Found Sounds: Music From the Mundane

In: The Music Technology Cookbook: Read-made recipes for the classroom Abstract:This ‘recipe’ encourages learners to develop their critical and analytic listening skills by seeking and recording sounds in their environment as a basis for music composition. The use of unorthodox (i.e. not inherently musical) sounds in a compositional context develops critical listening, creative use of …

A Good Pair of Ears

In: The Routledge Companion to Aural Skills Pedagogy: Before, In, and Beyond Higher Education Bryden Stillie and Zack Moir Abstract: When musicians and music educators consider aural training, many of us have a tendency to imagine students transcribing melodic dictations, identifying chord progressions, intervals, and cadences by ear, and otherwise training to recognise the aural …

Popular Music Making and Young People: Leisure, Education, and Industry

In: The Oxford Handbook of Music Making and Leisure Abstract: Many young people are involved in extracurricular music-making activities that may be considered as ‘leisure’ or ‘recreation’, such as playing in bands, making demo recordings, or live performance, for example. This chapter will begin by outlining what is understood, (for the purposes of this work) …

Popular Music, Policy, and Education

Gareth Dylan Smith and Zack Moir In: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy Abstract: This chapter explores links between cultural, economic and education policy and music education, focusing mostly on the contexts of the United Kingdom and the United States. Taking a broad view of what constitutes policy, the authors discuss how ideology, tradition …

Sleepwalkers Beware: Towards a Post-Structuralist Critique of Popular Music in Higher Education

In: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Education: Perspectives and Practices Zack Moir and John Hails Abstract: This chapter deals with higher popular music education (HPME) and has a particular focus on the teaching and learning of composition. Our interest in this area derives from our practice as musicians and educators, and our deeply-held mutual …

Haphazard pathways: Students’ perceptions of their routes to music study in higher education in the United Kingdom

Zack Moir and Bryden Stillie Link to article Abstract: This article reports on a qualitative study, which explored perceptions of fourteen first-year undergraduate music students in the United Kingdom regarding their secondary school music education as preparation for undertaking degree-level music study. The authors (both lecturers in popular music at a UK university) were motivated …

Reframing popular music composition as performance-centred practice

Zack Moir and Haftor Medbøe: Link to article This article reports on a qualitative study of four undergraduate students specializing in popular music composition, and examines links and overlaps between three related areas: participants’ interpretations and definitions of the term ‘composition’; their use of music technology; and how they describe their professional identities and roles …

Popular Music and Critical Consciousness in Higher Education: Cultural Invasion, False Generosity and fear of Freedom

ABSTRACT: Over the last half-century, Paulo Freire’s ideas have influenced progressive educators from a wide range of fields and disciplines, internationally. Although there has been some consideration of his work in relation to the field of music education, few scholars within the relatively new area of popular music education have dealt with or explicitly drawn …

We are Not Neutral: Popular music education, creativity, and the creation of a graduate precariat

ABSTRACT: I argue that the purpose of popular music education (PME) should not be to blindly and unquestioningly perpetuate the market-driven, employment-focussed, capitalist ideologies that have shaped many areas of PME in higher education (HE) in recent decades. The impact of such pervasive ideologies go far beyond merely influencing curricular content encountered by the relatively …