The role of culture in interpretive inquiry

Note-taking for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson Geertz, C. “Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture.” In The Interpretation Of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp. 3-30, 1973

The Craft of Research and Salsa Dancing

Note-taking for Principles of Empirical Research with Catherine Voulgarides The Craft of Research by Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb and Joseph Williams is a sober and traditional guide to humanities scholarship.

Introduction to Research on Games and Simulations

Note-taking for Research on Games and Simulations with Jan Plass In this post I’m summarizing some writing about the foundations of research on games for learning. It’s a dry topic, so to enliven it I’ve included a bunch of screencaps from Mega Man 2. They have nothing to do with anything, but they look cool. Plass, …

Cultural hegemony in music education

Music education in American colleges and universities focuses almost entirely on the traditions of Western European aristocrats during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known conventionally as “common practice music.” This focus implies that upper-class European-descended musical tastes are a fundamental truth rather than a set of arbitrary and contingent preferences, and that white cultural dominance …

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.

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 …

QWERTYBeats research

Writing assignment for Design For The Real World with Claire Kearney-Volpe and Diana Castro – research about a new rhythm interface for blind and low-vision novice musicians Definition I propose a new web-based accessible rhythm instrument called QWERTYBeats. Traditional instruments are highly accessible to blind and low-vision musicians. Electronic music production tools are not. I look at the history …

Personhood and music education

With this post, I begin some public-facing note taking on Music Matters by David Elliott and Marissa Silverman. The goal here is to explain the book to myself, but if this is helpful to you in some way, good. What is the point of music education? For Elliott and Silverman, the goal is to develop each student as a …

The evolution of the Groove Pizza

The Groove Pizza is a playful tool for creating grooves using math concepts like shapes, angles, and patterns. Here’s a beat I made just now. Try it yourself!   This post explains how and why we designed Groove Pizza.