Music Software & Relative Advantage

Software in the Classroom

Software has an indispensable roll in today’s classroom. While developers scramble to produce the next ‘Oregon Trail,’ schools and teachers are bombarded with choice. The issue of too much choice has given rise to much needed guidelines for evaluating and selecting the types of software that will offer the best relative advantage for the classroom.

Oh NO! NOT NICOLE!!

Music Software & Relative Advantage

Relative advantage is a term coined by Everett Rogers which refers to the perceived gains of adopting a new method over an old (Roblyer, p426).

Determining relative advantage requires we look at a variety of factors including the nature of the problem we are trying to address as well as the cost, time, feasibility, and money of implementing a digital solution. Most importantly, we must be critical of how much impact the technology we wish to use will further the learning objectives of the classroom. After all, “Older technologies can be useful.” (Roblyer, p9). For example, during the first few months of the year in this researcher’s classroom music problems are presented on a whiteboard and solved by students in a notebook using pencil and paper. As a result, students do not have to learn a fancy interface or worry about a device that needs a battery in order to participate. However, when it comes to creating longer pieces of music that may require revision using digital notional tools such as Noteflight or Finale are a better choice for students.

The areas of greatest conceptual difficulty for students in music are music theory and practical music (i.e. playing musical instruments). Music theory is as abstract as any physics concept and holds no real interest for most casual students and even some professionals. Playing musical instruments is oftentimes something that students enjoy in the beginning until they realize the work they must do to properly play the instrument.

Many of the software tools meant for musicians address theoretical problems with a few addressing the practice and performance side of the discipline. However, there are a few stunning exceptions. When choosing software for the classroom, it’s important to consider the type desired, its intended application, and its relative advantage to instruction. In the following sections we will explore the five types of software and offer some examples that offer high relative advantage when faced with teaching challenges common to the music classroom.

Wicked cool fun at the end of the article: Keep Reading!!

Drill and Practice

“Don’t worry honey! I do this kind of thing all the time.”

Drill-and-practice are exercises in which students work example items, usually one at a time, and receive feedback on correctness (Roblyer, p80). Good drill and practice software offers control over the presentation rate, answer judging, and appropriate feedback to the student. The benefits of good drill and practice allow the effective rehearsal students’ need to transfer newly learned information into long-term memory (Roblyer, p80). However, teachers have to be careful not to overuse drill and practice or learners may bore from even the most engaging software.

In the music world drill and practice software is common. Much of it is dedicated to music theory and ear training. The most polished and well known drill site is musictheory.net. Musictheory.net supplies learners with drill and practice problems on a number of music theory topics. Assignments can be made through the site and student records kept. Students are given immediate feedback on their progress and tutorials are also available to explain concepts that have not been understood. Like all good drill and practice software students can work at their own pace and difficulty can be adjusted for every learner. If you are going to use this software in the classroom set achievement goals of a certain number of levels for every student. This goal setting will deter students from randomly clicking in order to get through examples without learning the material presented. Despite this areas of caution, musictheory.net offers distinct relative advantages to the music classroom.

Tutorials

“Wow! According to this Escher Self Improvement Tutorial we’re already on step 12.”

Tutorial software is an entire instructional sequence on a topic, similar to a teacher’s classroom instruction (Roblyer, p84). Instruction is expected to be self-contained and offer everything the learner needs to acquire new skills or knowledge without additional resources. Good tutorials are interactive, under user control, utilize appropriate pedagogy, use graphics and video, can give give feedback, and have checks for understanding.

Music tutorials are surprisingly scarce in the world of music education. Many software packages would fall either into the demonstration category or drill and practice. However, if we bend the rules a bit and look at two software packages that can easily be combined then we approach the all important ‘feedback’ and ‘check for understanding’ criteria that a true tutorial software package must possess.

Although more appropriately called a demonstration rather than a tutorial, Youtube has long held a place in teaching the applied or ‘practicing/performing’ side of music teaching. Although not a dedicated music site, Youtube has been a repository of ‘How-to’ demonstrations including videos that cover a variety of musical issues common to students. Youtube channels can oftentimes contain sequential demonstrations that cover everything from how to hold your instrument to complex drumming patterns and advanced performance techniques.

As long as students know what words to use in order to search for a certain skill they can find a ‘how-to’ tutorial on anything. However, since Youtube does have videos on a variety of topics (including some not really appropriate to the learning environment) teachers need to keep a close watch on what students are viewing.

