I believe in the doing of things. In a word, action.
I believe that knowledge supports action. Knowledge without action is meaningless. Action without knowledge is dangerous.
I believe that my role as teacher is to impart knowledge, but also to inspire action. I show students how things work, why things work, and how they can tackle these questions by themselves after graduation. But I also show students context, how change to one thing can have a substantial impact on other things. Most importantly, I encourage students to put this knowledge into action.
I aim to integrate knowledgeable action through creative projects. I have found that students work best with materials that they immediately view as useful and which can instill a sense of accomplishment. Species counterpoint is one such example of cumulative knowledge in action for music theory courses, where students learn by creating a musical line against a given cantus firmus. In twentieth-century theory classes and in composition, I have assigned small composition assignments or “micro-commissions†focusing on specific techniques. In music technology courses, I have used projects such as building simple versions of common audio processing effects (i.e., reverb) to demonstrate the theory behind such topics. Assignments that use this sort of knowledge in action reinforce concepts from class and give students permission to explore their creativity.
An important facet of knowledge in action is the feedback loop, or the judgment of quality. As a graduate student, I took a course in digital signal processing where the assignments were specification sheets that explained what the week’s project was supposed to accomplish. The only concrete rule was that it had to deliver those accomplishments. After the assignments were due, we did the same assignment together as a class, directing the instructor on how to build a project that accomplished the week’s objectives. Often, we would argue over which methods were more efficient or more elegant. This type of teaching has a built-in feedback loop in that the project either does what it is supposed to, or it does not. It also instilled the aforementioned sense of accomplishment (assuming it had worked), because regardless of its elegance or efficiency, it was ours. Some of us took great pride in finding roundabout solutions.
This experience greatly influenced my idea of the purpose of education. Within a semester or two, the specification sheets became less specific because much of the feedback loop had been internalized. We knew how to make programs that worked efficiently, and we knew numerous ways to get the same results. Through this process I realized that the goal of teaching is to eliminate the need for an external feedback loop by providing students with the knowledge of how to critique creative work in multiple ways.
In music theory courses, I often present new works with the question “how would we analyze this piece of music, and what do we want to discover about it?†which promotes holistic and contextual thinking. Eventually, as a class, we may discover that we do not possess the tools to fully analyze the work, and I will step in with a new technique or explanation. I pair this sort of analysis with creative projects such as writing short works using similar techniques, exercising both practical and theoretical knowledge. I offer similar direction in composition lessons, giving students direct feedback on compositional issues in their own works, and directing them toward repertoire that has similar challenges and features so they may analyze how other composers have handled the same pitfalls. Ideally, by the end of study students no longer rely on external feedback to know if they are correct in their analysis or composition.
To address the judgment of quality in my music appreciation courses, one of my first lectures involves critically analyzing the Rebecca Black song Friday which has numerous issues in concept and execution. After making a list (analytical) and discussing how to fix the song’s shortcomings (practical), we listen to Friday as performed by Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Fallon and discuss which of the issues were corrected or alleviated by changes in execution. We then listen to Rebecca Black’s Saturday and look at changes in concept and execution. This exercise has several benefits in that it gets students talking in class (which frequently carries through for the rest of the semester) and it forces students to explore and explain why they like or dislike a musical work and how they might improve the work. By listening to alternate versions, students can see how subtle changes in concept and execution affect the end product, and the idea of concept versus execution is especially helpful when it comes time to assign their essays later in the semester.
In short, it is my duty as an educator to give students the theoretical and practical knowledge they need to be successful in the field of music, and the authority and training to put that knowledge into action.
