Real time and virtual: tracking the professional development and reflections of choral conductors

Professional development in conducting is inconsistent across the U.K., leading to a lack of confidence amongst teachers. This paper outlines the continued tracking of the professional development of choral conductors in their skills, knowledge and perceptions of their own progress. The course Choral Conducting, Leadership and Communication takes place over some five months during the spring and summer terms at the Institute of Education, University of London. The students on the course are a mix of i) those on a one year postgraduate initial teacher education programme (PGCE), ii) full- or part-time students on an MA in Music Education Programme and iii) those serving teachers who take it as a non-award bearing CPD course. Students attend four one day practical conducting workshop seminars and are also required to study on-line in a virtual learning environment in the intervening periods. Here they reflect on practice during the face-to-face teaching sessions and in their own professional context through up-loaded video extracts. In addition they retrieve other appropriate study materials and are required to peer assess and form small support groups in discussion forums. This paper describes the progressive development of inclusion of a virtual learning environment (over the period of two years) and the outcomes of this innovative approach to teaching choral conducting which supports face to face teaching

Group playing by ear in higher education: the processes that support imitation, invention and group improvisation

The study presented here explored how group playing by ear, or Group Ear Playing (GEP), through the imitation of recorded material and opportunities for inventive work during peer interaction supported first year undergraduate western classical music students’ aural, creative and improvisation skills. The approach to playing by ear adopted in this study is based on Lucy Green’s (2014) work on the use of informal learning practices in formal music education. The framework that emerged from the analysis of the data describes two routes taken by the students, whilst progressing from GEP to group improvisation. This study advocates that through playing by ear in groups western classical musicians within Higher Education can develop their creative, collaborative and improvisation skills

Promoting collaborative playful experimentation through group playing by ear in higher education

A group of 46, first-year, primarily classically trained, undergraduate students took part in an exploratory research study on Group Ear Playing (GEP) in higher education. The students attended the “Playing by Ear” component of the Practical Musicianship module, which adopts the materials and strategies on playing by ear in the instrumental lesson developed by Lucy Green. The students were divided into eight groups, then provided with audio material and were instructed to copy the music by ear as a group for 40 minutes each week for five weeks. Data were collected through individual reflective logs and end-of-programme feedback forms. The analysis of the data focused on thematic discovery from the transcripts and was achieved through open, axial and selective coding. The findings of the study suggest, first, that the students engaged in playful experimentation in a collaborative manner, where the more confident musicians supported their less confident colleagues. Second, a variety of strategies for exploring improvising was reported by the students, which included adding ornaments based on scales, changing the rhythms for variety, missing notes out and incorporating other melodic riffs. Third, although the focus of the activity was on copying music by ear from recordings, all musicians appeared motivated to improvise together rather than as soloists, in order to “change things slightly”, “make the piece sound more interesting” and fit with others’ parts. Finally, the students reported that GEP not only helped them to feel more confident about playing by ear but also to be more confident about improvising and to become more confident musicians. This study proposes that playing by ear from recordings in a group successfully facilitates collaborative playful experimentation in higher education and supports the development of learners’ listening, creativity and improvisation skills

Collaborative playful experimentation in higher education: a group ear playing study

Exploring how western classical musicians could develop their aural, improvisatory and creative musicianship skills through playing by ear is an area that has recently received noteworthy attention within Higher Education. This article describes a five-week Group Ear Playing (GEP) programme with first year, western classical undergraduate students. Data were collected through students’ weekly reflective logs, end-of-programme feedback forms and interviews. The students reported adopting a variety of learning strategies when they copied music by ear in their groups and particularly when they experimented with the musical material and improvised together. These strategies enhance our understanding of how playing by ear from recordings within a group setting could promote risk- taking, peer learning and interaction, collaborative playful experimentation and improvisation enabling a lifelong creative practitioner

Musical ‘learning styles’ and ‘learning strategies’ in the instrumental lesson: the Ear Playing Project (EPP)

