A constructivist approach for opening minds to sound-based music

Students often find sound-based music (sbm, an umbrella term created by Leigh Landy to describe music where sound is the basic unit rather than the musical note) difficult to understand when they first encounter it, and this article explores a practice-based method for increasing engagement through learning heightened listening skills. Accepting sound rather than notes as the basic unit of music can unlock access to a whole range of works and creative possibilities, but often this seems problematic for students. It therefore represents a ‘threshold concept’ in terms of the creative practice and appreciation of sbm. The approach outlined in this article utilizes a constructivist view of education, and it is suggested that overcoming ingrained preconceptions of what ‘music’ should be might be better achieved by allowing students to discover the potential of sbm through their own compositional work rather than through traditional methods of learning.