The Music of the World curriculum at Florida Virtual School is really more of a Western Music History survey, rather than a study of world music. My students study the basic elements of music, pop music, ancient music (which does touch on India, Egypt, and Greece), and the major eras of Western Music. The final module in my class covers Jazz. There are many musical concepts my students must acquire. I will choose four of them and offer some thoughts on what I think works in our program, and how it might be improved.
The first concept which I would like my students to understand more fully is the concept of form. While we do spend some time in Module 1 (Elements of Music) and Module 6 (Classical Era) discussing form, I believe that it is a concept that should be studied more thoroughly throughout the course. Considering many (if not most) of my students are not musicians, they do not have a lot of prior knowledge of musical form. Our second module (pop music) provides an excellent opportunity to introduce students to the concept of form through their familiarity with pop music. Many pop songs contain a verse-chorus or AABA form and by using examples of music they know, it would allow them to more fully grasp the concept. It could be explained, demonstrated, and assessed all within the framework of music with which they are familiar and comfortable. There are opportunities for learning activities in which students follow a form chart (or perhaps fill it out) as they listen to a familiar tune. By tapping into that prior knowledge, it would make it easier for the students to understand the concept. As it stands now, they learn a bit about form in Module 1 and then don't touch it again until Module 6 where they study symphonic and sonata forms.
The second concept for my students is the concept of monophonic and polyphonic music. Module 3 of our course (Ancient and Medieval Music) spends about 3 sentences describing the difference between monophonic and polyphonic music. Because polyphonic music becomes more and more important through the Renaissance and beyond, I think the students should have a clearer understanding of it. Right now, it seems to enter their short term memory and is lost. Even though the concept seems simple enough (one melody vs. two or more), my students struggle with associating the terms with the music itself rather than the performers. When I ask my students about Gregorian Chant, many of them say it is polyphonic. They understand (through learning here or prior knowledge) that "poly" means "many," but think the chants are polyphonic because many monks are singing them. A quick sequence of audio examples of monophonic and polyphonic music would go a long way in helping the students to more fully understand the concept. Additionally, more visual representations of the concepts would be helpful to the student.
Improvisation is a large part of our last module on Jazz. Students are expected to submit a recording (video or audio) of their own short improvised performance (they actually improvise an accompaniment figure, usually rhythmic, to a pre-recorded melody). Many of the students get very creative, but others struggle to do anything but clap along with the melody. For this concept and assignment, we do offer a live online lesson each week which helps our students more fully understand the concept and have more success with their performance. In our live lesson, we discuss the characteristics of jazz music, including improvisation. We talk about how musicians react to the audience and the other performers during improvisation, and then we play a recorded example of Ella Fitzgerald's One Note Samba. I think that this demonstration is the single most helpful element of our improvisation lesson. Our students get to hear and discuss Ella's improvisation and use it as a guide for what they will be doing.
Finally, the concept of timbre differences in ancient instruments vs modern is only touched upon briefly. I would like to see an activity that first lets the students understand timbre. It is mentioned in module one, but only briefly. In module 3, the students study lots of ancient instruments (gemshorn, lizard, lute, shofar, etc). Many of these have modern day equivalents. By using the students' prior knowledge of modern instrument timbres, they would be able to make connections between the ancient and the modern. After introducing the ancient instruments and their modern counterparts, students could participate in an activity in which they describe some similarities and differences between the two. Another possible way to introduce the ancient instruments is by having the students make predictions as to what they will sound like. They can make inferences based on their knowledge of modern instruments and check their knowledge using available online recordings. In the classroom, it would be great if the students were given the opportunity to try playing (or even creating) replicas of the ancient instruments, or perhaps creating their own new ones. This would add an incredible amount of creative options to a lesson on instrument timbre.
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