Music Education with Digital Technology Part One

I've been reading a book entitled Music Education with Digital Technology edited by John Finney and Pamela Burnard. I'll be posting my thoughts on a few of the chapters for the next few nights.

Finney (2007) states “where is music education? The answer is complex: all around, in and out of school” (p. 11). When Green (2001) speaks of music education, she refers to music education within schools. Finney’s view of music education is more broad as he is largely influenced by the education that takes place outside of schools. Finney disccuses the barriers imposed by school music in the UK and tells the story of a student, PJ, who could not manage with the music curriculum, but was still very musical and wanted to pursue studies in music at the high school level. PJ created music in the the rap genre and had ambitions of being a producer like his hero Dizzee Rascal. PJ had successfully crafted compositions, but he lacked other musical skills that are required by the curriculum such as theory. Finney believes that the problem is not with PJ, rather the problem is with the curriculum.

These boundaries are in some part created by what sociologists have referred to as high status knowledge. In the case of music, this is knowledge that arbitrates in matters of tastes. It defines what counts as music and what doesn’t count as music, and determines who is and who is not the musician. It continues to privilege elaborated musical structures and insists on a particular approach to the decoding of musical works. It is this that regulates formal musical learning and celebrates orthodoxy rather than heresy in artistic work (p. 18).

Obviously Finney values PJ’s ability to arrange and compose and it is refreshing to hear his alternative perspective, but it raises some controversial issues, specifically related to music technology. The reason why PJ was able to compose was in large part due to the enabling ability of the program he was using (Reason by Propellerheads). Like Apple’s Garageband, Sony’s Acid, or Ableton’s Live, these are sequencing programs that enable the user to piece together sampled sounds and sculpt them into an original piece of music. The advantage of such programs is that it encourages the user to experiment and improvise with the computer or program as the instrument. The user receives instant feedback from the program and can hear the impact of the choices they have made in composing. This allows for rapid editing and revising. The disadvantage is that the user does not need to have any knowledge of music theory (although implicitly they are applying this knowledge, thus demonstrating evidence of it). In the case of PJ, his school did not consider the computer to be an instrument, so from their point of view he was not very musical and no formal musical knowledge. I understand both perspectives and they both have some valid claims, but I think at the high school level students should be encouraged to be music makers regardless of how it occurs. The issue comes back to what Elliott (1995) refers to as the aims of music education. Ideally, if a school system could offer students musicing experiences with technology and in more formal scenarios such as traditional band class than students would receive the best of both worlds. The issue of context resurfaces because certain types of Music have closer ties with technology than others. In order for a student to use a program like Reason, they have to be willing to compose in the style of electronica.