Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

Continuing with my posts on how the nine national standards from The National Association for Music Education (MENC) can be enhanced by technology in the elementary general music classroom, today I approach standard #3.

Content standard #3: Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments.

Achievement standard: 3d. Students improvise short songs and instrumental pieces, using a variety of sound sources, including traditional sounds, nontraditional sounds available in the classroom, body sounds, and sounds produced by electronic means.

Using a digital audio program/sequencing program such as PG Music’s Band-in-box, Apple’s GarageBand, Acoustica’s Mixcraft 4, Sony’s Acid Music Studio, or loop-based programs as such, the teacher creates a 16-measure accompaniment (4 measures for introduction, 8 measures for improvisation, and 4 measure for coda) that the students will improvise to. Depending on your curriculum and age-group, you can have the students use rhythm instruments to improvise rhythmic patterns to the accompaniment. In addition, you can use Orff instruments, recorders, electric keyboards, or guitars to have the students improvise short songs to the accompaniment that you created.

This lesson is enhanced with technology because the teacher uses technology to create the accompaniment track. This accompaniment track frees up the teacher so that he/she can guide the students’ improvisations as opposed to the teacher playing the accompaniment on a piano or Orff instrument while the students try to improvise.

Have you ever enhanced an achievement standard-based lesson with technology?