This article provides an overview of six years of research with the goal of identifying key music technology competencies seen as essential for the undergraduate music major by tertiary music professors largely in North America. The results of the research are viewed from multiple dimensions: ‘pillars’ of curriculum as defined by a recent College Music Society (CMS) (United States) task force report, the diffusion of innovative technology historically within music instruction and general categories of music study within the tertiary curriculum. The authors share the results of five separate studies over a six-year period beginning in 2011 dedicated to the identification of core technology competencies for all undergraduate music students. Total responses included 772 returned questionnaires across the five studies that probed key competencies and their role in the instructional process. Consistent support for eleven key competencies was identified. The article concludes by offering a number of creative teaching scenarios across the tertiary curriculum for supporting the eleven competencies identified by participants in the research studies. The results from the research along with the overarching curricular issues presented may apply not only to tertiary music study in North America, but to the broader, international landscape of music curriculum innovation and reform.

This research focused on short-term memory (STM) and the extent to which pitch sequence length and pitch position within a sequence affect the amount of pitch information losi between offset of the stimulus and the time of perceptual report. Loss of pitch information in STM was shown as a result of increased time before recall, the position of a pitch within a sequence (recency > primacy > center), and the increased length of a sequence. It was also demonstrated that loss of pitch information due to an increased number of pitch items stored in STM was dependent upon the amount of time before report. Moreover, time was shown to be a selective function depending upon the pitch position in a melodic sequence. Implications were indicated for research design in several areas. These included music perception, pedagogical and measurement techniques in eartraining instruction, and programed instruction design in melodic dictation and sight-singing.

This article discusses the 'non-traditional music' (NTM) student in secondary education in the United States as a unique population of students who are 'nonparticipants' in traditional music ensembles. Through the use of current music technology, teachers are offering technology-based music classes (TBMCs) and are successfully engaging NTM students in performing, recording and composing. Eight attributes are proposed to characterize NTMs. An estimate of the non-participant music population and the validity of the proposed NTM attributes are examined through an analysis of anecdotal and empirical data from several extant studies. The results suggest that these attributes reasonably describe NTMs with some modification. NTMs are in the sixth through twelfth grades, do not typically participate in traditional performing ensembles, and most likely do not read standard music KEYWORDS music technology music education music creativity educational technology nontraditional student secondary school

The authors describe the preparation and execution of a statistics and a fine arts course, each of which was offered in parallel to an on-campus classroom group and an online Internet group. The authors address the pedagogical, administrative, and political issues that must be resolved before one can legitimately offer a course of study to an Internet audience that the instructor will never physically see. Pedagogical issues are paramount if the goal is to achieve best teaching practice. In addition, there are numerous administrative hurdles to resolve where admission officers, registrars, and governing boards are working from a traditional mindset where rules and guidelines are based on local geography and physical presence. Further, political issues quickly present themselves, including time issues, faculty-colleague and administrator perceptions of "legitimate teaching activity", and valuations of the course.

This report describes the design of a programmable tone generator, a digitally controlled system for generating complex tones. The PTG will provide sequential series of single tones or simultaneously sounding two-and three-tone groups over a four-octave range. Programming of the PTG is accomplished by paper tape using a digital, binary configuration. The current version will interface with Grason-Stadler Series 1200 equipment.