Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

For the next few posts, I am going to give an example of how the nine national standards from The National Association for Music Education (MENC) can be enhanced by technology in the elementary general music classroom.

Content Standards #1: Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music.

Achievement Standard #1d. Students sing ostinatos, partner songs, and rounds.

When my general music classes are preparing a round or a partner song for the Holiday Concert, Spring Concert, Grade Plays, or Graduation, I will often choose a round or partner song for two grades to perform together. Many times, I will have a couple of days on stage to rehearse them all together. However, I would like the separate parts to get used to each other before the two big and final rehearsals. Therefore, I will use a digital audio program like the freeware Audacity or the software GarageBand to record each class singing the song.

The steps are as follows using Audacity with one computer and a set of speakers attached to the computer:

1. Import the CD accompaniment track into Audacity.
   1. If you do not have a CD track of the accompaniment, then you can record yourself playing the accompaniment. If you feel that you cannot do this well, then perform this lesson without an accompaniment track or use a MIDI/digital audio program like GarageBand or even a notation program like Finale or Sibelius, to step-record the accompaniment. Check out Tom Rudolph’s blog on how to step-record. One you step-record the accompaniment, you can use the tempo controller to speed up the accompaniment to the appropriate speed. You can save the notation file as an audio file and then import it into Audacity.
   2. Play the accompaniment track that you just imported through the speakers attached to the computer.
2. Using the computer’s internal microphone, record your class that sings part one of the partner song. They will be singing with the accompaniment track.
3. Play it back for them so that they can hear themselves and assess themselves (if you would like to add the assessment to the lesson).
4. Save the file.
5. When the next class comes to music, record them into the same file that you just saved.
   1. Add a new track.
   2. Mute the track that has part 1.
   3. Using the computer’s internal microphone, record your class that sings part two of the partner song. They will be singing along with the accompaniment track.
6. Now have them sing part 2 again, this time with the class that you recorded singing part 1. Now they are rehearsing together.
7. When the class that sings part 1 enters music class again, have them rehearse with part 2 by using the same file and muting part 1.

Recording each part has assisted my students greatly with part singing, singing rounds, and preparing for concerts.

What other ways has technology enhanced a music lesson that’s purpose was to accomplish the MENC standard #1 “Singing, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music” in your elementary general music classroom?