Children's Creative Music-Making with Reflexive Interactive Technology

Adventures in improvising and composing

Victoria Rowe, Angeliki Triantafyllaki, Francois Pachet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317395720
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Children's Creative Music-Making with Reflexive Interactive Technology discusses pioneering experiments conducted with young children using a new generation of music software for improvising and composing. Using artificial intelligence techniques, this software captures the children's musical style and interactively reflects it in its responses. The book describes the potential of these applications to enhance children's agency and musical identity by reflecting players' musical inputs, storing and creating variations on them. Set in the broader context of current music education research, it addresses the benefits and challenges of incorporating music technologies in primary and pre-school education.

It is comprised of six main chapters, which cover the creation of children's own music and their musical selves, critical thinking skills and learner agency, musical language development, and emotional intent during creative music-making. The authors provide a range of straight-forward techniques and strategies, which challenge conceptions of 'difficult-to-use music technologies' in formal music education. These are supported by an informative collection of practitioner vignettes written by teachers who have used the software in their classrooms. Not only are the teachers' voices heard here, but also those of children as they discover some of the creative possibilities of music making. The book also provides free access to a companion website with teacher forums and a large bank of activities to explore. A toolkit serves as a database of the teaching activities in which MIROR applications have been used and provides a set of useful ideas regarding its future use in a variety of settings.

This book demonstrates that music applications based on artificial intelligence techniques can make an important contribution to music education within primary and pre-school education. It will be of key interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of music education, music technology, early years and primary education, teaching and learning, and teacher educators. It will also serve as an important point of reference for Early Years and Primary practitioners.

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Young children learning through music technology

Victoria Rowe

Introduction

Unlike their parents or teachers, twenty-first-century children have grown up in a digital audio environment, which has an impact on their musical experience. From their earliest toys producing tiny fragments of musical sounds and effects to the rich variety of multimodal experiences available in the DVDs they watch, children are provided with ‘an abundance of incoming, constantly changing information’ (Young, 2009). As well as traditional music toys such as drums, tambourines, xylophones and keyboards, babies and toddlers can encounter books that make sounds, singing teapots, recording microphones, toy laptops that play tunes, baby iPod apps, musical baby walkers and endless toys with buttons to press and call up a wide variety of sounds: even the child’s own favourite tunes that can be downloaded from the internet. Older children have access to a huge range of songs, musical sounds and effects through MP3-players, DVDs and video games. And of course many of these now include a multimedia component, appealing to the eyes and sometimes to the sense of touch, as well as to the ears. In contrast, the only sound-producing toy that I (VR: a child of the austere 1950s) owned was a teddy bear which growled when laid on its back: a toy that would have been familiar to a child of the nineteenth century! In two generations, technological advances have transformed the aural landscape of childhood, not only in the West, but also increasingly, through the accessibility of the Internet, across the world.

This chapter considers some of the ways in which technology has added new dimensions to the ways we learn and looks at some of the innovative research studies in which music technology played a key role in both the learning and research processes. Two ‘diversions’ provide some background material for readers who are not familiar with music education provision in the UK and with the general literature on creative thinking which our national curriculum encourages. Returning to the main themes, some of the music technology resources that are being used with this young age group are discussed, as is the role that the teacher may have in supporting children’s uses of music technology.

Technology and learning

If we use the term ‘technology’ in its broadest sense, by the age of 10 children will have encountered and in many cases operated many of the following ‘technological’ items: ICT, television, CD players, electronic keyboards, cameras, mobile phones, MP3 players, dance mats and other computer games. What are the effects of the availability of such technology on the development of twenty-first-century children? Physically, their fine motor skills, once developed through pencil control and building blocks, now include button-pressing, mouse-manipulation and touch-screen techniques. But there are other perhaps less acknowledged benefits. Children can have access to images, music and sounds of their choosing from an early age, giving them more control over their aural environment.

There is a perception that these young ‘digital natives’, as Prensky (2001a, b) called them, have an expectation that they are (or will be) able to command technology as tools in their day-to-day life, a ‘can-do’ attitude less common in, and rather envied by, older ‘digital immigrants’. Prensky’s terminology has been criticised recently for creating an artificial divide, which can position teachers at a considerable disadvantage and demotivate them from engaging as fully with digital technology as the children they teach. In fact, with the advent of social media and smartphones, age is no longer conceived as the barrier to digital technology usage that it was when Prensky coined his phrases (White & le Cornu, 2011). Furthermore, there is an argument that not all twenty-first-century children use technological tools with equal aptitude, fluency, enthusiasm or similar motivation. However, some digital life skills will be essential as these children grow up. Working (and playing) with ICT can offer several educational benefits: developing a positive approach towards learning by increasing children’s self-esteem and confidence; encouraging independence in order to overcome initial challenges; and, even more importantly, motivating a desire to learn via enjoyable experiences (TLRP, 2006). Interestingly, very similar benefits have also been associated with learning music (Creech & Ellison, 2010; Ellison & Creech, 2010). Indeed, Brown (2007a) points out that ‘There is good reason to think that music-making and interaction with a computer are both inherently engaging, given the amount of time people spend at these activities’ (p. 25).

