Description: The field of music has been transformed in the last ten years through the introduction of music notation technology. Although this aspect of the application of computers to music has received far less attention than the development of electronic music and computer musical synthesis, it is a more fundamental change in the way music is studied and learned. Until a decade ago all music notation was copied by hand. Musicians -- in the manner of medieval scribes -- were trained to copy music using India Ink and a dip pen, editing with the aid of a razor blade. Many composers trained themselves as calligraphers -- or had to pay professional copyists to transcribe their work. Today the preparation of nearly all professional musical materials is done with software programs such as Finale. Music notation software allows composers to edit their music easily, thereby making it much easier for an instructor to ask students for compositional re-writes. As a professional composer I have found that being freed of hours of recopying has liberated my musical imagination -- it is easy for me to revise and experiment in ways that were prohibitively time-consuming before. There is no reason why music composition students should not likewise learn how to use the tools employed by professional composers and have their potential for independent work enhanced.
The pedagogical problem is one of how to integrate the use of this software into music courses and, particularly at Reed College, how to take the best advantage of this software for students doing independent work in composition, analysis, and musicology. Finale falls midway between two kinds of software that have less relevance to our students. On the one hand there is packaged ear-training and theory software -- which does not seem to fit our needs, because we have small classes and bright, self-directed students who usually find these products boring. At the other extreme are products for computer sound synthesis. These might interest some students but, because we do not have a computer composer on the faculty, we can offer little support for such work. Musical notation software, however cuts across the interests of all of our students -- which raises the real problem: how best to get all of our musical students fluent in the use of Finale so that they can apply it across the music curriculum.
Finale, however, is quite difficult to master, even for an experienced composer. The greatest obstacle to having undergraduates use it is the amount of time it takes to tutor a student in its subtleties. Technology, however, can be used to solve this problem. Drawing upon my own experience as a composer and teacher of composition, and my seven years of working with Finale, I propose to create a computer tutorial and reference guide that students could use in order to gain an understanding of musical notation software. The tutorial would include exercise sequences for novices that could be used interactively with the musical notation software itself. Thus, instead of reading a book and then going to a computer lab to apply new knowledge, students could run the tutorial concurrently on the same computer they would be using to run the musical notation package.
In order to further enhance the learning environment for students, we intend to couple the musical notation equipment with musical synthesis equipment so that students could "play" passages during the composition process.
Implementation: An interactive multimedia tutorial and reference guide will be prepared and tested in a special "music lab" setting with a small group of students in Music Composition, during a one year period. After the tutorial and reference guide are refined with student feedback, the materials will be distributed to all faculty in the department so that curricular modifications can be introduced to take advantage of the new technology. During the second year, the electronic tutorial materials will be made available to all Music students in the Music Information Resource Center (IRC) and on the campus-wide network. Copies of the tutorial will be made available to faculty at other colleges.
Impact: The results of this project would directly benefit roughly 60 to 70 students per year. Use of music notation software is essential to the work in Theory I, which usually has 15-20 students, Theory II, with 6-10 students, and composition, with 4-6 students. It is also crucial for thesis work, which usually involves 2 to 4 students a year, as well as independent work in composition. In addition Finale would be extremely useful for students in music history courses (15-20) and in performance groups such as the Collegium Musicum (16). In addition, all four music faculty would integrate the Finale tutorial into other music courses. Virtually all of the students who take music courses (15% of all Reed students) would benefit.