Mary Hayes, Chris Taylor and David Wheway

Everyone loves and enjoys music in their lives. Not all children will become professional musicians, but we need to teach them as though they might be one day. That way, they would have the sort of start that would make it possible for them to become musicians. This chapter addresses how teachers can help children to develop musically with the help of ICT. In the 1920s there were significant technological developments, with the invention of the gramophone and radio. The outcome of the introduction of those items into our culture was wider access to a great range of different types of music, but a loss of the aural memory tradition in music. These are issues that are addressed in the first part of the chapter.

The second part of this chapter offers a background to music technology. In terms of professional music making, the technology is changing continually with new items rapidly becoming obsolete and at the same time, old systems coming back into fashion. This technology has a great impact on the child’s listening, and so it is useful for the teacher to know how the technology has shaped commercial music. While it may not seem directly necessary for teaching music in an early years’ setting, it is important to be aware of a broader view of its development and the chapter provides technical advice.

Recording of sound was first invented around the start of the century

USING ICT TO ENHANCE THE LEARNING OF MUSIC

with the phonograph. This used a cylinder to record sounds, initially covered with metal foil and subsequently wax. The sounds produced by machines were of low quality, and a high sound volume was required to create an impression on the cylinder. It was superseded by the 78 rpm record, which enabled copies to be made easily, and individual sections could be selected by placing the needle on the correct area of the disc. This invention has radically changed the development, marketing and per- formance of music. With the invention of the electronic valve, amplification of sound became possible. In the 1920s the first true electronic instrument called the ‘Ondes Martenot’ was invented. The electric guitar was introduced in the 1930s. This was initially of great importance in popular music as it allowed the guitarist to be heard behind the brass section of a dance band. By the 1940s, composers and technicians were experimenting with electronic instruments based on oscillators, which created sounds electronically, such as the Theremin. These offered new sounds to the composer’s palette. All these innovations depended on the invention of electronic amplification and microphones to render the electronic waves into audible sounds. The invention of magnetic tape recording, shortly before World War II, let composers and experimenters of the late 1940s and 1950s experiment with tape-based effects, including changing speeds, repeating loops, artificial echo and reversal of sounds. The invention of electronic record players led to an improvement of the quality and volume of sound available in the home.

The electric organ was initially devised in the 1930s as a replacement for the Church pipe organ. This instrument offered another range of sounds accessible by any keyboard player. By the early 1960s it had become a mainstream instrument, being used in pop, jazz and ‘easy listening’ as well as for religious purposes. By the end of the 1960s use of electronics had really taken off. Multitrack recording enabled one person to build up a whole orchestra of sound. Sampled sounds from instruments such as the ‘Mellotrons’ offered the studio musicians a chance to simulate an orchestra or a choir through a keyboard. The invention of the ‘Moog Synthesiser’ enabled musicians to create, manipulate and process sounds in a wide variety of new ways. The width of one’s imagination was the limit of the sound palette available to the musician. At the same time, groups such as The Beatles showed that it was not necessary to be a trained, literate musician to be an effective composer who could communicate with a wide audience.

Nowadays, a musician will be familiar with the use of digital (computer- based) and tape recording, a range of electronic instruments as well as acoustic ones. Many will have the ability to edit recorded music in the same way that text can be edited on a word processor, and to mix, enhance and reorganise sounds so that the final effect can be note perfect. In terms of the processing of sounds, it is possible to synthesise sounds (i.e. make and mix new sounds), to sample sounds (record any sound to play from a

ICT IN THE EARLY YEARS

keyboard), to sequence sounds (to compose and record digitally, and then to edit the composition) and these technologies are used throughout classical, pop and jazz traditions.

These inventions have had an enormous impact upon our perceptions of music. We now expect to be able to listen to music, via the radio, TV or CD player, of a quality that would be impossible to reproduce in the con- cert hall. The inventions have changed society’s perceptions of what music is, who plays it and where it can be heard.

In the sphere of music teaching, when these inventions began to be available for popular use, more emphasis began to be put on musical ‘appreciation’ (Borland 1927). Since then, arguments have developed to suggest that music needs to be taught differently, in order to ensure that professional musicians are able to understand music through aural means before beginning to learn notation (Kendell 1977; Paynter 1982). Odam (1995) later considered evidence that the right hemisphere of the brain deals with musical sound, intuition and holistic thought, while the left hemisphere is connected with linguistics and logic. Odam argued for musicians to be trained using aural memory before moving on to study notation, using a parallel with speaking and reading (1995: 33). He further argued that a strong musical experience should be built of complex patterns of sound before progressing with notation (1995: 47). Playing and learning through written symbols seems to be only a western tradition. It is not so in folk, jazz and other cultures, and African music is strongly related to vocal sounds – drumming follows the lines of tonal languages (Wiggins 1993: 24). Other cultures pass on music aurally and notation is often used after a creative act as a reminder of what the musician did. Van der Meer (1980: 139), when studying in India, found that it was quicker to learn the music first, than to make a notation. He also commented that Indian musicians trained first as vocalists. There is a short tradition in early years education of learning songs using names for the pitch of a scale linked to hand signals. It was developed in 1840 by Miss Glover as a system of notation (Rainbow 1967: 115) – this was a form of ‘tonic solfa’ later used by Kodaly (Taylor 1979: 49).

So how can ICT help to improve aural memory and develop musical experience? The chapter is structured around four aspects of developing a musical education that can be enhanced by using ICT. Those are:

1 Awareness of the children’s sound environment: taking time to listen to and describe sounds from their environment, such as sounds from out- side, on a trip, made from objects within their setting, hidden sounds, and of course music around them.

2 Responding to sound, showing an awareness of different ways of moving, at different speeds, and using these movements to respond to live or recorded music.

3 Categorizing sound by associating sounds with objects, moods, events,

USING ICT TO ENHANCE THE LEARNING OF MUSIC

when they are made (a woodblock sounding like knocking on the door, rubbing tambour skin like grass, tootling on a penny-whistle – a happy sound).

4 Recording, playing and changing sounds. Patterning with sound by putting two or more sounds or movements together, and recording the patterns.

Mary Hayes, Chris Taylor and David Wheway