Exploring Kuhn and Hein’s Worlds
I wrote about the challenge of getting to know popular and electronic music as a classically trained musician in my previous blogs. Kuhn and Hein bring up another challenge for educators like me:
“If you are looking to start a music tech program, you will face the challenge of serving a different population of students than you are used to. Music tech classes are diverse, unruly, and unpredictable compared to your top band or select choir. You will have self-identified nonmusicians alongside “alternative” musicians like DJs, beatmakers, and singer- songwriters, and they will vary widely in their knowledge and experience. The nonmusicians in particular will be taking a personal risk by signing up for a music class, and they will need lots of encouragement and a feeling of safety.” (Kuhn and Hein, 2021, xxv)
But they also offer a solution:
“If you can find a way to connect with all the members of this motley crew, you can provide a great creative experience for each of them. Even if you are not familiar with every style or genre your students are interested in, your deep musical background has given you the tools to figure it out, and to provide insights they would not be able to find elsewhere.” (Kuhn and Hein, xxv)
Reading Kuhn and Hein’s book, I looked up some of their work and came across this short documentary by Ableton on Kuhn’s website:
This is about music technology and electronic music programs at three schools in the UK and the US: Greenwich High School, Connecticut, USA; Alec Reed Academy, London, UK; and Lebanon High School, Lebanon, Ohio, USA. Kuhn, who teaches at the latter, gives interesting insights into his music technology program in particular and his approach to music education in general:
“Early on, I was giving a speech to a music ed event, and a guy stood up in the middle of my speech and [said]: You are destroying music education.
It got a really…strong reaction from people, because I’m skipping a lot of the steps… I want to put songs together with kids who are basically beginners at music. I don’t have the time to teach all of music theory, all of ear training, I don’t have time to teach keyboard. I’m not particularly interested in teaching any of those things to beginners. I want to teach the kinds of things that you have to know to be able to make music with these tools. And that’s the part that rubs some music teachers the wrong way… A lot of music teachers, for instance, would say we really have to be learning sheet music notation.
We might be able to just use a tool like the Push and say make a triangle with your fingers, kids, and move the triangle around: We got chord progressions now. We can build all kinds of great things off of that, but it has to be fun first.”
There’s a lot to take in here…
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Hein’s blog is really interesting too. He shares ideas on his podcast, Ethan Teaches You Music. For example, I found the episode Songs vs Grooves very informative as a musician not familiar with Anglo-American pop. He says:
“A song is kind of meant for you to sit and listen to as it’s performed, or if you are listening to recording, as it’s virtually performed. A grove is something you are supposed to more participate in, like you dance to it, or you could rap on it, improvise on top of it, or play instrumental solos.”
This might sound obvious to many regular listeners or pop musicians, but it was certainly educational for someone like me, to whom much of this music used to sound the same.
Most importantly, Hein shares his music on his blog as well. His Classical Remixes is absolutely incredible. Again, bringing in my own background, this music is exactly the kind of bridge and inspiration that I would benefit from as an educator: