Should band programs have to fundraise?

This is a complicated question, but for the sake of argument I'm going to provide a simple answer: Yes.

Honestly I think that it is necessary to look at the larger scope of this issue. In any society, we have to decide how to allocate our resources. We get taxed and we spend our tax money on a LOT of different things. One of them is public education which, hopefully, we keep as well-funded as it possibly needs to be.

But how well-funded does it need to be?

To answer that question we need to ask about the purpose of public education in general. What is its responsibility to our children? What must they learn there? Why are we sending them there in the first place? Theoretically, if we could answer these questions definitively, we could arrive at a core group of things that should exist in public education- each of them funded to the maximum amount possible as to make schools as effective as they can be.

I don't think that this post is the proper venue to try and answer these questions in detail. But when I do think about these things, I am often conflicted as to how a BOCJ program fits into the model I create.

I feel strongly as though I could stand up and defend music education in general. I feel that intuitive, valid, research-based arguments can be made to defend music's place in public education. But these arguments are harder to make the farther you get from "music" in general. For example, it is much harder to defend the necessity of football than it is to defend the necessity of physical education. An analogy could be made to any specific iteration of a field.

So I end up saying that music should be funded. Schools should have music programs. But a BOCJ program that only affects 30% of the students? A program that due to its inherent structure has limitations on the amount and types of skills and content that can be taught to its members? A program like this should be funded like any other group that fits those descriptions- as an extra-curricular aided by fundraising. Parents and students should be able to petition and demand a band program just as they would anything else, and in an ideal world schools should have discretionary budgets that help to meet those programs halfway, but funding any extra-curricular/special area fully from the start is to say that the money can't be spent in a better way- and I simply have a hard time believing that.

Technology in Music vs. Music Technology

How has technology changed music education?

When first posed with this question I feared getting carried away with my answer. I have endless thoughts and feelings on technology, both from my personal tastes as a tech user and my professional career, which has dealt exclusively with music technology. Thus I figured that it would be important to make a clear distinction between two types of innovations:

• Technology that has changed music education
• Technology that has changed music

While I may share some thoughts about the latter category at the end of this post, I believe the above question has more to do with the former. Certain advances in technology- mostly during my lifetime- have created five major changes in music education that I can see. They are:

1. Vastly increased access to music
2. Vastly increased access to experts
3. The ability to easily perform student music
4. The ability to play back student performances
5. A confusion over where and how new technologies should be implemented in the music classroom

1. Access to music has never been greater or easier. I believe this to be the primary influence of technology on the music classroom. In less than an instant I can call upon almost any piece of recorded music. Published songs, live performances, lyrics, and even simple transcriptions are available with the click of a button. This has enormous implications in the classroom. The kids want to learn a song that they know? The teacher can pull it up. The students aren't understanding how a certain passage should be performed? The teacher can instantly show them how the New York Philharmonic did it. The teacher wants to play numerous examples of Dorian tonality? No rummaging through CDs, no asking around, and no wasting class time- just the simple creation of a Spotify playlist. Lastly, if the teacher wants to assign the students listening for homework? I don't honestly know how this would have been done 25 years ago- it was probably impossible- but now the teacher can simply post links to the class web page. This advent of music ubiquity is every music teacher's dream, not only because it aids their ability to teach, but because it gives their students an effortless way to interact with music in their daily lives. I know that some lament the age of digital music- but I am not one of them. It has allowed me and everyone I know to listen to literally hundreds of times the amount of music I would have heard otherwise.

Here is a link to wonderful keynote address given by prolific engineer and producer Steve Albini that deals with some of the positive implications of easy music access on the actual music industry:

http://gu.com/p/43bhd/stw

2. My example above of the New York Philharmonic is exactly what I mean by increased access to experts. As part of a teacher's job to best facilitate the learning and growth of their students, they can now call upon the world's greatest possible examples of the techniques, styles, skills, and content the are teaching. This is invaluable. Students require modeling. If a teacher can not appropriately model something, then they must call upon someone who can. Years ago this meant reaching out to the community or other regional experts and trying to coordinate visits to the classroom. While this is still a great idea and should be done- it is not the only way to give students a great model. YouTube alone is a music teacher's personal repository of musical performances and techniques. It can be used to instantly show students how a piece should sound, how certain instruments should sound, how vocal groups blend, or even how notable composers, writers, and producers do their jobs. As an example in my field, I'm certainly capable of explaining to students in a music tech class how to start a mix- but why wouldn't I let that information come from someone who has won eight Grammys and mixed over forty #1 albums?