What effects does the instant access provided by technology have on the way children learn? Children’s familiarity with ICT offers opportunities for a new kind of learning in which attention can move swiftly, almost simultaneously, amongst a number of different sources; for example, by opening tabs and clicking on hyperlinks (Lankshear & Knobel, 2003). A casual observer might not realise that learning is taking place in such circumstances: it seems more like play, and indeed often occurs quite casually at home. Yet learning does occur: even the simplest computer games require the user to develop particular memory skills, ordering, sequencing and other techniques in order to progress through various levels of difficulty. Many teachers recognise this: a survey of over 500 UK practitioners (Marsh et al., 2005) found that around two-thirds agreed with the statement ‘Children can learn skills from playing video games’ (p. 48).

The new, diffuse kind of learning via technology is in strong contrast to the predominantly linear and focused approach of traditional school education: reading a book, filling in a page of exercises or listening to a music track. Traditionalists may therefore perceive it as a less structured and valid way of learning. However, if as educators we are to start from ‘where the children are’, taking advantage of the knowledge and skills they have already developed (Plowman & Stephen, 2007, p. 15), then their novel, more informal, exploratory and diffuse ways of learning form a rich resource that should be accessed and celebrated, rather than ignored. The new sociology of childhood gives prominence to ‘children’s agency, and their propensity to shape their own lives and impact on the lives of others’ (Marsh, 2010, p. 9). In a similar vein, O’Neill (2012, p. 177) stresses that teaching should begin with the student’s knowledge and cultural setting, and that more learning and understanding will develop from their deeper engagement in the activity. Furthermore, the ‘playfulness’ inherent in digital learning, together with the agency of the child in controlling which pathway to take, or which link to click, can very easily transfer into the kind of experimentation that generally precedes music creation, as we shall see in this book.

Music technology in preschool and school settings

Teachers of the under-11 age group are already familiar with many classroom applications for technology, ranging from basic word processing or project presentations to learning simple coding, through games and activities to boost numeracy and literacy, to the vast resources of the Internet for research purposes. Music technology has until now been less commonly used with this age group, although it is successfully used with older students and has been partly responsible for an increase in the popularity of music classes in secondary schools. With these older students, creating music using any of a huge range of available programs and apps can form a bridge between ‘formal’ school-based learning and the ‘informal’ learning that occurs amongst peers, outside the school environment. The fact that these apps and programs require a minimum of equipment and are quite intuitive to use means that teachers, too, can become familiar with them through experimenting at leisure. Given that many teachers now have much more facility with ICT than in the twentieth century, the introduction of music technology into music classes may now be seen as an aid to teacher confidence and enjoyment. Bauer et al. (2003) discovered that not only did classroom teachers in the US welcome the opportunity for training in the uses of music technology (beyond the basic administrative facilities with which they were familiar), but also that a week’s intensive training produced effective and long-term results. Availability of software at home also helped to increase teachers’ competence and confidence so that they felt able to work with the technology in class.

Technology can be used to combine several art forms, such as poetry, painting, dance or drama, and also to combine participants from a wider community outside the classroom. Dillon and Jones (2009) designed a successful community project in which young children used collaborative music-making technology (‘jam2jam’) in order to create improvisations on the artwork of some mental health clients. Not only does this project illustrate the potential of technology to work amongst different media, but also it shows how people can be ‘virtually’ brought together in a way that might not be physically possible. Given that the artists and the children were drawn from Indigenous Australian cultures, the connections between them were especially meaningful: since the two groups lived a long distance apart, one in the bush and the other in a city, they were able to share meanings and cultural heritage only through the use of technology.

Moving on to look specifically at music technology in schools, a study that illustrates the way in which technology can form a distance learning aid was carried out by Bolton (2008) in New Zealand, where at present classroom composing facilities for young children are limited. She instigated a three-way web-based partnership, ‘Compose’, between a music specialist/composer (in this case, Bolton herself), a generalist teacher and his/her students in the classroom. After some introductory sessions, students used GarageBand software in order to complete various open-ended musical challenges and to share their work with each other. Bolton’s article describes the compositional development of Josh, a boy with dysfunctional classroom behaviours, learning difficulties and low self-esteem. The encouraging and friendly support of Bolton’s one-to-one online teaching undoubtedly contributed to Josh’s transformation into an enthusiastic and able composer who also began to participate in more school activities. However, Bolton believed that one of the main factors in Josh’s interest in the project was that he was already highly computer literate and spent many hours on his PC at home, although he had not previously engaged much with school IT or, for that matter, with homework. Using technology was certainly part of the fascination for this student, something he felt he could handle confidently, as was the idea that he was going to create some music for others to hear. He described it as:

a goal to get something good… quite freaky actually that people were going to hear my music.… I never made good music like that before… it was my first time of having something actually done well. Normally I leave things to the last minute and I don’t get them done.

