The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate the perceptions of students and teachers regarding the engagement of creativity within choral classes. Participants rated their perceptions of the degree to which certain activities were creative. Middle/high school chorus students (N = 314) and teachers (N = 11) completed a survey…

Introduction: This paper explores the relationship between musicians' information seeking behaviour and their personality traits within the context of musical creativity. Although previous research has addressed different socio-technological and behavioral aspects of music information seeking, the role of personality characteristics around…

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary students' creating processes and perspectives through composition. Two fourth-grade classes took part in this action research, which consisted of creating four compositions--two with acoustic instruments and two with computer software. For each of the two sound sources, the first composition…

The music industry in the 21 century uses digital technology in a wide range of applications including in performance, in composition and in recording and publishing. In this article, I consider how the impact of digital technologies may be affecting pedagogical processes adopted by secondary music teachers, particularly in the area of…

This article examines the wider meanings of collective inquiries, creative collaboration and learning at work through analyzing a teacher's learning process when plunging into collaborative inquiry and creation with the students in primary classroom context. The incorporation of "songcrafting" into the existing practice of singing…

It is vitally important for students to be creating music from the youngest age, and in all general music class settings. Now that the National Standards have been revised (renamed the National Core Arts Standards) and creating has been elevated to one of three artistic processes, the creative activities of composing, arranging, and improvising…

Historically, music programs in K-12 schools have emphasized performance opportunities for children and young people. Until the release of the 1994 National Standards in Music, targeted instruction in composition was frequently overlooked due to the emphasis on performance as well as the expectations of what a school music program ought to produce…

In today's complex music software packages, many features can remain unexplored and unused. Software plug-ins--available in most every music software package, yet easily overlooked in the software's basic operations--are one such feature. In this article, I introduce readers to plug-ins and offer tips for purchasing plug-ins I have…

Improvisation, the third content standard for the National Standards for Music Education (Music Educators National Conference, 1994), has received less attention from music teachers. This article advocates for more improvisation specifically free improvisation in general music classrooms. The nature of free improvisation, and its evolution in the…

Theoretical approaches to learning in practice-based jazz improvisation contexts include situated learning and ecological perspectives. This article focuses on how interest-driven, self-sustaining jazz learning activities can be matched against the results of a recent Swedish investigation based on extensive qualitative interviews with jazz…

Choral directors will always be assessed by the quality of their choral performances. The concepts presented in this article are designed to strengthen and improve choral performance. If choral directors can design an individualized assessment plan and implement some of these ideas during each grading period, grades will be more equitably…

The purpose of this article is to introduce the characteristics of Korean rhythmic patterns and provide effective ways to teach Korean rhythms based on the theoretical and pedagogical approaches derived from 5,000 years of Korean musical tradition. First, we have provided the fundamental principles of Korean rhythms that represent the culture from…

This paper is concerned with the craft and pedagogy of contemporary classical composition, starting with an examination of French pedagogy as I received it from Darius Milhaud and Nadia Boulanger in the late 1950s. I discuss their different points of view (briefly the global approach to composition vs. what might be termed the molecular), the…

In this article, narratives of a salsa concert and a lesson with a Native American flute performer provide openings for exploring grooves and their application in the music classroom. The term "groove" is examined, along with some non-Western ideas about time as represented in the music of the West African Kpelle people. A sixth-grade…

This article describes a collaborative clinical field experience initiative conceived to provide meaningful fieldwork for preservice music educators, musically engage underserved students in a high-poverty school, and include instruction on composition and improvisation. The author chronicles the planning, implementation, and subsequent revisions…