When we add the learning software Smart Music to the viewing of demonstration videos on youtube we can now approach what should be called a ‘tutorial.’ Smart Music is an application and subscription service specifically for music students. Its is designed to help students practice by supplying backing tracks to their practice while actively listening to their playing efforts. Smart music helps students set goals and gives actionable feedback during practice time.

By combining demonstration videos from youtube and the actionable feedback supplied by smart music we can achieve the full tutorial status. This solution does leave a bit more work for students to do but since Youtube is so ubiquitous the only real challenge would be to get students to use smart music correctly. The relative advantage to the combination of these two software tools is that the student can gain more learning independence from the teacher although this combination technique should only be attempted with intermediate to experienced music students.

Simulations

“It’s like I’m actually walking at the mall!”

A simulation is a computerized model of a real or imagined system that is designed to teach how the system works (Roblyer, p 88). The user manipulates these systems to gain some knowledge of how they work. Simulations also need some guidance by the teacher in order to be truly effective.

In music true simulation activities are uncommon. There are simple keyboard simulators that offer students without access to a keyboard a viable option for completing assignments when a real keyboard is not available. These instrument simulators also offer students the ability to play and hear intervals independent of any superfluous educational information or goals. This simulation option, and others like it, characterize the current relative advantage of today’s music simulators. There are managerial simulators like The Road to Success which allows users to create and manage a record label but this is largely a statistics and text based adventure package better suited to an older niche market than an accessible educational tool for the majority of music students.

The future holds some interesting prospects for music simulators. The Royal College of Music in London is using a Performance Simulator which employs a virtual reality audience that students can perform infront of. The simulated audience gives feedback and is meant to help music students prepare for high stress performance situations. However, this technology is a ways off for most k-12 institutions.

Instructional Games

Teacher: “So what have we learned from today’s lesson students?”
Student:”That griefers are an inescapable part of life.”

Educational Games are software packages that add competition, rules of play, and a win condition, all while trying to impart an educational goal to the learner. Games take advantage of students’ natural competitive behaviors, their desire to succeed, and their fear of failure to demand attention and participation.

In the music world a truly immersive game environment, such as Minecraft, is nonexistent. Some might claim that game system offerings like Guitar Hero are music music games but, outside of improving one’s timing and possibly familiarizing students with 80’s 90’s popular music, they are of little value to the music classroom. The most common game applications are thinly veiled drill and practice software packages with game rules and score keeping pasted on. Having said that, many of these music games do offer benefit to students.

Theta Music and The Tonic Tutor both offer games that support learning rhythm, note identification, and even simple ear training. They have respectable graphics and offer a wide variety of gameplay situations although many of these resources are more appropriate to younger students. Quizlet is a digital flashcard program that offers drill and practice which can help teach students proper music terminology. Lastly, the venerable Simon Game of 1980s fame still lives online and is just as addictive as ever. Simon helps students remember pitch order via simple melodic patterns and can increase students’ ability to remember melody in general. The relative advantage of the current offerings for musical gameplay are that students can engage in competitive tasks and use their enthusiasm for the win to learn topics that would otherwise inspire little interest.

Problem Solving

“This is the cool you’ve been waiting for!”

Problem solving software functions by either teaching specific steps for solving certain problems or helps students learn general problem solving behaviors (Roblyer, p426). Good problem solving software should should “have a clear link to developing a specific problem-solving ability. Software documentation should state clearly which specific problem solving skills students will learn and how the software fosters them” (Roblyer, p97).

Again, this type of software is not well represented for music students although we can look at a newer offering called Auditorium by the independent game developers at Cipher Prime. This game is mesmerizing, simple, abstract, and fascinatingly beautiful. No directions are offered but through trial and error students learn that they must bend and manipulate streams of musical light to hit certain areas of the screen thus producing a melody and harmony that is beautiful to listen to. The musical benefit is not in solving the puzzle itself although that is a lot of fun. The true relative advantage to the music classroom is that students can hear and are encouraged to focus on the various elements of a song such as the bass or the melody as they try to complete the puzzles. In this way students gain a better appreciation for the component parts of music. With an online playable version and the desktop version only 7 dollars for mac or pc this is a program that should be in every music teachers software toolbox.

Round Up

While software dedicated to musical instruction is somewhat limited to drill and practice, developers are branching out slowly to realize that musical concepts are an enduring part of the human experience. I would venture to say that, of the offerings on this list, Auditorium is the most bold and ground breaking. Now, as promised, click on one of the two links below as a reward. The first link shows you gameplay of Pulse by Cipher Prime which you can own right now. The second link lets you play Auditorium on your desktop computer. Enjoy!