WEEK 1 AT USYD

WEEK 1 @ UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY (MASTERS OF TEACHING)

Today was eventful to say the least ... woke up excited to come in and BAM trains aren't running!! So my general 2 hour commute turned into a lengthy 3 hours... aaannyywhhooo

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I had my first Technology in Music Education and Music Extension 1 Classes with the amazing Dr James Humberstone. Today within these classes we ran over what a DAW is and how they can be applied within an education and learning setting. Working with DAW's like Soundtrap, Ableton, Garage Band and Logic Pro, we focused mainly on looping and how to manipulate them. Running through the general panning, volume automation, sweeping, cutting, duplicating, quantising, identifying if it is a MIDI or Audio and how to basic edit said tracks.

The exercise we were given in our Extension class, was to create a track with Loops (from Ableton Library and James Loops) using one drum and non drum track. We weren't limited to just that as many went beyond and added more and other features previously discussed. After sharing and experimenting more we came back to discuss exactly how this exercise relates to teaching a class and the NSW 7-12 Music Curriculum and we came up with the following;

- It used the Zone of Proximal Development, as it catered for people of all levels. It challenged students with prior knowledge by allowing extra tracks and features to be added while allowing beginners to add only two tracks but still learning the same amount and not feeling defeated or stressed by the task.

- Addressed all 6 Concepts of Music (Pitch, Duration, Texture, Tone Colour, Structure and Expressive Techniques) through the use of looping, automation, mixing and editing tracks.

- It also gave students a chance to use technology and be introduced to the new and ever growing world of online music and the use of looping/MIDI/Sequencing.

Below are two examples of short projects made on Soundtrap (Music Ed) and Ableton (Ext);

After completing these mini projects, I went home and read over the first few chapters of Khun and Hein - Electronic Music School. Even though they are basing their research off the US system, you can really see connections into how we can take their research and apply it to the teaching of the "other 80%" (Khun & Hein, 2021). Throughout this course I am hoping to create projects and exciting lessons for my students to engage in and allow students to see that music is not always classical and sheet music but even the creation of their personal playlists is a form of digital and musical creativity! Basically music is apart of everyones lives and I will try to bring that into my teaching :)