La Educación Musical en Infantil : un proceso de integración educativo y tecnológico.

Proyecto realizado en el CEIP Vicente Aleixandre de Valladolid por parte de los profesores de educación infantil y educación musical. Los objetivos del proyecto son: - Introducir la Educación Musical para todas las unidades de Educación Infantil. - Elaborar materiales educativos adaptados a los niveles de infantil con soporte multimedia e informático.- Desarrollar actividades educativas innovadoras que faciliten el aprendizaje y actualicen el curriculum. Colaborar en la creación de un espacio contextualizado para la formación inicial de maestros.- Conseguir la integración de un entorno colaborativo entre la educación infantil en el colegio y la formación universitaria. La metodología de trabajo se lleva a cabo por medio de actividades globalizadas para potenciar el aprendizaje significativo adaptando cada sesión al tema de la unidad didáctica. El marco de trabajo se desarrolla de manera colaborativa a través del Método aprender investigando que preside todo el proyecto del centro. La agrupación de los alumnos será flexible, dependiendo de la actividad. Se utiliza el marco telemático (BSCL-Synergeia) y los recursos informáticos para el desarrollo de las actividades. En la práctica se establecen dos planos para el desarrollo del proyecto: 1- En el colegio se desarrolla un proceso de creación de un grupo colaborativo que participa en el diseño de las diferentes actividades que se insertarán en las diferentes unidades telemáticas. Dicha programación se insertará en el BSCL-Synergeia. Posteriormente los recursos y los materiales generados en este espacio de trabajo compartido, serán utilizados en las clases. Finalmente el grupo evaluará cada una de las actividades y también será depositada en la red. 2- Paralelamente todo ello servirá de ejemplo en las asignaturas correspondientes en la Facultad de Educación , dónde se elaborarán materiales que serán colgados después en la red. La actividad se llevará a cabo durante la permanencia del especialista de música acompañado de las alumnas de magisterio. Se dedicarán dos sesiones de treinta minutos cada semana por clase. En las unidades temáticas se incluirán actividades como: canción alusiva a la unidad, ritmificación de las canciones con un desarrollo psicomotriz asociado a la música, materiales multimedia, recursos tecnológicos, uso de instrumentos musicales y elaboración de instrumentos musicales básicos centrados en la percusión. Ha incidido en el profesorado de infantil y de música del centro. Se han llevado a cabo dos sesiones para evaluación inicial del proyecto a las que asistieron todos los profesores del PIE y las personas implicadas de la Facultad. Además se ha realizado una evaluación continua a lo largo de todo el proyecto, y más concretamente se ha realizado una conjunta, con las personas colaboradoras de la Facultad en el PIE, al final de cada Trimestre. Como conclusión de esta evaluación el considerarla muy positiva para el centro, el alumnado y las familias.El trabajo que se ha realizado, consideran, va a ser de gran ayuda a la hora de llevarlo a cabo en el aula de infantil.Se han elaborado una serie de unidades didácticas de música para incluirlo dentro de la programación de infantil: la escuela, los frutos de otoño, el cuerpo, la Navidad, día de la Paz, los carnavales, el restaurante, los transportes, los oficios, semana cultural y los animales. Además se han elaborado materiales educativos multimedia, materiales en soporte papel y con el apoyo de las tecnologías de la comunicación y la información. Entre ellos se destacan los cuentos educativos y las fichas de trabajo elaborados igualmente por el centro y la Facultad. Se han utilizado los siguientes materiales: ordenador, teclado electrónico con pulsación piano fuerte y sensitiva, los programas musicales integrados en el ordenador Finale 2005, Sound Sorge 5, Encoré, Sony Acid Music, CDs , disquettes, papel, pinturas. Trabajo no publicado.

Programación por contenidos en la enseñanza del piano.

Se reflexiona sobre cómo adaptar el concepto de programación a la enseñanza del piano y se ofrece una aportación práctica que documenta y avala que las programaciones con objetivos, contenidos y criterios de evaluación son factibles y necesarias en el aprendizaje de instrumentos.

Predicting music enjoyment in cochlear implant users

Most cochlear implant (CI) users perceive music poorly. Little is known, however, about the musical enjoyment received by CI users. The author examined possible relationships between musical enjoyment and music perception tasks through the use of 1) multiple musical tests, and 2) two groups of listeners: normal-hearing (NH) listeners with a CI-simulation and actual CI users. The two groups’ performances are compared to determine whether NH participants listening to music via CI-simulation software are a good model for actual CI users for perceiving music.

An analysis of verbal responses to music in a group of adult non-specialists

In a workshop setting, two pieces of recorded music were presented to a group of adult non-specialists; a key feature was to set up structured discussion within which the respondents considered each piece of music as a whole and not in its constituent parts. There were two areas of interest, namely to explore whether the respondents were likely to identify the musical features or to make extra-musical associations and, to establish the extent to which there would be commonality and difference in their approach to formulating the verbal responses. An inductive approach was used in the analysis of data to reveal some of the working theories underpinning the intuitive musicianship of the adult non-specialist listener. Findings have shown that, when unprompted by forced choice responses, the listeners generated responses that could be said to be information-poor in terms of musical features but rich in terms of the level of personal investment they made in formulating their responses. This is evidenced in a number of connections they made between the discursive and the non-discursive, including those which are relational and mediated by their experiences. Implications for music education are considered.

