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Incorporating pop music into school curricula

In a recent article posted on the National Association for Music Education website, music teacher Matt Warren notes some of the benefits of incorporating pop music composition into school music curricula.

"We want to prepare students for the musical world in which they are living and popular music is the large majority of students’ musical vernacular," Warren says. "Composing with popular music allows students to go beyond passive listening through ear buds and become more expressive. Using popular music as a starting point is in many ways an easier transition to teaching students this skill of composing."

He also points out the advantages of 'composing in the cloud'. For the students, this means they aren't tied to the school music lab to do their work. But it's convenient for teachers as well. Warren uses a cloud-based service called Soundation:

"With Soundation, I can log in to each of my students’ accounts and see, hear, or even edit a student composition remotely, leaving notes for them in real-time. This allows me the opportunity to help students from a different building but there are other advantages, as well; while most of my students don’t have MIDI capabilities outside of class, they can still edit and create using the software tools in their study hall or at home to refine their projects."

Read the entire article on the NAfME website.

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