Beginning with Composing. Educator Focus: Musical Experience Transfer

Scholars continue to look deeply at early musical experience of students. However, deeper reflection on educators’ personal musical beginnings may play a vital role in teaching young students how to compose music. Personally, as a child of six, while mystified by it at first, I experienced a natural unfolding of myself as a musician when I started to create my own music, and I tried it repeatedly to see if the new musical ideas would continue to happen. They did. My personal world as a young musician was to begin chording on my music educator father’s piano at the age of three, then to begin composing about two years into my piano lessons, develop a relationship with performance, that was less than comfortable, all during my K-12 education.

I taught piano and composition privately beginning at the age of 12 and my early career in the music industry included composing and producing music. These experiences are not excluded from my current teaching, and in fact, support it. I am genuinely driven to learn about music educators’ experiences though my workshops, sessions, and scholarly work because of my personal beginnings with music.

Beginning creating and composition is less related to age or musical knowledge, and more related to the shift we may choose to make toward music teaching and learning through creating and composition. As students work together independently or in groups, aspects of this idea include knowing “who is in the room,” the relationships students share in groups, and the balance of their ability to move forward with creating and composing that evolves for each student individually. Music teaching and learning can begin with composing through presentation of introductory musical concepts, for example, rhythm, and introduction to various types of notation, invented and Western, as students learn about rhythm through creating it.

Development of template outlines that may inspire students to innovate creative work through extensions of their own idea selection and development is effective as inspiration arrives in different moments and for different reasons. As music teaching and learning includes opportunities to explore working together, students may work both independently and in groups to discover their composing selves. Students may be invited to present everything they compose to build their experience of personal confidence, whether it is rhythms and drumming or a piece for mariachi band also independently or in groups.

The route to completing compositional projects is most often developed through extensions of initial ideas such as adding more challenge to material, inclusion of technology and development of music production skills, through positive critique from other students, and finally, presentation of all compositions for each other in class or for school and community events. Revision most frequently comes through “next projects” to support students’ process and moving specific elements of the product they create forward. If the outline for each composition project is met, students’ compositional work can receive full points and students move forward with a feeling of success in the social classroom environment.

Social-emotional aspects of learning are primary to creative and composition projects. Students’ feelings expressed through educator questions and comments can be checked consistently throughout students’ process. Students experience anxiety at times when beginning creative projects, but more often “flow,” and excitement that builds—in reality, sometimes slowly, but sometimes also very quickly, in my observations, are more frequent.

Differing experiences of students (private lessons, performance, music production, and technology) also augment classroom dynamics and outcomes of completed projects as well as lead to next projects. Listening to the ideas of everyone in the room is essential and creating a cohesive atmosphere is fundamental. Through all of this, composing becomes a favored music experience for students, with and without technology.