I'm teaching a new class this quarter at University of Washington Bothell called "Music in Everyday Life." My intention was to turn the traditional "music appreciation" class on its head and, rather than give students a list of dead white guys, famous compositions, diagrams of sonata-allegro form, etc., I'd focus on the ways in which they engage with music in their daily life. The course description is as follows:
On the first day of class, I asked them to introduce themselves and to give one instance of how they used music in the last 24-48 hours. Many said they had it on while doing homework, or driving, or working out, or they used it in the background as they were getting ready in the morning. We then tried to group these uses into larger categories and we compared the categories with Dan Levitin's six song types (I asked them to read the introduction to the book). We then watched The Music Instinct, a PBS documentary that covers many of the recent advances in music cognition and psychology.
I have the students keeping online listening journals. Every week they respond to a question that I pose that is based on that week's material. After the first class, I asked them to go through their library and find songs that corresponded to Levitin's song types.
On the second day of class (note: class meets once a week for four hours) we talked about different modes of listening and kinds of listeners. We started with David Huron's classification of listening styles: I played a variety of music for them and guided them as to how to listen (or what to listen for). We then talked about an essay by Tom Ter Bogt and colleagues, "Moved by music: A typology of music listeners." One of the foci of the DC II courses is to expose students to a wide variety of research methodologies. We spent some time talking about the statistical approach in this article and how to read something like it if you're not well versed in statistics (I am not well versed in statistics: I confessed to glazing over most of the numbers). We informally tried to recreated their methodology and had the students talk about their listening habits. In the second half of the class, I had them break into groups and discuss what it might be like to listen to music in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. I asked them to consider several things:
Scholars of music tend to focus on one of two broad areas: either close readings of musical works or studies of the cultures from which these works emerged. Both approaches “center” the musical object and relegate personal encounters with that work to the periphery. Few scholars have studied the ways in which communities and individuals use music in their daily lives. Through readings from the scholarly literature, discussion, and self reflection, this class will attempt to shed light on how music structures our lives and influences our behavior. Simultaneously, we will consider how our daily lives shape our understanding of music. We will consider topics such as workout music, elevator music and Muzak, music in retail establishments, iPod culture, ringtones, and general music listening habits. A semester-long journal project will provide students with an opportunity to study their own individual listening habits.This course is part of the Discovery Core program, a sequence of three courses designed to introduce students to life at the college level. The rap class that I team-taught last quarter was a DC I class. You can click here to see all of the DC II classes--lots of neat topics.
On the first day of class, I asked them to introduce themselves and to give one instance of how they used music in the last 24-48 hours. Many said they had it on while doing homework, or driving, or working out, or they used it in the background as they were getting ready in the morning. We then tried to group these uses into larger categories and we compared the categories with Dan Levitin's six song types (I asked them to read the introduction to the book). We then watched The Music Instinct, a PBS documentary that covers many of the recent advances in music cognition and psychology.
I have the students keeping online listening journals. Every week they respond to a question that I pose that is based on that week's material. After the first class, I asked them to go through their library and find songs that corresponded to Levitin's song types.
On the second day of class (note: class meets once a week for four hours) we talked about different modes of listening and kinds of listeners. We started with David Huron's classification of listening styles: I played a variety of music for them and guided them as to how to listen (or what to listen for). We then talked about an essay by Tom Ter Bogt and colleagues, "Moved by music: A typology of music listeners." One of the foci of the DC II courses is to expose students to a wide variety of research methodologies. We spent some time talking about the statistical approach in this article and how to read something like it if you're not well versed in statistics (I am not well versed in statistics: I confessed to glazing over most of the numbers). We informally tried to recreated their methodology and had the students talk about their listening habits. In the second half of the class, I had them break into groups and discuss what it might be like to listen to music in the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. I asked them to consider several things:
- Where would you most likely hear (or not hear) music?
- How would you obtain music?
- What kinds of ambient sounds might affect your listening?
- What role did the technology of the time play in music consumption?