3. When I was in music theory in high school- we arranged our favorite songs and themes for the marching band. Then they played them that season. Was this possible or realistic in high school before music notation software? I would venture to say that it wasn't. For each of us to perform that task we merely arranged the music in Sibelius, hit print, and handed the parts to the band. The same process without computers would have required a massive amount of editing, proofreading, and hand-copying of parts. With today's technology you can finish writing a piece of music and have it in the hands of a concert band the same day. This allows students to realistically hear their compositions and play a role that they may never have been able to play otherwise. Even in small ensembles, this increased efficiency makes it possible to cover more material than ever before.

4. Since this capability has existed for quite some time, I almost did not include it, but the vastly increased ease with which it can now be implemented makes it worthy of mention. In an instant a band director can record and play back a band's entire performance. He or she can post those performances online for critique and further listening/reflection, and create teachable moments that would be impossible without instant playback. Any musician who has come to master their craft knows the value of recording their playing. It is humbling, it strengthens your ability, and it allows you to perceive errors that could never be perceived while playing the music. These same effects apply to all music students. Further, it allows a teacher to track the progress of a student, and document the learning that happens in the classroom. I know that people have all sorts of varying opinions about this issue, but when taken by itself- apart from extrinsic forces- it is certainly a good thing.

5. Finally, I think there is one major negative impact of technology in the music classroom. We live in an age where we associate technology with progress. Therefore, I think that there is a tendency to shoehorn technology into situations that don't necessarily improve the quality of education. While technology can incite student interest to a certain point, I think that it's applications in this area are limited. In many classrooms, technology is used for tasks that could just as easily be accomplished without the technology. iPads, in particular, can be deceiving. It is crucially important that we ask ourselves how the use of technology promotes more meaningful learning in each instance. Technology should never be used for technology's sake, unless the use of that technology is the actual learning goal of the activity. In that case, the teacher is intentionally prioritizing a technological goal over a content area goal. This is ok, naturally, so long as it is not the norm. Below is a fantastic video that I can't recommend enough. It comes from Veritaseum about the role of technology in education and how learning works:

Now, after making that last point I think it's important to talk about music technology itself. As I said in the beginning, I think that this is an entirely different category. The fact is that technology, while perhaps only affecting music education in the above ways, has completely changed music itself. We now write music differently, record music differently, perform music differently, and even have entire, dominating branches of music that did not exist prior to the 1980's (i.e. music that is created from pre-exisiting recordings.) To ignore these technologies would be outright irresponsible in a comprehensive music curriculum.

In many ways, I think that music education has to catch up with how we actually make music in this century. I have been in classroom after classroom full of 3rd graders writing notes down on a staff and creating "compositions" to be played by the teacher. Students continue to do this through high school (some are even exposed to it for the first time in middle or high school...) even though NO ONE composes like this anymore. I compose, for a living, every single day of my life. I am representative of the largest group of working music composers- that is, individuals who write music for visual media and other non-print content. After a quick survey of everyone I know in this field, I can say definitively that none of us have ever put a pencil to a piece of paper and drawn a note while writing music for our job. When Hans Zimmer writes a score today- the process is COMPLETELY different than just 35 years ago when John Williams wrote the score to Star Wars. The two videos below illustrate this, but they're also just amazing to watch regardless!

This isn't to say that I don't think the essentials are necessary. We should teach students how to write notes- but shouldn't we also be teaching them how music is actually made today? Shouldn't we be prioritizing the skills that they would actually use if they pursued music? Let's show them how to take an empty multitrack session and turn it into a piece of music. Let's teach them how to think about the mix while they are writing. Zimmer, above, states "I write music in 5.1." That is a powerful statement! It could be made by anyone who writes music today. Technology in music is an integral part of the process and it must be taught as such.

