IMPACT Conference 2017

Popular music education projects and curriculum continue to develop and expand across universities, yet pre-service teachers who experience these courses often perceive musical processes used in popular music making as irrelevant in more traditional mediums (e.g., band). The purpose of this presentation is to offer a project that cross-pollinates musical behaviors and processes between general music and instrumental methods courses using video game music composition. Using littleBits Synth Kits, pre-service teachers in an elementary general music course created scoring blocks—introduction, loop, transition, tag—and aligned these blocks with a student-chosen videogame. This foundation was then passed to pre-service teachers in a beginning instrumental methods course to compose and improvise acoustic layers indicative of beginning band students. Videos of completed projects will be provided as examples. Additionally I will present a working curriculum for this videogame music project as well as offer student responses, modifications to the project, and implications for pre-service music educators and music education.