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: Music Teaching
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 a new track for teaching swing
When I teach swing, I like to play examples of the same piece of music with and without swing for ease of comparison. My favorite comparison is between “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” from the Nutcracker Suite and “Sugar Rum Cherry” by Duke Ellington. This isn’t an exact comparison, though, because Ellington does more …
The saddest chord progression ever (revisited)
First, let’s get this out of the way: the title of this post is a joke. No chord progression has any inherent emotional quality. Musical sadness is a matter of cultural convention, and even within a culture or subculture, sadness is the result of harmony interacting with melody, rhythm, tempo, timbre, phrasing, articulation and other …
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Over The Modal Rainbow
Music theory prankster Robert Komaniecki tried to ruin “Over The Rainbow” by singing it in C Phrygian mode: @robertkomaniecki Where are my Gregorian chant-heads at #musicmajor #musictheory #choir ♬ original sound – Robert Komaniecki My son’s reaction to this: “Waaaaggghhh.”
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 …
Building the Amen break
I continue to refine my new groove pedagogy method: teach a complicated rhythm by presenting a very simplified version of it, then a less simplified version, then a less simplified version, until you converge on the groove in its full nuance. Imagine a pixelated image gradually gaining resolution. My goal with this is to have …
Building the Funky Drummer beat
I’m developing some groove pedagogy for an instrumental method book I’m working on with Heather Fortune. The goal is to help people understand and create Black American vernacular rhythms, specifically blues, rock, funk, dance, and hip-hop. As we started collecting and transcribing grooves, we quickly ran into a problem: all the really good ones use …