Finally- here is a blog that seems truly useful about technology in the music classroom. The recommendations seem to be practical and focused on bettering the student's learning experiences!

https://techinmusiced.wordpress.com/

Rubrics

Reading Alfie Kohn's article on rubrics was extremely thought provoking. Before responding, I would address my one criticism, which is that he doesn't devote any time to suggesting a replacement or solution. While it can be frustrating not to have the information at hand, a brief search of his other articles finds several answers to this question, summarized by the following except from this article about grades:

Replacing letter and number grades with narrative assessments or conferences — qualitative summaries of student progress offered in writing or as part of a conversation — is not a utopian fantasy.  It has already been done successfully in many elementary and middle schools and even in some high schools, both public and private (Kohn, 1999c). 

With that settled, I agree with a lot of what Kohn says- but I think the title and framework of the article are misleading. Doing a bit more digging, Kohn is very clearly opposed to grading in general. Attacking the rubric can sometimes be confusing because he is not revealing his larger goal. For instance, during the first part of the article I found myself asking, "doesn't this only apply to standardized rubrics? Does any of this make sense with a teacher-designed rubric?" When he finally addresses the point, it becomes a little clearer that the problem is not rubrics, but rather the systematic grouping of students in general.Viewed through this lens, the article makes perfect sense:

• Grades are bad. 
• Rubrics serve to encourage and legitimate grades. 
• Rubrics are bad.

One of the major problems is whether or not a teacher can do anything about it. I agree in a broad, philosophical sense that the institutionalization of grading should not be a barrier to reform. But isn't it? While justification to parents and efficiency may be lousy reasons to use rubrics, can a teacher in today's high-stakes environment risk doing otherwise? On a more practical level, can a music teacher who sees hundreds of students truly provide a meaningful narrative assessment of each individual?

The answer may be yes. It would certainly be a better way of communicating a student's progress in the arts. In fact, music classes are a perfect place to see how grades make things more difficult. A high school BOCJ teacher must develop a grading system that judges all students on the same criteria. But should all students be judged using the same criteria? How do you simultaneously push the top performers in an ensemble, making the accountable for growth, but also encourage the beginners to improve and try as hard as possible? Will a rubric allow you to qualitatively assess a student's ability? What if there are three students, one with perfect chops who can't improvise a note, one who just started trombone last week but can follow the harmonic changes effortlessly, and one who can't seem to play a note in time during rehearsal but has successfully written and arranged pieces for the entire band? Do these three students receive a similar low grade, hitting parts of a rubric but not others? If these students are judged/ranked based on their strengths, will they ever understand the importance of developing their weaknesses? If you judge on effort, will they ever leave their comfort zones?

That was a ton of questions. And I don't have a single answer. I tend to agree with Kohn that conferences and narrative assessments would solve most of these problems. In teacher evaluation, we currently have teachers set goals and then judge their effectiveness by their ability to meet those goals. My feelings about the practicality and effectiveness of this with teachers are another story altogether, but if the profession has decided this is good enough for teachers, why wouldn't it be good enough for students? Why couldn't students conference with their music teachers to set goals and discover their strengths and weaknesses? Why couldn't music class become each individual student's arena to become the best, most well-rounded musician possible? Time may be a constraint, but it also may not be. After all, a great BOCJ teacher knows these things about their students anyway. How many class periods of the entire ensemble setting goals while the teacher conferenced would it take to hit every member of the band? And what a great opportunity this would be to learn about your student's goals! 

From there, assessment could be a simple, honest conversation with a student about what the teacher sees, what could be improved, what worked well in meeting the goals, what didn't, and what techniques they will focus on moving forward to continue progressing.

I'll admit that it puzzles me how one deals with a student who does not put forth any effort in this system. Assuming there are no grades, he or she will simply wind up with a portfolio of narrative assessments that say there has been little progress and little effort. This would function similarly to administration (or colleges) as a grade, but how does one make sure that student learns something? How do you make sure this doesn't happen? Is it any less preventable than a student who gets F's? Do F's provide more or less motivation to students? Does the motivation even matter if alternative assessment is deemed better for the majority, who aren't failing? What does everybody think?

Pictured: Failing.

American Songs & Jazz

Should music educators be experts on jazz and American folk music?

In an effort to start discussion and truly examine my thoughts on the issue- I think I'm going to say no.

