Originally in this lesson, I had students watching a video of a performance that they would replicate the percussion element on non-standard instruments. What I decided first that would enhance the experience of non-standard instruments and performing music within a specific context is connecting the performance to other musical groups and traditions through online media. Websites like YouTube and SoundCloud aggregate recommended links and similar artists based on the content of a video. Students would benefit from doing their own research/inquiry into the genre on music, and find other artists and performers they like and do not like. By doing this, not only will they be well informed on the stylistic aspects of a tradition, but be able to compare and contrast different artists and their performances. This will help later on in the class when the students are performing sections of the piece in a group. As a mini-assignment or homework, students would write and compare a few artists of their choice within that genre of music. To do this, they would also need to research a bit about its history and context.
I have chosen mostly formative and student-based assessments, because I feel music classrooms thrive when the experiences and needs of students come before a scripted curriculum. Everyone loves music, but many students do not get involved in school music programs because they don't offer anything that is meaningful or relevant to how they engage with music outside school. We need to shift the paradigm from believing students need to learn all the nuts and bolts (music theory, performance techniques) before they can have a meaningful music making experience. I am not saying to ignore notation or performance techniques, but they are largely the entrance point to a music class, and become the focus of classes as well. This ignores the other aspects of music making often -- conducting, arranging, improvising, and composing. A student-based and more formative assessed class allows for these other aspects of musicianship to thrive. I have enhanced that experience by including ways for students to research and inquire about the topics on their own, and also be able to monitor their own progress via recording software such as garageband. With the use of social networking websites that are based around music, such as soundcloud or last.fm, students can also share music with each other they have discovered, and critique each other's performances. This would of course have to be monitored by the teacher, as bullying is a hot issue in education right now. Part of this can be solved by establishing a safe environment in the classroom, and then extending that to an online space.
Another enhancement to this lesson involves using recording software during performance. Students would record themselves playing individually or in groups, then refer to the recording to evaluate their own progress. Furthermore, students who need help in particular areas such as melodic or rhythmic enforcement, or "global listening", which I define as the ability to listen to multiple musical lines and information beyond one's own part, would benefit from the garageband "virtual band" feature. This feature creates an accompaniment of software instruments. Students would "solo" or mute tracks to hear individual parts of a song to hear how their part fits into a whole. Zooming from micro to macro, playing in time with a click track, and evaluating their own progress will be a more student-centered experience than direct instruction where the teacher is constantly critiquing. Students become more responsible for their own learning when they have the resources to check themselves -- even the simplicity of having tuners and metronomes embedded in most software is a small step towards fluency. The more common model in a traditional music class is for the teacher to be waving his/her arms around, and telling students explicitly when they are wrong.
To enhance the inquiry/research of different musical traditions, students could do something similar to what our technology class has done -- online participation. Soundcloud, Last.fm, YouTube, and blogs all have the capability of creating online music communities. Particularly Soundcloud has the ability to create groups that students can join and post audio streams of music they want to share with the rest of the class. This gives every student, with one-click simplicity, the ability to share and learn what the rest of the class is interested in. Students who can network with the ease of sharing streamed music this way would quickly aggregate library collections of music they were interested in, and that relates to the lesson material.
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