Evangelicals

I've been pretty annoyed by evangelicals over the years. I want to clarify this by saying that I know that not ALL evangelical christians are like this. But I know that over the past few years, especially in Africa, Evang. have been one of leading groups persecuting gay people. Even if I wasn't gay, I don't understand how anyone can view the genocide of a group of people as a good thing. Evangelicals in Africa, I want to say it's in Uganda but I'm not sure, Have been behind legislation in the country that makes it legal to hang gay people; FOR FUN. like it's just something they want to do and have fun, I mean it's literally like an old fashioned Fag Drag or cross burning... do I need to say more? I feel like that demonstrative enough of how dangerous these extremists are.

Don't get me wrong, I'm christian myself, but the types of showy events they talk about seem like they can only lead to trouble, you get people all worked up with showy displays and it can make people crazy, If you had the expression that a single person is smart, but a crowd of people is stupid, this is what I mean, people get this type of group mentality that what they are doing is THE ONLY WAY, and suddenly, enter Adolf Hitler, who can manipulate basically good people into doing things they would never do, I'm just very dis trusting of these types of displays.

A Plague of Ticks

I liked this reading, I read the book 'Naked' a couple of years ago but it was nice to revisit it. my favorite thing about this reading (and the book overall is really good) is that it's hilarious. obviously everyone likes something funny, but I hadn't considered reading the story as a way I could imporve my writing, I read a lot and some things have probably seeped (spelling?) into my writing from this but the truth is, I never really thought about it directly. I think just noticing this kind of thing and being aware of it will drastically imporve my writing, and hopefully it's overall hilarity!!

p.s. has anyone ever read any of the books by Augusten Burroughs? I've read most of his books and a couple of Dave Sedaris' and I get them confused because there writing styles are very similar. in fact when I first started reading 'A Plague of Ticks' I thought there was a mistake and it had been written by Bouroughs. In any case, if anyone really liked the 'Naked' selection, your sure to like some of A.B's books.

Shameless plug: Hey, I just gave a conducting recital and Beth (the other bassoonist in our class) played in it, if you'd like to check out some of our skills check out the videos here: My Recital! all the videos are on there in six parts!... okay, that's my shameless plug, thanks
Dan
the first and the last videos are particularly good... okay, that was yet another plug... haha

Words........

This was really interesting to me, and I mean R E A L L Y interesting. especially the parts of the woman who lost her speech ability when I compared it to Ill de Ponzo (sp?) to the woman the lack of language was very nearly a blessing and when asked to chose between that and a world with words, she didn't know how to answer. Whereas Ponzo was overcome with happiness when he discovered that everything has a name and that he would finally be able to communicate with other people.

I liked this show a lot, but the music could not have been more distracting, they kept playing it as a background thing but my mind grabbed the music and brought it to the fore front. I had to go back and listen to a couple of things twice just to hear what they were saying and force myself to ignore music.

one final thing, could this possibly have been any more pretentious? is it any wonder that public radio is running out of money?

Introduction

This blog post seemed to want exactly what the intro for my annotated bibliography is.. so, here you go!

The topic I have chosen to write about is the state of elementary general music education in America. Mainly I hope to address a lack of continuity between music educators, an overall restructuring of both the types of music being taught, and the amount of music experienced, and the use of movement to teach the form and structure of music in addition to melodic contour (which it is already largely used for.) The main reason this comes to my attention is largely due to several methods classes both specifically related to elementary music classes, which would be elementary methods, and the classes that inadvertently tend to touch on the subject, such as General Choral Methods, And Teaching Music to Disabled Students in Inclusive Settings. These classes have shown me a few things about general music, one being that every teacher views what should be done in a different way and sets about reaching those goals in a different way, and two that every teacher feels that certain core principals of music are more important than others. This is largely what led me to want to discuss this topic, In classes such as english or math a very straightforward and often specific curriculum is laid down by the school. In this way we can be assured that students are receiving at the very least the same information, however it is approached by a teacher. However, in many states, the curriculum for music is much less defined, schools generally only want to see an inclusion of the National Standards of Music Education as part of a lesson plan. This is, in part, a blessing because it always the teacher freedom to arrange curriculum in the way they feel most comfortable, however, it is simultaneously a curse for students because from school to school children will be taught different concepts in different ways. The main problem with this is that some children will receive a better education than others and the goal of education is to grant everyone a free and appropriate education with the highest possible benefit to the students.

