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Aims
The overall aim of this strand of the project was to examine ways in which ICT can be
used within the classroom to enhance skills in composing, performing, listening to,
understanding and appraising music.
Particular Aims were:
- for teachers, in partnership with researchers, to develop music design initiatives which
enable students to engage with music in an interactive, practical way, using ICT;
- to offer opportunities for teachers to share knowledge about new technologies and
software and their use in music in schools;
- to investigate the process of music composition through the use of ICT;
- to investigate the process of teaching in situations where some children are exploring
sound through computer software and other children are using other sound sources;
- to engage with debates about the changing nature of Music and Music education in a
digital age.
Subject Design Initiatives
Dance eJay compositions
(Jo Heppinstall and Natalie Butterworth, Colston’s
Primary School). Jo and Natalie worked with Year 6 students who had no experience of using
computers for composing music prior to the start of the Interactive project. Using eJay software the students created a piece of music in ternary form with a 16 bar ambient introduction. Many pupils commented on how the software enabled them to work in a style similarto the music they listened to at home. They enjoyed working with a package that gave them access to sounds - like drums and electric guitars - that might otherwise not be available within the primary school.
"...we're into hip-hop and rock and stuff like that...so it's quite...strange for us to hear the music we're into [in school]...it's new...it's good."
"It is much more interesting [than other composing work] and there is more range of sounds."
Jo and Natalie were interested in whether engaging with music through ICT
increases children’s access to composition and enhances their creative potential.
Kpanlogo: African Drumming
(Helena Brazier, Cotham School)
Helena's design investigated whether teacher sequenced models can enable pupils in Year 7 to
develop their rhythmic skills. Students performed set models by ear and from notation,
improvised above a set ostinato and refined ideas for composition. Responses from this
module of work were compared across all seven Year 7 teaching groups.
Music for Film
(Paul Taylor, Cotham School) Paul worked with the Composer-in-Residence at the school and devised a subject design in which Year 9 students explored the relationship between film and music using Cubase VST 5.1. The template contined prepared musical cliches, which had to be synchronised with the film loaded into the program and available on the screen. This was the first time Paul had experimented with visual as well as audio material. The final product was pupil compositions to match images on
the screen. The initiative proved very appealing to boys and girls. Many students arranged the fragments of music - cutting, copying and pasting them appropriately - but higher achievers also composed their own fragments or even whole sections of music to fit the film.
Spanish Music
(Becca Ball, Fairfield High School). At the start of the project Becca had only just acquired 4
computers for music. Her subject design initiative was situated within a unit of work
already in her Year 8 scheme. All pupils in the class undertook a piece of music composition: 8 students
worked on computers using the cubasis sequencing package. This was their first
experience of using computers for music. Becca was interested in attitudinal aspects to ICT
and the differences in the composition process using computers and other electric and acoustic
instruments. We were also interested in exploring the processes by which pupils, in a
classroom situation, learned the technological skills essential to the use of the sequencing
package. Becca was also concerned with teaching styles and management issues related to
working with computers and acoustic instruments within the same classroom.
Rondo Form Composition
(Sven Rees, Sir Bernard Lovell School) Sven
explored the composition process using the Cubasis computer sequencing package with students in Years 8 and 9. They used Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" as a stimulus and composed music influenced by a picture of an old castle and Vasarely's "Orion Noir".
Self-supported Learning in Music through Use of the Computer
(Andrew Cleaver, St
Michael's CEVC Primary School) Andrew had only one music computer in the classroom. He was aware that
many primary music teachers were in a similar situation and therefore needed to
engage students in work on a rotation basis, whilst the teacher was teaching another
subject to the rest of the class. He was interested in the possibilities for independent
musical learning of knowledge and compositional skills though computer packages.
Andrew used Evolution Sound Studio auto-accompaniment software as a basis for musical discovery. Pupils were given the 12 bar blues chord sequence and were asked to ceate one or more part to fit with this. Some children added rhythms, some produced rhythms and melodies and others sang vocal lines to the computer-generated accompaniment.
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