'John James' and 'The White Stones' p. 71: Music, rhyme, and home

An essay relating 'The Dragon House' by John James to 'Thoughts on the Esterhazy Court Uniform' by J. H. Prynne

Nostalgia, music and the television past revisited in American dreams

The 1960s-set NBC family drama American Dreams presents not just the recent American past but its musical television as well. This paper examines how the show’s recreation of and interaction with the music show American Bandstand ties together the divergent experiences of a turbulent decade. American Dreams’ reshooting and appropriation of original broadcast footage is intricately interwoven with dramatic action allowing for new layers of commentary and meaning to be read across the music and image relationship. Through intercutting and juxtaposition, its use of music performance goes beyond the regressive recycling of images of nostalgia, as critiqued by Jameson and other theorists of postmodernity, to engage political and social debates through a complex web of reference, reproduction and commentary, presenting a politicised reading of the 1960s that problematises these charges of nostalgia texts as apolitical and ‘historicist’.

Pianos for the people: the manufacture, marketing and sale of pianos as consumer durables, 1850-1914

During the second half of the nineteenth century, British society experienced a rise in real incomes and a change in its composition, with the expansion of the middle classes. These two factors led to a consumer revolution, with a growing, but still segmented, demand for household goods that could express status and aspiration. At the same time technological changes and new ways of marketing and selling goods made these goods more affordable. This paper analyzes these themes and the process of mediation that took place between producers, retailers, and consumers, by looking at the most culturally symbolic of nineteenth century consumer goods, the piano.

Beyond a constructivist curriculum : a critique of competing paradigms in music education

The distinction between learning to perform on an instrument or voice and learning music in a wider sense is one that is made in many countries, and is especially pertinent in England in the context of recent policy developments. This article argues that, whilst this distinction has come to represent curricula based on the opposing paradigms of behaviourist and constructivist approaches to learning, this opposition does not necessarily extend to the pedagogy through which the curricula are taught. A case study of the National Curriculum in England highlights the characteristics of a curriculum based on constructivist principles, along with the impact this has when taught in a behaviourist way. It is argued that conceiving the curriculum in terms of musical competencies and pedagogy in terms of musical understanding would provide a basis for greater continuity and higher quality in the music education experienced by young people.

Terminal: a miracle play with popular music from the end of the world

Terminal: A Miracle Play with Popular Music from the End of the World is a film and live performance project exploring the politics of post-apocalyptic fiction. A theatrical staging of a morality play for end times and future folk music, it recasts eschatology, as a foundational myth for a future society. Post-apocalyptic writing and cinema are grounded in an ethos of survivalism. Invoking Rousseau’s state of nature, or time before government, these fictions propose violent scenarios in which nuclear holocaust, environmental catastrophe and other disasters generate an individualistic politics of pure pragmatism, negating the possibility of democratic deliberation. Terminal narrates this familiar scenario, but at the same time questions its validity. The film, shot on black and white VHS at Kurt Schwitters’ Merzbarn in Cumbria, dramatises a series of conversations between future-historical archetypes about the needs and pressures of the situation in which they find themselves at the end of the world. The performers then gather to play worshipful songs about acid rain, radiation sickness and eating the dog, using a mix of conventional, obscure and makeshift instruments In the tradition of books such as Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker and Arthur M. Miller Jr.’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, Terminal imagines artistic expression and new folk traditions for a world to come after the apocalypse. If, as Slavoj Žižek would have it, it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to think of the end of capitalism, the project juxtaposes these two endpoints to test out how alternative scenarios might emerge from the collaborative practice of making theatre and music against a setting of social collapse.

Emotional responses to Hindustani raga music: the role of musical structure

In Indian classical music, ragas constitute specific combinations of tonic intervals potentially capable of evoking distinct emotions. A raga composition is typically presented in two modes, namely, alaap and gat. Alaap is the note by note delineation of a raga bound by a slow tempo, but not bound by a rhythmic cycle. Gat on the other hand is rendered at a faster tempo and follows a rhythmic cycle. Our primary objective was to (1) discriminate the emotions experienced across alaap and gat of ragas, (2) investigate the association of tonic intervals, tempo and rhythmic regularity with emotional response. 122 participants rated their experienced emotion across alaap and gat of 12 ragas. Analysis of the emotional responses revealed that (1) ragas elicit distinct emotions across the two presentation modes, and (2) specific tonic intervals are robust predictors of emotional response. Specifically, our results showed that the ‘minor second’ is a direct predictor of negative valence. (3) Tonality determines the emotion experienced for a raga where as rhythmic regularity and tempo modulate levels of arousal. Our findings provide new insights into the emotional response to Indian ragas and the impact of tempo, rhythmic regularity and tonality on it.

Piano Crafts Department

Students are shown working on pianos in various states of construction in the Piano Crafts Department at the New York Trade School. Black and white photograph.

Piano Tuning Classroom

A Wissner piano is shown in a piano tuning classroom at the New York Trade School. Wissner pianos were manufactured in Brooklyn from 1878 until the company went out of business at the start of World War II. Black and white photograph.