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 #4.

Content Standard #4: Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines.

Achievement Standard #4b: Students create and arrange short songs and instrumental pieces within specified guidelines.

A couple of years back, I composed a research project that involved these content and achievement standards with second graders. Briefly, they composed a four-measure B Section (to a four-measure A Section that I composed to make an ABA song) using Finale NotePad (a free software that is a watered-down version of Finale), whole, half, and quarter notes, and the notes of a C Pentatonic Scale. They were extremely successful with placing the correct notes on the correct lines and spaces of the treble clef staff and placing the correct rhythms in a 4-meter. One of the observations that I made was that when I had students compose with the traditional methods of pencil and staff paper, some will try to put five or six beats in a measure that is in 4-meter time. They will state to me that they do this because there was still space left in the measure (they drew their notes very small). However, when these same students used Finale NotePad to compose, the program would beep at them when they tried to place more than four beats in a measure. Since they were used to computer and video games beeping at them to let them know that they cannot proceed, they had no issue with Finale NotePad beeping at them to let them know the same thing. They would continue by placing notes and rhythms in the next measure.

The students would then listen to their compositions, critique them, and make any necessary changes. Once they liked their melody, many of them would tell me that they did not have a song. As one student put it “Mrs. Burns, it is like I have a taco and my melody is the meat. But, I don’t have the cheese or the shell, so my melody is not a song yet.” After being blown away by this second grader’s observation, I then realized that some of the students wanted to “complete” their songs. Therefore, I created a Latin and a Southern Rock rhythm section to accompany their melodies. I created these accompaniments using GarageBand. The students had the option of having the Latin band accompany their melody, or the Southern Rock band accompany their melody, or having their melody play solo.

The results of these three second grade classes’ compositions can be found here: 2J 2H 2R

The students received a CD of their composition. The very next morning, I had two parents come to my classroom and tell me how much they enjoyed their children’s songs, that their children told them everything about the process of composing a song, and that they had to play the song 20+ times in the car’s CD player.

My music curriculum was now in the homes and cars of the students. I have continued this project with other second grades and the results have been wonderful and successful.

Have you ever used composition software to make the composition experience a more successful one for your students?