I suppose the best way to answer this question in detail is to step back and ask myself, "what should a music educator be an expert in?" It is quite easy to start answering "yes, of course" when asked about specific things, like the aforementioned jazz or folk music. Before long, this generates an exhaustive list that could never be accomplished.

A music educator should be an expert in music. That is, how music works. Functional harmony and rhythm, voicing and voice leading, arranging, improvisation. These are the elements that create music. These are the things that must be taught to music students. In the same way that an english teacher must be an expert in grammar, a music teacher must know these things. His or her job is impossible otherwise.

Moving on from there, there are honestly few other things that I consider an absolute necessity in order to teach music. I believe that music educators should have a solid understanding of the history, culture, and evolution of music- but I don't think they MUST be experts in any one particular area.

It is impossible for me to answer this question without talking about the idea of music history in general. When I hear the words "expert in jazz" I take it to mean an expert in the history and culture of the music, in addition to its musical elements. It is almost always assumed that a music teacher will teach the history and culture of music to his or her students- and many music classes deal almost exclusively in this material. (Think 7th grade Music Appreciation) But is this a good use of time? Aren't we putting the cart before the horse?

How much time is dedicated in math, from Kindergarten to 12th grade, on studying famous mathematicians? On studying the political sphere that surrounded their important discoveries and contributions? Certainly some time, and you probably learned a thing or two about Pythagoras at some point...but compare it to the amount of time spent studying composers and history in music class. Lesson after lesson, all to children who are not yet musicians. For a more apropos analogy, think of english and language arts. When you first learned about classic literature, and were first introduced to author study- how long had you been speaking? How long after you spoke english fluently did you start to study famous examples of the language? Even using the most conservative estimates, I'm willing to guess years.

Pictured: Mathematician, Cult Leader

Why do we do this? Is it because we don't truly believe that we can achieve the goal of making everyone a musician? Is that why we stop early and throw music potpourri in to elementary curriculums?

I say all of this to respond to the original question. Should music educators be experts in jazz, or American folk, or classical, or blues, or rock, any of the myriad of cultural musics around the world, or anything else? Maybe. Maybe not. What matters isn't how much they can tell the kids about any one style of music- its whether or not they can teach the kids music as a whole. It's whether or not they can make those kids musicians. We can argue until the end of time about whether or not to include romantic literature in the high school english curriculum- but we can all agree that every high school graduate should know how to speak, read, and write. And until every kid graduates high school able to play, write, and read music- I think that these discussions are a moot point.

What American songs should every student know?

This is an extremely difficult question to answer, because I could make a long list- but it doesn't mean that I think teachers should be working outside of core music instructional time to teach them. Basically, as stated above, I think that music teachers need to teach musical skills and content first. A great music teacher will do this through a healthy repertoire of classic, current, and culturally significant music. If you can't effectively use a particular song to communicate or practice musical skills or content, then it probably shouldn't be used. If you can, then you should use it!

That said- I don't want to completely dodge the question. I believe that teaching folk songs and patriotic songs that have a place in our country's history is important. There are many, many songs in this category, and I don't know how important one particular song is over another. If we think about our larger goals and aims as music educators, we strive for a world where people are musically literate and can share, play, and create music with one another throughout their lives. If this is the end goal, and we work toward it, I don't think we have to worry about whether or not we taught "America The Beautiful" to our classes. It will be far more important that they have the facility to learn it later from someone who knows it, and pass it on to others.

Trumpet Lesson Reflection

There are many things I noticed during the first five minutes of this lesson. First, it was very difficult to approach a student about playing an instrument that I have no mastery of. I believe that teacher modeling, especially in music, is the single most important dynamic in a classroom- and it was very difficult for me to talk to a student and get them interesting in playing an instrument without being able to model it. I had planned to spend the first five minutes talking about the student's musical preferences as a gateway to learning about music in general, and I was surprised by the "student's" responses that they didn't really listen to music and didn't really care too much whether they learned the instrument or not. That said, I think these are relatively realistic responses rom a 6th grader who is self-conscious and not entirely committed to the process to begin with.

I think that I would have focused even more time and attention than I had planned in the lesson toward starting that conversation about music with the student and helping them to open up. Developing a personal connection to music is more important than anything I can teach the student about their instrument, because it is what will inspire and motivate them to practice and work outside of the lessons.

