice thing happened with my music theory songs
A Twitter acquaintance wrote me this series of DMs: I am so glad he had that reaction. I haven’t been pushing my music theory songs too hard because I wasn’t sure about their value to anyone other than me. I did use some of them in my New School music theory class last semester, but …
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Building Hip-Hop Educators – new book chapter abstract
Oliver Kautny, a professor of music education at the University of Cologne, Germany, and founder of the Cologne Hip Hop Institute, invited me to contribute a chapter to a book that the Institute is planning to publish, an edited volume on hip-hop and music education as an open access book by Transcript Publishing. I’m co-writing …
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The Song Factory course
I have been teaching songwriting for a lot of years as a means to other ends: with my private guitar and production students, with my music tech students, with my music education students, with my music theory students. But this semester at The New School, I get to teach my first actual songwriting class whose …
My year in writing
I wrote a lot of stuff this year! First, let’s talk about the big projects that I started in previous years but finished in 2022. The biggest one was my doctoral dissertation. Read the story of it here. Now I’m in the gradual process of adapting it into a more accessible format, probably a book …