Emerging Methods in
Music Education II
Nathan Townsend's Documentation of his Teaching and Coursework
Nathan Townsend's Documentation of his Teaching and Coursework
For this assignment, we were placed in a group and had to write a song and perform it together. Prior to this we had a guest lecturer run us through a very helpful lesson on songwriting. A big part of this for me was learning how to collaborate and communicate in the format of music composition with a group of my peers. I really loved throwing ideas back and forth and it was really beautiful to see how an idea could be improved by every member of the group adding onto it. I think that this opened my eyes to the value of songwriting as a musicianship practice, and I aspire to bring this kind of activity to my students in the future.
Songwriting Performance
Above is a video of our songwriting project performance. This is an in progress performance, as we did not have time in class to perform it in its final form on video, but this performance showcases the progress and process of the project.
For our DAW musical biography project, we were asked to create a composition using a DAW (Digital Audio Workspace), that related to our interests or life. I used ableton to compose my song, Spbottle. This project really encouraged me to dive deeped into music production and put effort into bringing a project from start to final project. I utilized a lot of recordings and help from my classmates as I composed this song, and tried to deepen my skills using strategies like side-chaining, eqing and gain staging. I think that this project was a really fun way to explore more about using a DAW, and prompted me to think a lot about how I would want to teach a music production class in the future.
Songwriting Performance
Above is documentation of the basic sketch of what I wanted to create, and the implementation timeline that I wanted to accomplish my plan on. The process of writing and formally documenting a plan really helped me to finish the project in a way that felt manageable and fun. I will definitely be writing out documentation for further DAW projects that I work on in my own time.