Seventy-five audio recordings of learners attempting to copy a melody by ear were transcribed and analysed. Thematic analysis through NVivo was carried out and combined with judgements from four independent experts using a criteria grid. Overall, the learners’ spontaneous responses to the ear-playing task, termed here ‘learning styles’, were classified into four main categories, termed impulsive, shot-in-the-dark, practical and theoretical. Learners who showed evidence of possible Absolute Pitch (AP) were categorised cross all the first three learning styles, suggesting that the ability to play back by ear from a recording may not be aided by AP. After the initial spontaneous response, the learners’ most common learning approaches, termed here ‘learning strategies’, included listening without playing, playing isolated notes, asking questions, listening and playing along with the recording, and experimenting. The findings suggest that the practice of playing along to a recording can reveal a range of spontaneous learning styles amongst students, of which teachers may otherwise remain unaware; and a range of further learning strategies that may provide new insights for music teachers

Second Screen User Profiling and Multi-level Smart Recommendations in the context of Social TVs

In the context of Social TV, the increasing popularity of first and second screen users, interacting and posting content online, illustrates new business opportunities and related technical challenges, in order to enrich user experience on such environments. SAM (Socializing Around Media) project uses Social Media-connected infrastructure to deal with the aforementioned challenges, providing intelligent user context management models and mechanisms capturing social patterns, to apply collaborative filtering techniques and personalized recommendations towards this direction. This paper presents the Context Management mechanism of SAM, running in a Social TV environment to provide smart recommendations for first and second screen content. Work presented is evaluated using real movie rating dataset found online, to validate the SAM's approach in terms of effectiveness as well as efficiency.Comment: In: Wu TT., Gennari R., Huang YM., Xie H., Cao Y. (eds) Emerging Technologies for Education. SETE 201

Scaffolding, organisational structure and interpersonal interaction in musical activities with older people

The research reported here focuses on the organizational structure and facilitator strategies observed in musical activities with older people. The observations formed one part of the Music for Life Project, funded by the ESRC New Dynamics of Ageing Programme (http://www.newdynamics.group.shef.ac.uk/), which investigated the social, emotional and cognitive benefits of participation in community music making, amongst older people. Three hundred and ninety eight people aged 50+ were recruited from three case study sites offering diverse musical activities. Observations of 33 groups were analysed. Approximately half of the observed time was spent with participants engaged in practical music-making, supported by facilitators who sang or played along, conducted or accompanied. Facilitators spent a relatively small amount of time providing non-verbal modelling and very little participant discussion or facilitator attributional feedback was observed. The findings suggested that facilitators could develop their practice by a) making more extensive use of non-verbal modelling; b) creating space for open questioning and discussion, where participants are encouraged to contribute to setting goals; c) making more extensive use of attributional feedback that empowers learners to control their own learning; and d) vary the organizational structure and style in order to meet a range of diverse needs within groups of older learners

Musical 'learning styles' and 'learning strategies' in the instrumental lesson: The Ear Playing Project (EPP)

Seventy-five audio recordings of learners attempting to copy a melody by ear were transcribed and analysed. Thematic analysis through NVivo was carried out and combined with judgements from four independent experts using a criteria grid. Overall, the learners’ spontaneous responses to the ear-playing task, termed here ‘learning styles’, were classified into four main categories, termed impulsive, shot-in-the-dark, practical and theoretical. Learners who showed evidence of possible Absolute Pitch (AP) were categorized across all the first three learning styles, suggesting that the ability to play back by ear from a recording may not be aided by AP. After the initial spontaneous response, the learners’ most common learning approaches, termed here ‘learning strategies’, included listening without playing, playing isolated notes, asking questions, listening and playing along with the recording, and experimenting. The findings suggest that the practice of playing along to a recording can reveal a range of spontaneous learning styles amongst students, of which teachers may otherwise remain unaware, and a range of further learning strategies that may provide new insights for music teachers