ET: On Be Moved!
As a follow-up to my post about the collaborative project Be Moved!, I’ve invited Evan Tobias to share his thoughts about the project as well as what he hopes to achieve with his students through this venture.
I’m happy to be writing a guest post about a collaborative music project that Brian and I are working on with my some of my general music students. Creative thinking and composing music are core elements of my music classes and my students do not play instruments so it seems natural to have them work collaboratively with a professional performer, who also believes in creativty and education. The details of the project can be found at the link above so I’ll focus on some of my objectives and what I hope all of the participants take away from working on the project for the rest of this post:
- Music as a medium for expression and communication: By having my students think about a few of their personal life experiences and how to express them in music I’m hoping they learn firsthand how they can be creators of music and also how music can be a form of expression for them throughout their lives.
- Working with musical concepts: Although at the start of the project the students are focusing on creating motifs that express the experiences they have chosen to share, they will be working on developing these motifs and working with saxophone recordings of their music. Through working with, manipulating and developing the various musical material they exchange back and forth with each other and Brian, they will have the chance to experiment with, learn about and make use of countless musical concepts and develop new knowledge and skills. Though I have some specific goals of ideas I would like them to learn, most of the concepts will arise organically from the collaborative project which will make it more meaningful to them in the long run.
- Collaboration!: K-12 students and many teachers are often very far removed from composers and performers and other professionals involved in music. On the other hand, performers and composers and other professionals involved in music can be very far removed from K-12 students and teachers. I believe that by forming relationships and working collaboratively, teachers, students, performers, composers, and other music professionals can learn from one another and help develop these roles and make them more relevant to students’ lives. I think collaborative projects have the potential to have a positive effect on all parties involved and eventually on society.
- The Blog as Collaborative Medium: This project is an experiment in using the blog format to facilitate collaborative music projects. The blog allows for the easy exchange of files and feedback regardless of physical distance. Through my involvement in The Music Educators Network I am hoping to provide the resources to allow for future collaborative projects and a space on the internet where professionals in the music world interested in collaborating with K-12 students and teachers can network and learn from one another.
- Openness and Transparency: By keeping an ongoing archive of every aspect of the project online, anyone wishing to observe and learn from it can do so. This project and the results of it are going to be licensed with a creative commons license and will hopefully inspire others and provide a potential framework for future projects that can expand and improve on this one.
I want to thank Brian for allowing me to share what I think is a very exciting project and for participating in the project himself. I hope that projects such as this one will become much more common in the future and that long-term ongoing collaboration between the professional music world and K-12 music education will someday become the norm!