Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Music Classroom - by Nicole Biamonte (Paperback)

About the Book

This essay collection provides a variety of ideas and techniques for teaching music classes using elements of popular culture, such as popular songs and genres, mixes and remixes, video games, music videos, television shows, and internet resources. Each chapter offers a pedago...

Book Synopsis

This essay collection provides a variety of ideas and techniques for teaching music classes using elements of popular culture, such as popular songs and genres, mixes and remixes, video games, music videos, television shows, and internet resources. Each chapter offers a pedagogical model for incorporating these powerful tools to encourage student interaction in courses on musicianship, music theory, analysis, criticism, music history, and related classes.

Review Quotes

A dizzying array of technology is now available to assist teachers and students in accessing music. While recorded versions of many genres of music have been readily available for generations, tools such as YouTube.com, Pandora.com, and Grooveshark.com have made a variety of recordings available for free. Additionally, a variety of computer programs and games allow students to mix, analyze, and play with music as never before. In editing Pop-Culture Pedagogy in the Classroom, Biamonte (McGill Univ., Canada) has assembled a timely collection of essays that assist classroom practitioners and those interested in music education. The book deals with pertinent issues such as building listening skills through sound-mixing techniques, integrating aural skills and formal analysis through popular music, and using American Idol to introduce music criticism. The chapters mix explanations of some of the key concepts related to various learning objectives for students with practical ideas and techniques related to how to teach these in the classroom using aspects of popular technology with which students are familiar. A strong complement to Thomas Rudolph's Teaching Music with Technology (2004). Summing Up: Recommended. General readers; upper-division undergraduate students and above.

As the cover implies, the essays in this collection address pop music from the 1930s to today, with a heavy emphasis on the roles of technology and the media....While the collection is directed more toward music theory than music history, it provides a wealth of ideas for making history classes more interactive, relevant, and engaging for today's students....Those already committed to integrating pop culture into the classroom will find plenty of encouragement in this book.

About the Author

Nicole Biamonte is assistant professor of music theory at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University in Montreal. She has published articles in Music Theory Online and Music Theory Spectrum and contributed to the forthcoming collection Rush and Philosophy. She serves on the editorial board of Music Theory Online.