MUSIC + MAKING

For Integrative Fluency

The ideas presented here mark the beginning of the Music + Making pedagogical approach. Music + Making is the next step for students graduated from the Language Rhythm system for musical fluency. These two concepts are part of a broader philosophy I have coined Integrative Fluency™. Suffice it to say, Integrative Fluency is a work-in-progress; but the central concept is about opening the way for students to tap into an augmented facility of mind or an expanded capability of consciousness latent in human potential.

Music + Making is simple: nurture students' ability for self-expression in a rapidly changing, technological and globalized world. The method employs project-based learning, multi-spherical thinking, multi-disciplinary cross-pollination — concepts from advanced teaching pedagogy — in a traditional STEM maker lab that has been tailored to encourage artistic exploration and development.

For example, students will use the creative, do-it-yourself notion of "making” by researching, designing and building a novel musical instrument. Using a Raspberry Pi, tech wearables, 3D printing and learning to code, students can begin building a collection of uniquely expressive instruments. With Language Rhythm training as a base cognitive toolkit, a new tech-based artistic language can evolve — a language that is equal parts music, speech and code. The Music + Making task is to conjoin technological and artistic development and then contextually situate the resulting performative practice in tradition. For example, here is how I envision jazz improvisation evolving with technology.

As a consequence of the Integrative Fluency philosophy, Music + Making vitally shapes creative capacity to meet the artistic needs of a technological future. Most importantly, students are forced to engage with the burgeoning tech in order to define its role in satisfying the needs of real human, cultural performative practices. In whole, tomorrow’s artists will need to be linguistically fluent as the world's traditions adapt and morph. In my case example, advancing jazz students will begin to stretch the tradition into a viable improvisatory language for the future. Augmented facilities of mind and body will become more commonplace; and tomorrow’s musicians need to be prepared: technically, artistically, linguistically. 

I believe that each student is capable of participating in enjoyable and gratifying music-making. Old-school teaching methods — like the way I was taught — no longer serve advancing artists for their computerized future. The capacity for artistic self-expression must be nurtured in a manner consistent with our traditions while preparing communities for a computerized world. This is Music + Making. Let’s be makers of music!