Understanding Music Interaction, and Why It Matters

This is the introductory chapter of a book dedicated to new research in, and emerging new understandings of, music and human-computer interaction—known for short as music interaction. Music interaction research plays a key role in innovative approaches to diverse musical activities, including performance, composition, education, analysis, production and collaborative music making. Music interaction is pivotal in new research directions in a range of activities, including audience participation, interaction between music and dancers, tools for algorithmic music, music video games, audio games, turntablism and live coding. More generally, music provides a powerful source of challenges and new ideas for human-computer interaction (HCI). This introductory chapter reviews the relationship between music and human-computer interaction and outlines research themes and issues that emerge from the collected work of researchers and practitioners in this book

Developing Practices and Approaches to Electronic Popular Music in Education

Paper III and paper IV are excluded from the dissertation until they are published.The field of electronic popular music education is a relative newcomer compared to most other educational fields within the arts, and the relationships between educational purposes, between the teacher and the students, and between technology and musical parameters are not as established as they are elsewhere. Through the four articles constituting this thesis, various ways of teaching electronic popular music are explored, all of which emphasize to some degree these relationships. In Article 1, I make broad discussions using continental educational theory—in particular, the work of Biesta—to generate pertinent questions for educators within electronic popular music education. I also introduce and develop an understanding of artistic subjectification as a means of facilitating subjectification (in the Biestaian sense), one that I argue is unique to art education. Article 2 presents a case study of the one-to-one teaching approach of a teacher in electronic music, and points to how one might teach technologies by simply ignoring them and focusing exclusively on the aesthetic parameters of the music, then leaving it up to the student to figure out how to technically achieve their creative endeavors. These two articles together point to how teachers can help students (re)gain agency in their creative practices through both explicitly focusing on how technologies mediate their practices and through ignoring technology altogether. The third article explores the tension between continental educational thinking and student-centered education via the case study of a task for activating student expertise in electronic popular music education, based on that tension. It then frames the findings of this case study within a proposed teaching method, and finally introduces the concept of middle ground teaching. Article 4 provides a case study of a collaborative music making camp involving 16 students, and develops from this case study the model of aesthetic dialogue that points to various aspects that influence the quality and efficiency of the collaboration. These two articles together point to ways of approaching fragmented knowledges and skills and tackling the diverse backgrounds of students.publishedVersio

It's How You Flip It: Multiple Perspectives on Hip-Hop and Music Education

The cultural practices of hip-hop have been among people's favorite forms of popular culture for decades. Due to this popularity, rap, breaking, graffiti, beatboxing and other practices have entered the field of education. At the intersection of hip-hop and music education, scholars, artists, and educators cooperate in this volume to investigate topics such as representations of gangsta rap in school textbooks, the possibilities and limits of working with hip-hop in an intersectional critical music pedagogy context, and the reflection of hip-hop artists on their work in music education institutions. In addition, the contributors provide ideas for how research and theory can be transferred and applied to music educational practice

MuSciQ- A Musical Curriculum for Math

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)Music and math are related in that 1) they both rely on the basic understanding of numbers, proportions, intervals, measurements, and operations and 2) both require levels of abstract thinking and symbolic notation. Studies link music and math by examining, for example, how music may play a role in math performance. There are, however, few studies that examine how a musical curriculum may impact not only math performance, but math related variables including math anxiety, math self-efficacy, and math motivation. This study sought to develop and assess the feasibility of MuSciQ, a music technology-based curriculum, and explore how it might impact math anxiety, math selfefficacy, math motivation, and math performance in twelve fourth-grade students. Additionally, acceptability of the MuSciQ curriculum was assessed by students, a teacher, and a school administrator by using the Technology Acceptance Model. Participants experienced large, significant improvements in math anxiety scores and significant improvement in math motivation. Math performance and self-efficacy showed small, non-significant improvements. When split by gender, only math anxiety scores showed statistically significant improvement in males. As expected, there was a significant positive correlation between motivation and self-efficacy before and after the curriculum was introduced. There was also a significant positive correlation between technology acceptance and motivation. Surprisingly, although there were significant positive correlations between the pre- anxiety and motivation measures, there were no significant correlations after the curriculum was introduced. There were no significant correlations found between anxiety and technology acceptance. There was, however, a significant correlation between technology acceptance and self-efficacy. Technology acceptance and additional qualitative comments provided by students and administrators suggest MuSciQ is an easy and useful platform to promote music and math learning. These findings point to a need for further investigation into the influence of MuSciQ on math related variables

Towards the convergence of music, mathematics and computing in the primary school through the use of a visual programming system designed for in-the-wild delivery

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.In comparison to the 2014 changes concerning the UK National Curriculum (NC) for Information Communication Technology (ICT) and maths, the NC for music has remained relatively unchanged. A decline in the number of students studying music in UK schools has also been noted throughout the last decade. Considering the NC statutory requirements for music, maths and computing at Key Stage (KS) One, this thesis argues that in a visual programming context, music harbours interdisciplinary symmetric correlations concerning both maths and computing. Thus, the NC statutory requirements for music, maths and computing at KS One are drawn together in a bespoke visual programming system called Music And Mathematics In Collaboration (MAMIC). MAMIC is a thematic-based interdisciplinary curricular connection visual programming system designed for inthe- wild use. MAMIC has been delivered by several non-expert practitioners from varying backgrounds (with minimal training), as part of four case studies across KS One and Two in situ. Based on the results from the case studies, the MAMIC library topology model is presented as a central contribution. This model employs multiple layers of visual programming abstractions which house the symmetric correlations across the music, maths and computing NC statutory requirements. The sequence number is presented at the syntegration concept of this model. From these findings, the MAMIC library topology model and the MAMIC interdisciplinary model can be used to design interdisciplinary visual programming systems for in-the-wild curricula. A pedagogical framework is also presented to illustrate ways that interdisciplinary visual programming can be incorporated into the primary school curriculum. Music’s potential as an interdisciplinary vehicle in a visual programming context is also explored. However, it seems this potential is difficult to access by in-the-wild nonexpert practitioners and students alike. Finally, this thesis presents several recommendations that aim to reposition music in a new interdisciplinary space by using a set of KS One interdisciplinary NC statutory requirements for the subjects of music, maths and computing