Bolton (2008, p. 49)

By starting from the student’s previous experience and enjoyment of IT and by motivating him through online support and the opportunity to share his work online with others, Bolton showed that using music technology had a strongly positive effect on Josh, and that using it might also produce benefits in other areas of his school life. Naturally, there is considerable variation in the ways different learners set about using music technology, depending on previous experience and also on how they envisage the options open to them – the affordances – offered by the technology and how it can be made to fulfill their aims. A possible application of Bolton’s study could be to provide qualified musical assistance in areas where there is a shortage of trained music teachers, since one teacher could be ‘shared’ electronically between several schools (as already occurs in some isolated communities in the Scottish Islands and elsewhere, where music teachers work with their students via Skype). Such shortages are common in the UK and in many other parts of the world, as increasing demands are placed on teachers to focus on core subjects, and music provision becomes squeezed into ever smaller time frames.

Diversion 1: music education provision

As we stated in the introduction to this book, it is beyond our remit to give a global overview of music education provision, so I write here about the system I know best: that of the United Kingdom. I believe, however, that readers from other countries will find many parallels with our situation. In England, where music is a statutory subject for all children up to age 14, the national curriculum offers guidance on the areas of musical awareness that should be covered at each age and stage. Taking a practical approach to the subject, the national curriculum for music aims to ensure that all pupils:

• perform, listen to, review and evaluate music across a range of historical periods, genres, styles and traditions, including the works of the great composers and musicians;
• learn to sing and to use their voices, to create and compose music on their own and with others, have the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, use technology appropriately and have the opportunity to progress to the next level of musical excellence;
• understand and explore how music is created, produced and communicated, including through the interrelated dimensions: pitch, duration, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture, structure and appropriate musical notations.

(UK Department for Education, 2013)

These are quite high demands to make of a generalist teacher and, unfortunately, teaching professionals do not always have access to sufficient initial training or continuing professional development to carry out musical activities with confidence. Provision for active music-making in preschool settings (in the UK at least) is patchy, ranging from excellent in a few places to inadequate in many others. Recorded music via CD or MP3 players is commonly used to accompany group singing or to provide background music in the classroom, but many preschool professionals do not feel able to initiate their own songs or other musical interactions, in contrast with the way they are happy to draw or do craft or sport activities with the children. Some settings employ music specialists who can offer excellent support, but who are unlikely to develop such close relationships with the children as the full-time staff can do. Right from the start, then, music can become constructed as an elite activity for this reason, something that ordinary people do not tackle. Other disincentives for staff to undertake musical activities can include intrusive noise and disruption, lack of good equipment, unfamiliarity with instruments or technology and pressure of supervising all the other concurrent activities.

In preschool settings in the UK and many other countries, most activities take place in ‘free play’ sessions, in which children choose what to do and move freely between activities, and this randomness can make it difficult to plan music sessions for individual children. However, research has found that preschool children engaged with musical play for more time if they were interacting with a familiar, nonexpert adult than with a music specialist or on their own (Young, 2003b). Treating music as a commonplace normal play activity, with plenty of enjoyment and communication between adult and child, can result in meaningful, expressive and well-structured musical interactions which can scaffold the child’s understanding of music (Rowe, 2012, p. 199).

The benefits of music for schoolchildren aged 5–11 are very similar to those listed above for preschool children. Music is, or should be, accessible to children of all ages, cultures and abilities. Taking part in musical activities can contribute to a sense of belonging to a community and making a valuable, and valued, contribution to it. This sense of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Young children learning through music technology
• 2 Musical creativity and technology: pedagogical considerations
• Vignette 1: Music technology workshop using Audacity
• 3 Interacting with style: the MIROR software and its learning theories
• Vignette 2: Playing a style-recognition game with MIROR
• Vignette 3: Using MIROR-COMPO in a computer laboratory setting with year 3 pupils at a primary school in Birmingham, UK
• 4 Improvisation: a gateway to creative thinking
• Vignette 4: Developing autonomy in composition
• 5 Creating musical sounds, creating musical selves: supporting the development of children’s agency and musical identity
• Vignette 5: Composing with a purpose: music for movement
• 6 Developing a language for creative music-making
• Vignette 6: What did I see in the… MIROR?
• Vignette 7: Communicating in and about music
• Vignette 8: Composing with MIROR-COMPO
• Conclusion: supporting children’s musical creativity development
• Toolkit
• References
• Index