Whether you are looking to use popular music as a way to simply enhance your current music program, or you are ready to go all in and create a new modern band ensemble, creating the space in your program requires an awareness of your community, access to the right tools, and a bit of fearlessness to try something new and different. It can start with short simple conversations in the music classroom.
My favorite time to talk one-on-one is just as students are coming into class and setting up their instruments. I will ask simple questions like, “What have you been listening to lately?”, or, “Did you seen any live concerts over the summer?”. These small conversations can lead to big revelations. Often times I would jot down notes…”Elizabeth LOVES Hamilton”, or “Look up Naz”. Inevitably I would look into what my students are listening to and find chord progressions, rhythms, or even poetic themes that can also be found in the concert music we are rehearsing. This creates fertile ground for relevant and enjoyable lessons that connect their ‘schoolwork’ with their personal life. The more you get to know your students passions in music, the more equipped you will be to fashion that music for use in your music program.
One of my favorite start-of-the-year lessons is also one of the simplest, Create a YouTube Playlist and share it in Google Classroom. I love playing these playlists on my way to school in the morning and they really help in getting to know my students on a much more personal level. The playlists serve as a point of pride and enthusiasm for my students and inspiration for my lesson planning throughout the school year. This one simple lesson provided me with a large selection of works from which I could program into our school concerts, create arrangements, mash-ups and also derive lessons in theory, arranging, form, meter, key and on and on.
Once these channels of communication are open and students have been provided with a space to express themselves through music, the natural next step would be to empower them with the tools that enable them to create their own original music, arrangements and mash-ups. My favorite tool for this is Soundtrap.com . Their Education platform provides a safe, web-based collaborative environment for multi-track audio capturing and editing. The best part is that students can access their accounts on any device, share their sessions with each other and access their music anytime. As a teacher I get updates when students work on their sessions and I can listen to them anywhere. With this one tool, I am able to create practice loops, listen and comment on original student work, and develop music for the large ensembles to perform.
I have been creating original music with my 1st-9th grade students for over a decade and I can honestly say that once they got their hands dirty with the inner workings of modern day music production, their appreciation for everyone from Taylor Swift to Mozart grew exponentially. With this appreciation comes inspiration and a great desire to do more and to do it better. This desire was given a space in my music program in the form of something I called the Independent Music Project. It is open to individuals and/or groups, it usually involves students who are excelling in the music program, but looking to go deeper and do more. In some cases it has involved forming a group to perform a particular piece, or set of pieces, or record an entire full length album of original music. Projects would end up on the web shared with the world, like Atticus Dewey’s album “All Atticus All The Time”, (he worked with over 80 students from two different schools to get his album done), as performances in school concerts, or as set-break videos and audio that would play during down times at the concerts.
The essential elements that make all this work are student ownership and the space to be creative. There is no clear path in the realm of creativity. Fear of the unknown must be overcome. Missteps and mistakes are inevitable, quality work is not. It takes some resolve to include popular music that resonates with the community in any well-run music program. With good communication and an open mind the journey is joyful, relevant and worthwhile. This, I believe, is at the heart of what Popular Music Education is all about.