Looking back I also agree with Mr. Schneider that the beginning of lessons like this in a larger context (music class, band, etc.) would need to be dedicated toward establishing routines- especially once the instruments come out of their cases.

When I look back on my first guitar lessons as a kid- I know that one of the most important things my teacher did was get me playing something I recognized and liked right away- in the first lesson. Hearing myself play something that quickly was a huge motivator for me moving forward. I don't know how well this translates to other instruments, particularly because they require more physical technique to make sound- but I would certainly be looking as hard as I could for the equivalent material so that a student could be impressed with him or herself as soon as possible. It's very hard for a kid to feel truly proud that they held the instrument correctly or followed a procedure like a pro- so I think the first lesson needs to include something they can run home and tell their family and friends about- I just don't know what it is necessarily (with band instruments). What does everyone think?

What Makes a Good Musician?

After reading Brandt Schneider's article "Creating Musical Flexibility Through the Ensemble" I have a flurry of ideas and questions about whether or not it is truly possible to foster individual musicianship in a performing ensemble. Mr. Schneider claims boldly that the answer is yes, and after reading his proposal I am inclined to agree- but only after a great many conditions are met.

The premise of Mr. Schneider's argument is that we can use the performing ensemble to increase our student's individual musicianship. This is an idea that I find enormously appealing for two reasons. First, increasing musicianship is (or at least should be, in my opinion) the absolute primary goal of music education. I could go on and on about the secondary goals of music education, because the list is infinite. Music helps us lead better lives in a myriad of ways and we all know it. But the primary goal should, of course, be to develop our student's musicianship. This is how they receive the vast benefits of those unmentioned secondary goals. Second, the large performing ensemble is lying at the core of almost every music program in America. Therefore, without complete institutional overall, these two concepts (developing musicianship and the performing ensemble) must be married or we can hardly claim that our field is valid.

Mr. Schneider outlines many of the qualities he believes his students should possess as musicians. I think that he tends to work backwards in his reasoning- listing a few things that a great musician can do (change keys, change genres, play the melody, etc.) without providing a full examination of why great musicians can do these things at the drop of a hat. I think that while Mr. Schneider's method will undoubtably increase his students musicianship, I wonder if the answer doesn't lie deeper than practicing those skills. Sure, student's must be able to play in all of the keys and to "play by ear" but I think that these skills come easily after laying the proper foundation. Great musicians- that is, truly great musicians, understand music. They hear functional harmony in everything- and comprehend the relationships that they hear. A true musician hears music like an average person hears another person speak- as distinct parts (words, sentences) arranged in a structure so as to make a complete thought. The larger that one's english vocabulary is, and the more they hold conversations and read and think, the more they understand others when they hear or read what they have said. Likewise, a comprehensive harmonic vocabulary and constant practice using it are pre-requisites for students to begin to understand music. With the right skills in this area (what Dr. Gordon would call audiation), there's no reason why every student in a music program shouldn't be able to do this:

With detailed knowledge of harmonic function and the ability to hear it- students could not only arrange medleys like this- but they could perform them on the spot! With or without instruments.

To be more concise- I would be less interested in students playing songs in all 12 keys, and more interested in how or why they can play the songs in all 12 keys. Do they know the harmonic language of the tune? Can they definitively recognize tonic and dominant and other functions? Can they reproduce those sounds? Mr. Schneider touches on this in the article, and I completely agree with his notion that band class should be theory class. How ridiculous that theory is separated like it's something different!

That said, you can't have a theory class with 80 kids in it. Truly dedicating the time and effort required to teach these essential music skills takes smaller classes that are not performance based (though there would certainly be a performance component.) Mr. Schenider mentions the National Standards and my first thought is how odd it is that we have band directors all across the country trying to invent ways to incorporate these standards into the existing system. Why aren't we changing the system? Couldn't we come up with a music class that promised to teach every one of the standards to its full capacity? One that doesn't look like this:

Standards

PERFORMING

Composing

Improvising

Singing

I think that Mr. Schneider's method is a truly admirable effort to teach these skills in an existing band setting. Like I said earlier, we have to start integrating these skills however we can in the current system. But I can't help but wonder what we could do if we were able to teach music like any other subject.