Recording

One of the tools that I have always found extremely valuable in my teaching and in music education in general is audio recording. I have found it valuable to record yourself or an ensemble in order to listen to the recording and to analyze it and critique it to help understand musical concepts and improve performance abilities. As I read the articles, “Picture This” and “Capturing Your Sound: A Guide to Live Recording,” it was nice to be able to reconfirm the value of audio recording and its uses in music education. The articles reconfirmed that recording students can provide them with the opportunity to hear themselves and self-critique their performance in an effort to better understand the music and their abilities as well as how they may improve for the future. In addition to showing students what they are doing well and how they can improve, students seem to be intrigued by recording themselves. Through my experience, and as the article “Picture This” says, students enjoy the opportunity to perform and “Kids love hearing themselves” (Watson 33). From my experience with recording students, they seem to give a better effort when they are making a recording, and they are always excited to hear the results of their efforts, whether it is good or it still needs a great deal of improvement.

In addition to the values of audio recording that I have experienced myself, it was interesting to learn the many other ways that audio recording can be used for music education. I appreciated some of the creative ways that recording could be used to enhance music learning. For example, I thought that it was interesting to learn about using audio recording and audio-editing software to provide visual representations of musical concepts to go along with the audio recording. I can see the value of showing students how they are playing a note. For example, sometimes students will not understand or maybe not even believe you when you tell them that they are not holding a note the correct value. However, when they hear their performance and see a visual representation of their performance they cannot argue with the facts, and they tend to grasp the concept more effectively. I also thought that the idea of using recordings to demonstrate progress to students over time was an excellent idea. I have considered showing students their progress; however, I have not been able to incorporate it into my teaching up to this point due to time constraints. However, I think that demonstrating progress would be something that would be valuable to take the time to include into my plans in the future. Students are usually very critical of themselves, and I think it is important to show them how well they are doing and how they have progressed from time to time. In addition, I also think that it is a valuable idea to use recording to demonstrate progress for the purpose of grading. Often times when students perform in rehearsal or for a quiz, they are not able to revisit their performance to critique it. However, with recordings one has the ability to preserve the sounds that were created so that students can review what they have created, giving them the ability to critique themselves, and giving the teacher a concrete piece of evidence for grading purposes.

Along with the ability to record students for educational use in the classroom, it is also important to be able to record student performances at events such as concerts. This is important because it preserves the concert experience for students as well as for the teacher, which can be used to show the growth in a music program over time. For example, if I were to record my concerts, I would be able to check back in a few years to see if the groups have improved in overall quality and to see what areas need continual improvement. As the article stated, in order to create recordings of concerts, one has to either hire professionals to do the recording or he/she must do the recording on his/her own. I thought that the article, “Capturing Your Sound: A Guide to Live Recording,” was a good guide to show someone how to make a recording on your own in an economical manner. This is important because it is not always feasible to hire someone to create recordings. Throughout my own musical education and teaching, I have seen many recordings being made and the microphones used for the recording; however, I never knew exactly what went into the process. Reading the article “Capturing Your Sound: A Guide to Live Recording” provided a good fundamental explanation of how to create your own recordings. In addition, I felt that one of the more valuable parts of the guide was how one can get the students involved in the process. I think that getting the students involved in the recording process shows the students another aspect of music and as the article mentioned, it can even help students develop their critical listening skills. I also thought that the article had helpful information because it gave me a better understanding of how I may use the equipment that is available to me in a more effective manner to help preserve the performances of my students. For example, I may have been able to record a performance, but the article helped me to better understand how I could edit and then duplicate the performance more effectively. In general, I believe that audio recording is a technology that is invaluable to music education and it can provide many opportunities for the teacher and students.