Here we go again…

One thing from the year past, one thing for the future:

The Past

I wanted to do something with my orchestra that really pushed the boundaries of my students’ concept of music. The idea being that we had a good start on melody, harmony, intonation, articulation, and the like…but that ‘concept’ is something that so often lacks in high school music ensembles. In times such as this, I am happy to work with a brilliant colleague who leads our electronic music program. Together, we tossed around the idea of doing a collaboration with our orchestra and laptop orchestra. We found a piece that was manageable for each group (Blue Calx by Aphex Twin). I had a student volunteer score the wind and string parts while the laptop orchestra prepared their parts. When it came time to prepare for the performance, both groups were very prepared for what was going to transpire. At that point, it became mostly about communication (understanding musical connections and how the piece would ‘work’).

I am sure that there were many who heard this piece performed and wondered if there was something a little off about me, or what kind of ‘medication’ I was on. And that’s fine. What I know is that my students got a different perspective on music making and a broader sense for what is possible therein.

The Future

This year, we are experimenting with a new structure in ‘Freshman Foundations in the Arts’ (which is basically an all-encompassing survey course for ALL freshmen). Before, this class had been very segmented into the various disciplines: music, drama, and visual art. Students were not asked to connect these at all…nor were the teachers (myself included). My colleagues and I decided that this should change. With our school focusing on interdisciplinary learning, we thought it would be a great opportunity to revise the class. Add the awesome element of all students and teachers receiving iPads for classroom use, and you can imagine the ideas that were bandied about.

What we came up with is a class based around creative, cross-curricular projects. Students will be utilizing their iPads as often as possible and incorporating ideas presented in a group setting. From there, it will be up to the students to identify the concept of their project. For example, all freshmen read Lord of the Flies over the summer as their first English assignment. Coming into the class, we want them to gain experience working with the iPad, specifically in creating art. With the concept of Lord of the Flies in mind, students will create a movie trailer that identifies the main themes of the book. We will encourage them to utilize existing movie trailers (within fair use) as well as record their own video clips to be assembled in iMovie. Then, students will compose a soundtrack to their video utilizing Garageband and other tools. As of right now, the integration is going to be cumbersome. You cannot export directly from Garageband to iMovie. Hopefully the ‘cloud’ integration with iOS5 will solve this problem. Anyway, there are multiple other projects that I will describe and evaluate at a later date. Stay tuned.