            In order to research this topic I spent much of my time in the music library searching series texts for lessons involving twentieth century music, in particular, the composer Arnold Schoenberg who nearly singlehandedly changed the way we in the classical world hear, experience and write music. In all the shelves and shelves of textbooks I found only two texts, both for eighth grade, that had one page each of general information on Schoenberg, both of them presenting it in different ways, and recommending different pieces to listen to. (the recordings of which are cited below) This had the effect of both saddening and angering me, Schoenberg is viewed by many as one of (if not the) most important composers of the twentieth century in both a historical and compositional capacity. From there I searched the music index on EBSCOhost and searched for articles that included the lack of continuity between music educators, as well as different approaches to teaching music of any kind through movement or other methods. My main resource for the theory of music in the twentieth century is a book entitled “Twentieth Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice” by Vincent Persichetti. This book is one of the best efforts to cover every type of harmony used in the twentieth century. I mainly hope to use it as a guide as to which types of harmonies will be accessible and understandable to students of a young age. My other resources are recordings of the two pieces listed in the series textbooks and the interview conducted with General Music specialist Dr. Laura Ferguson.

Plagiarism

This talk about plaigirism was  very interesting to me as a musician, mainly because of the differences between the way it is approached in music and in writing. so many things seemed to be plagiarism in writing that aren't in music. for example, If I want to write a set of variations on a theme by Bach, I don't have to pay a fee or even give much credit, I can just title the piece 'Variations on a Bach Theme' and it would be more than acceptable, IN FACT many amazing pieces of music are writte in just this way, the Finale of Brahms 4th symphony is based entirely on a chorale by Bach. however if I did something like this in writing, there would be extreme and dire consequences, not to mention the moral implications and punishments involved with such a crime. Overall, I understand why plagiarism is wrong in writing, and have never done it before and don't intend on starting now, but the thing that troubled me is why it should be so different in the musical word, after all writing is an art as much as music is.

Paper Topic

The topic for my paper is basically (I won't call it this) but it's going to be about what's wrong with elementary music education. All of you (who grew up in America and went to public school) had music classes in school most likely from 1st - 8th grade. Unfortunately, most of you probably vaguely remember them OR if you do remember them, you probably remember them as just singing in class and basically it was viewed as a 'bird' course. (hopefully some of you actually did have a meaningful music teacher in primary school! (if you did, send them an email and thank them!) but I didn't and most people I've talked to didn't either!) the problem is that general music CAN (DEFINATELY NOT ALWAYS) be a place where under skilled musicians flock, or a place where skilled musicians forget their higher learning and become the type of musician they are teaching (a very unskilled one) obviously, this is not always the case (and I really can't emphasize this enough) but I want my paper will be a way to show teachers that little kids can be taught advanced concepts in music and also serve to convince people that they need to be teaching things like this or learned music will literally DIE in America.

This is the article I found, it talks about a lack of unity amongst general music teachers, as well as adressing how poorly we are prepared to do this in college.

Spurgeon, Alan. "Proposed changes for the Undergraduate Elementary Music Education Curriculum". General Music Today. Vol. 17 Issue 3. pg. 28-32. Music Index. EBSCO Host. IUP Library, Indiana University of PA. Indiana, PA. February 2011.

Link to Article

Annotated Bib example

Hello Everyone!

My professor didn't recommend an article, she recommended a series of posters she saw at a convention for music ed.
because of this, I thought I would cite a book that I would probably include in my paper. I'm hoping to do my paper on strategies for teaching 20th century harmonic practices to young children in general music education settings.
So I figured I would cite a book about 20th century harmony which I would be refering to quite a bit

Persichetti, Vincent.Twentieth Century Harmony: Creative Aspects and Practice. New York, W.W. Norton & Company. Print

This book is viewed by Dr. Ferguson, as well as several other music faculty members, as the book to use to understand 20th century harmonic practices. The great thing about this book is that as well as explaining each harmonic and compositional technique, the author also gives exercises at the end of each chapter. This is excellant because it gives students a chance to both review the concepts and also practice them. another great thing about this book is that relatively little training in "Common Practice (roughly 1750-1850)" music theory is required. Because of this, I feel this book demonstrates that it may be easier to teach 20th century harmonic practices to children rather than harmonic practices before the 20th century.