In this, the final episode of the season, I reflect on some of the (eight!) resources that the amazing Jess Lee, Lillian Li, Vicky Zhang made (with me getting in the way here and there) for Genevieve Lacey’s wonderful Finding Our Voice project which commissioned 8 new works from Australian artists including William Barton, Linda May Han Oh, Lisa Illean, Madeleine Flynn, Jenny Hector, Tim Humphrey, Mark Atkins, Erkki Veltheim, Matthias Schack-Arnott, Lior, Nigel Westlake, Lou Bennett, and Sunny Kim.

Here is an AI-made transcript of the episode:

This week I’m thinking about the project that I’ll create for our undergraduates and postgraduates at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music to learn about Project Based Learning (and similar pedagogies) with and through. In this episode, I share some of the previous projects with you, and talk about what Project Based Learning (PBL) is, and how when we do music education well, everything’s a project!

Comments are still broken on my blog, so please just send me a message in any format with your thoughts!

Here’s an AI-generated transcript:

Explicit Teaching (not dissimilar to Direct Instruction) is really in vogue with our local government at the moment, and this coming week all government school teachers have to undertake professional development in it. Of course, there’s a research base behind the use of Explicit Teaching, but does much of that research come from music education? And if it doesn’t, what should music teachers make of Explicit Teaching and similar ideas? Are they useful for music education, or will they get in the way of best practice?

In this episode, I speak to music teacher and research Dr Brad Fuller, who published a wonderful article on this very subject just last year: Is What Works Best, Best For Music Education?

Apparently my blog isn’t accepting comments at the moment, so please feel free to comment by dropping me an email or over on the socials!

Here’s the transcript of this episode, made by Otter.ai (so it will have a few inaccuracies!):

I know, everyone is writing and podcasting about AI at the moment – YAWN! But the AI generation of music (audio) has just taken another huge leap forward, and in this podcast I wonder what it means for the teaching and learning of music creation – composition, songwriting, producing, and so on. Can students just get AI to do their work for them? Should we be encouraging it or banning it? And if the really good technologies make audio, not MIDI, how easy is it to create a score for that audio (in school systems where a score is still required)? I’ve created a load of tracks with Suno.ai and I’ll be breaking them down. Here is the score of Broken Pieces, one of the tracks that I speak about:

Please get involved by sharing your thoughts at https://humberstone.org/2024/04/19/musiczettel-s3e12-ai-and-teaching-music-creation/

Here is a transcript also made by AI (so it won’t be 100% accurate!):

Today’s show is sponsored by Abble and their new product the iSlave Mini, as well as by FcDonald’s. Please check out these unreliable products!

In this episode I’m reflecting on the list of pre-service music teachers’ blogs that I published via my blog yesterday, and the courses to which each relates. I make links to the brilliant Electronic Music School by Will Kuhn and Ethan Hein, and also to the DAYTiME music conference coming up in Adelaide and streamed online on June 14th this year.

I explain why public blogging is useful as a tool to encourage critical thinking, not just in undergraduate and postgraduate music education students, but, following my own research, for in-service music teachers, too.

Here is a transcript that should be tolerably accurate, thanks to Otter.ai:

Having had a grumble about the lack of an evidence-base in the local government’s supposedly “Evidence-based syllabus” in the last episode, I turn this into a positive, with the first of several podcasts accounting for my own research in music education, as well as others’. In this episode, specifically, my chapter on teaching music creation in Australia which is part of a relatively new book “The Routledge Companion to Teaching Music in Schools”.

I would really LOVE it if you’d add comments on the corresponding blog post for this episode… https://humberstone.org/2024/04/04/musiczettel-s3e10-teaching-music-creation-in-australia/

Here is an AI-generated transcript (so it may have a few errors!):

Following on from the last episode of MusicZettel, in which I focused on the positive things about the new NSW Syllabus, in this episode, I look at the things that the New South Wales Education Standards Authority (NESA) got wrong, especially given that they’re claiming this is an “Evidence-Based Syllabus”. I hope that this critical look at the syllabus is useful for listeners in other states and countries also being affected by syllabus/curriculum reform. NB This podcast was removed for a day following my website upgrade yesterday – there was no government conspiracy!

I would love to know what you think about this topic – please leave comments on the blog at https://humberstone.org/2024/03/28/musiczettel-s3e9-the-new-nsw-syllabus-pt-2-when-ideology-gets-in-the-way-of-educative-evidence-based-practice/.

I will post the unit of work planning resources for teachers planning for both the new and old syllabi on my blog in the coming days (again!).

Here is an AI transcription of the podcast:

I’m asking the big questions today, prompted by the new year 7 to 10 (12 to 16 years) music syllabus released recently by the NSW Government: what is classroom music education for? What are the aims of this syllabus, and can we remember the good to avoid the not-so-good? Today I’m focusing (mostly) on what’s good in this new syllabus, and using that to advocate for the same aims in Music Education.

I also mention an article that I wrote recently for AARE (The Australian Association for Research in Education) responding to the new syllabus, and you can read that here: https://blog.aare.edu.au/the-brand-new-syllabus-should-let-the-music-play/?unapproved=234158&moderation-hash=5ce8abd82ef18bc132a6a4b9443b8915

Please leave comments on the blog post for this episode at https://humberstone.org/2024/03/14/music-zettel-s3e8-the-new-nsw-syllabus-pt-1-what-is-classroom-music-education-for/.

Here is a transcript, generated by Otter.ai:

In today’s episode I talk about ways I’ve used samping in my own composition and production, and ways that I’ve used it to teach composition and engage children in my music classes. There are lots of ideas, and examples of music that I’ve written. My page of resources on teaching sampling with the Flip Sampler app is available here.

If you have any comments, I’d love you to leave them on my blog, where I publish this podcast series. https://humberstone.org/2024/03/08/music-zettel-s3e7-teaching-music-through-sampling/

Here is an Otter.ai transcription of this episode: