Will Kuhn and I are the co-authors of Electronic Music School: a Contemporary Approach to Teaching Musical Creativity, out now from Oxford University Press, with a foreword by Adam Neely.
The book is a complete guide to starting a lab-based music technology program. It includes project plans, suggestions on equipment buying and maintenance, strategies for convincing different stakeholders, and a progressive music education philosophy that ties it all together.
Reviews
This book is the perfect guide for music teachers & school leaders who want to engage their students in a truly creative and innovative music education – whether that’s taking a few creative steps within an already existing music program or starting a new, dedicated electronic music program alongside already existing ensemble offerings.
- Every pre-service music teacher and music ed student should read this to bridge the likely gap between their conservatory or undergraduate program and the leading-edge of music education.
- Every *current* music teacher should also read this to expand their thinking about what music education can look like and how individual creativity can play a more central role. If you want your music program to continue to be important to students over the course of your career, read this book. Your students will thank you.
The book is thoughtfully written, presents road-tested projects and teaching strategies, gives philosophical food for thought, dives into practical equipment needs (and what to prioritize), and draws on a rich body of research throughout. It’s really the whole package and the first book I’d recommend for anyone interested in creative, student-focused music education.
It puts words to what many music teachers have sensed intuitively during their careers: Students need a music education that more closely resembles their experience of music outside of school. It’s time to bridge the gap between music inside of school and music outside of school. Bridging that gap is the best way to advocate for music education.
As a school choir director (and someone who *loves* making choral music), I have seen too many students for whom the choral music program did not meet their musical needs – no matter how much I would like to think that it has something universal to offer everyone and that it can be a place that equally engages all students. There are too many aesthetic, cultural, class-based, racialized, and historical realities that make this a naive assumption. I can’t simply “strive for excellence” or “incorporate more pop music” and hope that those will be adequate solutions.
Ensembles are wonderful, but they aren’t the only efficient way to help large groups of students be musical. That may have been the case in the past, but that no longer holds true.
No, to truly best serve my students, they also need access to the tools that allow them to create the types of music that are important to them. And those tools are more readily available than ever.
This book is a practical guide to help you take the first steps.
Electronic Music School is a truly groundbreaking book. It is the missing link to the future of music education. If you are a traditional music teacher accustomed to large ensembles or the dreaded “music appreciation” class, this book will take you through the steps necessary to create new courses your students will find relevant and enjoyable. If you have been teaching music tech for years, you will be impressed by both the breadth of material covered, as well as the depth of each topic.
Perhaps the most vital aspect of Electronic Music School is the practical philosophy of music education that underpins its ethos. It eschews the tired conservatory model of exclusivity and dead Eurocentrism in favor of a participatory culture where every student is welcomed as a creator and practitioner of musical and sonic arts. By way of an extensive list of listening examples, it gives voice to innumerable diverse music creators ranging from Aphex Twin to Alison Wonderland; from James Brown to J Dilla to Jlin- creators who have been highly influential in the modern popular musical landscape and in world culture in general, yet have remained largely absent from music history courses.
Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein are the dynamic duo of modern music education. The projects in Electronic Music School have been vetted for years at the high school and collegiate levels in their respective programs. Their approach to teaching music is grounded in decades of formal and action research and this book includes more citations than a master’s thesis.
I encourage every music educator to read this book. If you want to understand the changes that are currently taking place in the field and how the landscape of music instruction will look in the next 5-10 years, Electronic Music School is a great place to start!