Future-proofing the Electronic Music School

Abstract

A central difficulty of building a curriculum around current popular music styles is the rapid evolution of those styles. In this chapter, we give strategies for maintaining a music technology program’s cultural relevance over longer time spans, without rewriting every lesson plan every year. Rather than trying to respond to every new development in popular culture, we propose that teachers follow the hip-hop ethos of maintaining freshness. And rather than chasing novelty, we suggest that teachers look for common threads across popular styles and trends, and teach to those commonalities. We also propose identifying out-of-date styles that have become appealingly retro, since these can become a long-lasting feature of the curriculum without losing freshness. We also give strategies for maintaining cultural continuity as student cohorts graduate, and how the same set of technical skills can underlie a wide variety of genre-based projects. Finally, we address broader problems like adapting to new teaching formats and the ramifications of committing to a software platform.

Current Trends in Music Pedagogy in Higher Educational Institutions

“…An increase in their number has a positive effect on the emergence of interest in learning on the part of students and motivates them to deeply master their chosen area of performing practice (Elmgren, 2021). The preservation of cultural continuity, through the appeal to the genres of the classical direction, combined with the use of new teaching formats, the development of modern styles of music, is one of the strategies and prerequisites for the successful development of educational programmes (Kuhn and Hein, 2021). According to scientists, special attention should be paid to the choice of methods of teaching performing disciplines, in particular, playing the piano, already at an early stage of mastering the instrument.…”