Thursday, September 24, 2009

MIDI accompaniments and Sequence-stration

The Kersten article had a lot of great ideas for using MIDI at home and school. The suggested web sites that are still available could be very useful. A list of sites like these be made available to parents at open house or at curriculum night or made available on the music homepage. If parents could have a demo of what these do, they might encourage their musicians to use them.

I like the idea in Sequence-stration about using unexpected timbres. Students can play with the whole sequenced piece, then as a music minus one simply by muting the melodic line. The fun accompaniment is still there to keep them moving through the exercise.



I remind myself that most of my private students (all elementary and middle school) tell me that their teachers don’t use accompaniments during class – not even a CD accompaniment. Some of these students do not have adequate computer access at home. These articles are packed with great stuff to know, but the application will depend on the teaching environment.



(Teachers should be aware of DonorsChoose.org. This is a site that allows an educator to describe their equipment need. Donors choose which projects they want to be a part of and make contribute to the cause as they are able. The larger community comes together for the good of the kids.)
Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. damonharveySeptember 25, 2009 at 1:09 PM

    Hi Tammy,

    I do think that using recordings is extremely important within a school ensemble setting. Some practitioners disagree stating that students should not have any preconceived notions about how a piece should sound before recreating it themselves; however, I believe that listening to various performances develops a musical vocabulary. It also helps young people identify what a quality musical performance sounds like and how to evaluate their own playing. MIDI certainly provides a way for teachers to create play along accompaniments. I think that having a fun, energetic harmonic backup for an instrumental melody is a fantastic way to motivate elementary students to practice. MIDI can help us set-up our students for successful performances. Also - thank you so much for the tip about DonorsChoose.org. I'll have to look at this site soon.

    -Damon

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bill BauerOctober 4, 2009 at 10:36 AM

    Certainly accompaniments (of all types, including those generated by the students themselves) should be used by young instrumentalists. There are many reasons for this, which I won't take the time to go into here. In addition, listening is the way we develop our musical vocabulary. Consider what it would be like to try to learn to talk without ever having heard spoken language - a ridiculous concept that wouldn't be given a second thought. Some areas of music embrace listening as being crucial to the developmental process (e.g., jazz). While our TPACK model reminds us that we have to consider the context of where we teach, the creative teacher can find ways to help students benefit from technologies old and new.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)