My music technology syllabus

This is now out of date, see the current version I use variations on this project list for all of my courses. In Advanced Digital Audio Production at Montclair State University, students do all of these assignments. Students in Music Technology 101 do all of them except the ones marked Advanced. My syllabus for the …

Research proposal – Hip-Hop Pedagogy

Final paper for Principles of Empirical Research with Catherine Voulgarides Research questions Jamie Ehrenfeld is a colleague of mine in the NYU Music Experience Design Lab. She graduated from NYU’s music education program, and now teaches music at Eagle Academy in Brownsville. Like many members of the lab, she straddles musical worlds, bringing her training in …

Classical composers, Bowie and Björk

This post originally took the form of a couple of Twitter threads, which I’ve collected and edited here for easier reading. Greg Sandow asks two very interesting and provocative questions of classical music: When the Museum of Modern Art did its first retrospective of a seminal musical artist, no surprise it was Björk who reached past music …

QWERTYBeats research

Writing assignment for Design For The Real World with Claire Kearney-Volpe and Diana Castro – research about a new rhythm interface for blind and low-vision novice musicians Definition I propose a new web-based accessible rhythm instrument called QWERTYBeats. Traditional instruments are highly accessible to blind and low-vision musicians. Electronic music production tools are not. I look at the history …

Music Matters chapter five

Public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class. These are responses to the discussion questions at the end of chapter five, which discusses personhood and music education. Why should music educators be concerned with the nature of personhood? All forms of music, education and community music are …

Music Matters chapter one

This post is public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class.

Music Matters chapter two

This post is public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class. This chapter deals with philosophy and music education. The word “philosophy” in this context means not just a credo or belief system. It’s the process of examining your thinking, beliefs, relationships, and so on.

Afrofuturist pedagogy

Väkevä, L. (2010). “Garage band or GarageBand®? Remixing musical futures.” British Journal of Music Education, 27(01), 59. I believe that music education should engage with the music that’s meaningful to students. The field is coming to agree with me. School music programs have been gradually embracing rock, for example via Modern Band. Which is great! Unfortunately, rock stopped being …

Music education at the grownups’ table

I was asked by Alison Armstrong to comment on this Time magazine op-ed by Todd Stoll, the vice president of education at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Before I do, let me give some context: Todd Stoll is a friend and colleague of Wynton Marsalis, and he shares some of Wynton’s beliefs about music. Wynton Marsalis advocates for  jazz as …

Lifelong general music

I’ve been blessed that both institutions where I teach music technology give me considerable freedom in how I do it. I find the music side to be quite a bit more interesting than the technology side, so I center my classes around creative music-making, and we address technical concepts as we encounter them. I’m learning …