Despite the Best Intentions

Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg The final reading for Learning of Culture is Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools by Amanda Lewis and John Diamond.

Making better citizens through dance

Public-facing note-taking for Philosophy of Music Education with David Elliott This week, I’m taking a look at two chapters from a new book on the red-hot topic of artistic citizenship, the social responsibility of artists and arts educators.

QWERTYBeats design documentation

QWERTYBeats is a proposed accessible, beginner-friendly rhythm performance tool with a basic built-in sampler. By simply holding down different combinations of keys on a standard computer keyboard, users can play complex syncopations and polyrhythms. If the app is synced to the tempo of a DAW or other music playback system, the user can easily perform good-sounding …

Artistic citizenship in the age of Trump

Public-facing note taking for Philosophy of Music Education with David Elliott This week I’m reading about the social and ethical responsibilities of artists generally, and musicians and music educators in particular. That topic is especially relevant at the moment.   Before we get to the moral philosophy aspect, let’s talk about this performance. Why is it so good? Movies …

Coping strategies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvuM3DjvYf0 Some thoughts gathered from Twitter this morning: Inspired by Harry Belafonte, we’re reading this Langston Hughes poem in class right now. And listening to the Hamilton Mixtape. The mood in the Park Slope Food Coop this morning was like a New Orleans funeral–multiethnic people talking about genocide to a soundtrack of funky jazz.

Music in a capitalist culture

Midterm paper for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg Max Weber locates the roots of capitalism in vestigial puritanical Protestantism. Émile Durkheim, in turn, gives a theory of how that Protestantism arose in the first place. In this paper, I ask two questions. First: can Weber’s and Durkheim’s theories of religion be extended to explain culture …

Music Matters chapter nine

Public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class.  Research into music psychology (and simply attending to your own experience, and to common sense) shows that music arouses emotions. However, there is no conclusive way to explain why or how. To make things more complicated, it’s perfectly possible to perceive an emotion in …

Music Matters chapter four

Public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class. What is education? The etymology of the word “education” from its various Latin roots gives a good overview of modern senses of the word: Educationem: rearing children, animals, plants and promoting physical development Educare: to train or mold …

Music Matters chapter one

This post is public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman for my Philosophy of Music Education class.

Composing in the classroom

The hippest music teachers help their students create original music. But what exactly does that mean? What even is composition? In this post, I take a look at two innovators in music education and try to arrive at an answer. Matt McLean is the founder of the amazing Young Composers and Improvisers Workshop. He teaches his students composition using …