April 29, 2011

Whistled this too loud, too many times this morning… Maybe (now that I wrote it down and posted it) it will leave me alone.  Too bad I didn't compose it!

April 28, 2011

I'll admit it.  I'm stumbling my way through an iTunes U Stanford course on Objective C and developing apps for the iOS.  This is not just because I've always been fascinated by computers (though music supplanted that passion when I was in eighth grade), but it is also because I have always been curious about different kinds of experiences listeners can have.  To me, this goes way behind simply sharing and choosing new music to listen to.  By creating innovative interfaces, we musicians can give people ways to monkey around with the actual notes and rhythms, learn things about how music fits together, and create new instruments along the way.

I'd say the ownership question in this article by Eliot Van Buskirk just scratches the surface.  What does it mean to "play" music?  What does it mean to "listen" to music.  What skills are earned and learned to do either in a satisfying way?  Most interesting to me, how can composers and educators make opportunities to create music for people with little or no musical training. 

April 25, 2011

Hey all you who think that it's ok to focus exclusively on core subjects at the expensive of the whole human being, check this out.  My teaching mentor, Wendy Silverberg, is at the helm of the music program described in this video.  Bottom line: extensive music education, specifically the Kodaly approach (which is highly sequential, developmental & skills-based) does more for learning reading and math than does spending that time focusing on reading and math.

If it's a newflash for you that the brain, mind, soul, and body are one interconnected system in which one domain benefits from working on another, I just don't know what to say.  Nonetheless, here's the video:

http://vimeo.com/11845467