2 - Creating Music with Technology - An Overview of Creativity and Improvisation

Best Practices Related to the Acquisition of Knowledge and Skills for Creating Music (Improvisation)

Intrinsic motivation to create music is an important component, driving the student to seek knowledge and skills to effectively communicate their artistic ideas. Students should be provided experiences to develop their musicianship, using strategies that Hallam (2008) suggests. He describes listening activities, audiation, imitation of styles and musicians, music structure analysis, and working with more experienced musicians as beneficial exercises. In consideration of improvisation, these approaches help to develop a holistic musical vocabulary through each session or practice.

Affordances and Constraints of Technologies With Application to Musical Creativity

 Bauer (2014) notes in his book, Music Learning Today, “teachers should conduct a cost/benefit analysis that considers the technology’s affordances (benefits) and constraints (limiting features) in relation to learning outcomes and the classroom context. Technological approaches shouldn’t be used for technology’s sake. They should only be incorporated when there is a clear benefit to learning.” (p. 10) In my estimation, the cost factor considered must relate to the time cost and perceived benefit of the program selected. Providing exercises that limit aural stimuli can help facilitate growth through exploration with technology and music apps. However, if the exploration requires a significant learning curve or tutorials to facilitate a single project, then the curricular and pedagogical approaches should provide ample time for intermediate checkpoints of understanding. Appropriate constraints are necessary to guide learning to an outcome that is measurable.

An example of this challenge involves a set of assignments for this week’s introduction to music notation programs, MuseScore and Noteflight. Each program enables a user to create printed notation, but the learning curve needed to fully utilize MuseScore is considerably more challenging. In many notation editors, similar shortcuts exist which speed the process of entry. To create a demo score in MuseScore, a very detailed and sequential set of instructional videos have been produced, enabling a user to self-pace their own learning and mastery of skills. From my perspective, Noteflight was a much easier to learn because the visual stimuli in the user interface simplified the process of entry. A brief read of the single page PDF with crucial shortcuts, allowing the user to find time savings through process simplification, made the program seem easier to use. For a student who is learning both content and relevant technologies, simplification of process enables more engagement on content goals.

Connections Among Creative Curricular Outcomes, Pedagogies, and Technologies

Appropriate constraints during skill building assignments mirror a sequential model for improvisation, developed by Kratus (1996), mentioned by Bauer in Chapter 3, “Creating Music.” The sequential approach described moves from exploration, through process and product development, toward more fluid and style development. Each of our students will develop their own personal sense of musical style through a period of development, and the technological tools that we provide must enhance their creative toolkit rather than act as an inhibitor. In concert with the Understanding by Design framework, our end curricular goals must be broad enough to allow students to experience learning through activities, but the sequence of concepts should ensure that the essential knowledge and skills are mastered before adding layers of complexity. Using the examples of music notation programs, students might be better served using programs such as Noteflight or Finale NotePad prior to being introduced to more full featured programs such as MuseScore or Sibelius. The added complexity of the latter titles is not commensurate with the curricular context of learning the essential skills of music notation, rather than advanced engraving features.

MIDI and Its Connection to Technologies for Music Learning

One approach to teaching music notation is to use MIDI technology and prior encoded music as a building block. A wealth of MIDI files are available on the Internet, which are easily imported into notation editors. The use of such files can eliminate the data entry portion notation editing, allowing students to have experience manipulating sections of music. As students develop proficiency in notation editors, they can then export the resulting musical notation through MIDI into digital audio workstations (DAW) as an element of musical composition. DAWs provide significant production tools to create music, especially when used with MIDI files, loops, and actual recorded instrumentation.