Journal of Popular Music Education - Current Issue

In an alternative universe to popular music (PM) education, many community music (CM) educators turned to technology during unprecedented pandemic disruptions, attempting to maintain group music-making and social connections. This study investigates CM technology-aided pandemusicking, drawing from case studies of twelve Canadian leaders, and finding that music fields, values and goals were blurred. These leaders often used recorded and live internet music-making, which required adopting digital technologies that align more closely with PM fields than their traditional practices. Pandemusicking was often a difficult solution, but leaders were aided by increased consumption and skill-partnerships. Nuanced considerations from literature on media culture counter utopian rhetoric about tech-enabled democracy, consumption and participation while prompting reflections on broader implications of a technological world that leaves some music participants and educators behind. This outcome has vital implications for leaders with inclusive goals, who work with wide age ranges, and it suggests potential roles of PM education and educators.

Music technology-focused ensembles such laptop orchestras have become mainstays at higher education institutions. Nevertheless, the perpetual innovation inherent in the mandate of such a group presents some unique challenges in the post-pandemic academic landscape. In the post-COVID period of supply chain breakdowns and budget-obsessed administrations, building an ensemble focused on technology may become prohibitively expensive. As traditional music departments struggle with lower enrolment, expanding large ensembles to include a more diverse corpus of instruments would solve multiple problems. Assuming the challenges inherent in starting such groups could be overcome, ensembles that expand their instrumental diversity could allow for innovative study, increase enrolment and even save the host institution much-needed funds. The author groups extant technology-focused musical ensembles into categories by their focus and then proposes a novel category featuring intentionally diverse instrumentation, which may solve many of the problems associated with funding such groups while increasing and diversifying enrolment.

Since the publication of Paul Théberge’s seminal book Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology (1997), a series of multifaceted, interrelated and co-dependent technical, economic, social, cultural and musical changes have contributed to the emergence of a distinct role of music-maker that could be termed ‘the Bedroom Producer’ (although as long as Bedroom Producers have the correct equipment, then the location of their music production activity is immaterial). This article explores the creative context of the Bedroom Producer and analyses the co-current, interactive spheres of music-making that they engage with. These analyses show that are important implications for educators working within popular music education (PME) and the article introduces some of the ways in which educators can use contemporary educational approaches to take account of the creative process in teaching and learning.

During the 25 years since the publication of my book, Any Sound You Can Imagine: Making Music/Consuming Technology, a number of technological developments and theoretical trends have emerged: among them, the integration of music production within Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) platforms, and the rise of social media as a means for information sharing among musicians, on the one hand; and the emergence, in popular music studies, of practice-based and community-oriented forms of music research and pedagogy, on the other. In addition, new technologies and applications of artificial intelligence (AI) have begun to have an impact on music-making and listening at every level. These developments are discussed in relation to theoretical issues of innovation, production, consumption and gender found in my previous work and, more specifically, in relation to concerns raised in a number of articles in the present volume, using them as a springboard for further reflection and theorizing.