CTImusic
News
Winter 1998
Computer Assisted Learning for Musical Awareness (CALMA)
Department of Music, University of Huddersfield
Michael Pengelly
This project focuses on the teaching of Musical Awareness, an area central to the education of all musicians. It aims to develop and disseminate innovative approaches to the teaching of Musical Awareness which have been researched over a number of years at the University of Huddersfield.
The Concept of Musical Awareness
The innovative approach to the teaching of Musical Awareness has been devised by the RAMP (Research into Applied Musical Perception) Unit in the Department of Music at Huddersfield. It is related to, but broader than, conventional aural training - which is too often detached from performance, composition and the critical appraisal of real music. The RAMP approach is rooted firmly in making this perceptual training and awareness directly relevant to 'real-life' musical experience, whether it is that of composer, performer, listener, teacher or musicologist. Traditional dictation-based aural courses - now thought by many to be outdated and of limited relevance - can engender a narrow approach to listening, so focused on pitch and duration that they may even deaden students' awareness of other crucial aspects of music. The RAMP approach, however, enhances students' awareness of, and responsiveness to, aspects of sound such as timbral variation, nuances of performance and intonation. Issues such as the listeners' critical response to music, aural imaging and interactive improvisation are also addressed. A detailed account of this philosophy can be found published in Pratt (1990).
The end product of this project will be a Computer Assisted Learning (CAL) package which will help disseminate these innovative techniques of aural development. We believe that many aspects of the teaching of Musical Awareness will be greatly enhanced by the addition of CAL to more traditional teaching methods, and that the package will be of value to all undergraduate music courses.
Interactive Computer Assisted Learning
Following our success in developing SYnthia*, a CAL package which combined interactive graphic control of sound examples with flexible yet structured learning for teaching the principles of sound synthesis, we aim to produce another highly interactive package. The new software will enable students:
- to investigate the principles of Musical Awareness in greater depth
- to determine their own learning paths within a structured framework
- to move quickly through material they understand and repeat sections they find more difficult
- to take ideas explained theoretically and immediately explore their meaning in sound
- to test and improve their ability through a series of carefully graded exercises
To do this, the computer will play sound examples from disk; it will also synthesise and modify sounds in real-time using interactive graphical controls. The program will run on either Macintosh or IBM-compatible desktop computers and will not require additional synthesis hardware. The package will provide a year-long course in Musical Awareness, enabling students to develop their personal musical sensitivity, working independently, whilst also including preparation for group activities. As such, it could form the basis for a crucial foundation module for music students throughout Higher Education - those studying in university music departments, those in conservatoires and those in teacher-training. It will be offered free of charge to HE establishments.
Among the few traditional CAL aural packages which exist, there is nothing available for this broader, more musical approach to Musical Awareness, and nothing as flexible in interaction as we are proposing.
Collaboration
If you would be interested in our work as a potential end user Ð and we are particularly keen to forge links with other music departments to establish how such a package could be integrated into their courses Ð and could find time to discuss how our project could be of use to you, then please contact us. The package has great potential as a learning resource, and your contribution will help us to integrate our work successfully into undergraduate programmes.
Dissemination
Current development copies of the software are available direct from the project and are also lodged with CTI Music's software library at Lancaster.
Additional information
Further information on the CALMA project is available on the Web at: http://www.hud.ac.uk/schools/music+humanities/music/CALMAstart.html
Contacts
Project Directors
Dr Michael Clarke, Tel: +44 (0) 1484 472424
Prof George Pratt
Developers
Julia Bowder, Tel: +44 (0) 1484 472011, e-mail: J.A.Bowder@hud.ac.uk
Dr Michael Pengelly, Tel: +44 (0) 1484 472011, e-mail: M.Pengelly@hud.ac.uk
James Saunders, Tel:+44 (0) 1484 472011, e-mail: J.E.Saunders@hud.ac.uk
Project Address
CALMA
Department of Music
University of Huddersfield
Queensgate
Huddersfield
HD1 3DH
UK
REFERENCES
Pratt, G. (1990). Aural Awareness: Principles and Practice. (Milton Keynes: Open University Press).
* SYnthia has received international recognition, winning the 1994 European Academic Software Award in the category for Humanities. It is distributed by the ASK network at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany.
CTImusic News is © 1998 CTImusic, Jennifer Barnes, Simon Baines, Cliona Doris, Marianne Hall, Michael Pengelly, Harriet Richmond, Claire Taylor-Jay, Lisa Whistlecroft. All rights reserved
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