Music Technology Pedagogy

Rethinking Music Technology Pedagogy

Music technology pedagogy is the focus of this project and website, which grew out of a blog post by Jeff Kaiser titled Why Reaper? That post sparked an ongoing discussion among educators and professional audio practitioners about pedagogy in music technology, teaching music production, recording, and sound design across universities, community colleges, K–12 programs, and technical schools.

Why Software Choice Matters in Music Technology Education

These conversations explored how music technology education often prioritizes “industry-standard” tools such as Pro Tools and Logic. While professional familiarity with these platforms can be important, we argue that effective pedagogy in music technology should be balanced with instruction in tools that support a broader diversity of users, workflows, and creative approaches.

We advocate introducing the digital audio workstation (DAW) Reaper—alongside other alternative and open platforms—as a viable option within music technology education contexts often dominated by Pro Tools and Logic. In this way, software choice becomes a pedagogical issue rather than a purely technical one within music technology pedagogy.

An article expanding on these ideas in a more general sense was written by Jeff Kaiser and presented at the Audio Engineering Society’s (AES) International Conference on Breaking Barriers in Audio.

The paper is available as a free, open-access download through the Audio Engineering Society’s eLibrary.

Toward a Forward-Looking Pedagogy in Music Technology

In this project, we ask: what might a forward-looking music technology pedagogy look like in an era of rapid technological, cultural, and economic change? Such a pedagogy must certainly teach the current context, applications, and technologies. It should also address technologies and applications that may not yet be common in the industry, but have the possibility to bring about innovation.

We believe education is about much more than the transference of information and technological solutions from instructors to students. For us, education must also explore possibilities, and should be a time to learn about options, to construct and solidify conceptual knowledge, and to create a meaningful future. There is strength in knowing how to achieve one's goals quickly in a familiar working environment, but we also believe that there is considerable value in learning larger concepts that are transferable, and working towards equitable, accessible, creative, innovative, and entrepreneurial futures.

Broadening one's learning and exploring new and various ways of working also carries additional benefits, of course. It can improve memory, communication, listening, and comprehension, teaching one to appreciate different values and points of view. It fosters insights into the ways other people might think, encouraging empathy toward and support of one’s colleagues. It also helps one to become a good critical thinker and creative problem solver, able to make connections across complex ideas. All these skills will contribute to an opening up of opportunities as the student moves into a future filled with possibilities.

For us, a forward-looking pedagogy in music technology includes these ideas:

Equitable Music Technology Education

  • It should create awareness of—and access to—music technology instructional resources to as broad a group as possible. There should be as many free and inexpensive resources as possible, encouraging the potential of students who lack the means to purchase expensive options.

Accessible Music Technology Pedagogy

  • Accessible Across Geography—Such a pedagogy should incorporate a focus on what can be learned away from studio locations with the inherent financial investment they require. We do not want to take away from the importance of studio located coursework— access to professional equipment, in particular hardware, is a joy, but it is also a privilege not accessible by all. One goal we envision is that students who own, or even just have access to, a laptop can not only produce music, but complete their coursework in their bedroom, at their kitchen table, in their favorite park, coffeehouse or library—anywhere, in fact, without requiring additional costly software.
  • Financially Accessible—it should be accessible to people of varying financial means.
  • Accessibility Across Abilities—it should be accessible by people of varying abilities.

Cross-Platform Music Technology Tools

  • The pedagogy we envision should not simply dictate investment in a specific computer brand, OS, or software, in its choice of teaching tools. In addition to expensive standards, it should introduce students to, and instruct using free or affordable professional software that supports different operating systems and different vintages of computers.

Creativity in Music Technology Learning

  • This pedagogy should encourage students to express musical creativity while learning music technology fundamentals.

Innovation and Historical Awareness

  • A forward-looking pedagogy must, almost by definition, reinforce the value of innovation even while it recognizes and learns from the rich lineage and history contributed by the music technologists, producers, engineers, artists, and other innovators that have gone before.

Professional and Transferable Skills

  • This pedagogy should offer transferable skills that will enable students to work in various studio environments and at a distance from the studio.

Entrepreneurial Approaches to Music Technology

  • A pedagogy of this kind should encourage, or at least introduce an entrepreneurial approach, presenting scenarios in which students might own their own means of producing  music rather than be locked into studios owned by others. It should attempt to educate independent thinkers who can embrace solutions outside of expensive options.

Critically Engaged Music Technology Pedagogy

Within critically engaged music technology pedagogy, we ask questions such as:

  • What does it mean to be critically engaged in music technology?
  • For us, it means to explore and ask questions about the frameworks in which music technology is created and used.
  • Technology is not created in a void, it is created by people living in cultures with shared meanings, values, tools, art, institutions, and other structures. How do these things inform and influence what is being made and how it is used? Who made it, why did they, and for what purpose?
  • The recording studio itself is a location of cultural production, both in terms of cultural products (recorded music) as well as meanings and values, et cetera.
  • Among others, we ask these questions:
    • What kind of culture has been created by past producers, engineers, and artists?
    • How does that culture affect us and the music that we produce?
    • What kind of culture can be created by future producers, engineers, and artists?