Reflections for Week 6...
There were a number of things in the reading for this week that I’ve never even heard of before, and some things I’ve used or experienced quite a bit. I now have a nice new list of things I will be checking out over the summer as well!
I found the section on human response to music to be very interesting. There was a list of ways people respond to music and I can easily say that I’ve experienced every one of these. At live concerts, I've experienced physiological changes in heart rate and breathing when the lights go down and the music starts and I’ve had motor responses there too (air drumming counts, right?). I’ve been intellectually stimulated by twists of phrase in lyrics or the sheer musicianship in front of me on the stage. I’ve experience aesthetic and emotional reactions to music and have used music to help alter my mood when I needed a pick-me-up. It’s amazing that certain songs can take me back to very specific memories of events, some of which aren’t even really particularly interesting, from when I was as young as 5 or 6 years old.
This very much got me thinking about teaching my students how to listen. I’ve used professional recordings in rehearsals to show my students what we’re aiming for when we perform. We’ve talked about what we hear in the recordings and make a list of things we want to work on. Some students seem to have an easy time with this while others struggle and don’t really seem to know what to listen for. This is something I hope to work on in the future. I’ve never seen call charts or listening maps before. I don’t if a group of these exist for middle school band pieces already or if I’d have to create my own. There were a number of good suggestions in the text if I do need to make my own. If anyone knows of any that are already out there, please let me know!
There are a number of great future project ideas that I would like to explore moving forward. I like the idea of having students create a Spotify playlist and sharing it with the rest of the group. I think it would be neat to see what students enjoy listening to and some people may be introduced to new music they didn’t even know existed. I’d like to have my students write a short paper on their favorite musical artist or a favorite composer. I’m thinking the former would be much easier for them. I used musictheory.net in my one year of teaching high school level music theory, and there’s no reason I couldn’t set up some easy lessons and/or quizzes for my elementary school band students as well. I think this would be a great way for them to learn more about music theory, and they could move at their own pace.
My growing list of things to check out from this week include HyperHistory Online, Smithsonian Folkways, Smithsonian Global Sound Library, and delving further into WebQuests. There are so many great ideas to explore, and so little time!
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