Why Do Music Education Professionals Need to Look Over The Digital Horizon?
6th January 2025
With all the Over The Digital Horizon resources now available on the Music Mark website, their curator, Ben Sellers, explains the programming of the webinars and offers three priciples to consider as we move forward into an ever more digital world.
Ben Sellers
The Over The Digital Horizon webinar series from Wiltshire Music Connect offered a glimpse of how young people may be learning music in two, five or ten years time. It’s fair to say that there are both utopian and dystopian elements in there, and in order to serve our young people we need to ‘grasp the nettle’, acting swiftly and boldly to create spaces that allow our young people to grow into musicians able to rock our worlds – both real and virtual – for decades to come. With that in mind, this article offers three principles as we move inexorably towards the digital horizon. It explains the programming of the webinar series, and discussions that will hopefully help us work together with maximum efficacy.
1: We need to contribute to the innovation process
It can be easy to forget that we as music educators have a lot to contribute to the development of new technologies – we are experts in music and we are experts in learning – so when a new technological advancement comes along we should be asking ourselves ‘who is developing this, and how can we work with them to make it useful for our students?’
One example of this advancement is in the widespread use of wearable sensors, the most common being smartwatches and smart glasses. Many students will soon be wearing these day to day, including in the practice room. With the right software, we can use such devices to detect accuracy of rhythm, timing, pitch and timbre, as well as monitoring aspects of posture, fingerings and playing technique (e.g. bowing movements). This data can be used to both ‘gamify’ the learning of any instrument, piece or exercise (like Guitar Hero but with actual musical learning), but the data can also be shared and discussed with the teacher, effectively giving the teacher ‘eyes and ears’ in the practice room. See George Waddell’s presentation ‘Future of instrumental teaching’ presentation for more on this.
A second example of how we can contribute to the innovation process would involve us supporting the design of apps for phones and tablets. There are some great theory and ear training apps from ABRSM and others, but when it comes to music creation there is currently no app that develops a user’s understanding of tonal harmony or orchestration through composition or songwriting. How about if we worked with tech partners to create that app? We don’t need to change what we teach, but we may need to change the medium with which it is taught.
2: We need to prepare to work in truly virtual spaces
Another huge change that is very likely to happen in the not so distant future is the commonplace use of augmented and virtual reality, together called ‘extended reality’. Many young people are going to be learning, playing games, socialising and (hopefully) playing music in immersive virtual worlds, often referred to as the ‘metaverse’.
The image of a generation of young people with headsets on, completely oblivious to the real world, with unaccountable companies collecting data on their facial expressions, blood pressure, breathing rates… yes, this can be scary and sit badly with our idea that music-making needs to be an in-person activity in order to foster connection and community. However, if the increased use of phones and tablets in music education is anything to go by, the metaverse could well become the place where instrumental teaching, ensemble playing and even performances take place, and it is much better that we, who have our pupils’ rather than shareholders interests at heart, are the ones creating and holding these spaces.
And virtual worlds also open up incredible opportunities. As Stefania Seraphin says in her presentation, they ‘give us the unique ability to step into the shoes of another person than oneself.’ Pupils could sit in in James Brown’s horn section and follow his hand signals, or play bass with Queen’s Live Aid concert and have Freddie dancing around them. Or attend the weekly West of England Youth Orchestra virtual rehearsal, where they will play in real time, latency free, with their peers, if for whatever reason they are not able to attend in person. They could learn about acoustics and lighting as they build their own virtual venues. They may do a performance on the Friday in person, and on Saturday in a virtual world.
They could practise for auditions and instrumental exams with virtual examiners in recreations of exam rooms or concert halls. This way of working won’t work for everyone. It is up to Music Hubs, arts organisations and individual ensemble teachers to create spaces for those who don’t want to or are unable to access virtual worlds, and it may be that it turns out that young people en masse decide that making music is just much better in person.
But it is also an opportunity to create virtual saturday morning music schools, spaces for rock bands to be mentored, DJ academies, massed choirs of young people located around the world. These things are going to happen, and the question is: is it us doing them or someone else? And if we want it to be us, we need to start working towards it now.
3: We need to diversify practitioners, partnerships and pedagogies
As educators we are no longer gatekeepers of musical skills or knowledge. I believe that the role of the educator will increasingly be to respond, guide, collaborate with and be a role model for their learners. We expose them to a variety of styles, ensembles, career pathways – then discuss with them the areas they want to develop and use our experience and musicianship to help them get there, or find someone who can.
Japanese master Taiko drummers in Sapporo will get up early to deliver after-school sessions in Devizes. Up and coming rappers in Dallas will mentor Trowbridge’s next Eminem. This is, in part, happening already, as Phi Pham’s presentation explains. Crucially, we must acknowledge that the person with the musical skills to support a pupil’s chosen pathway may not yet have the teaching skills, and we need to build solid and long term training pathways for emerging educators.
And as the music industry becomes increasingly reliant on film, tv and video games, we should make partnerships with other sectors. Video game music, which generates more revenue than the music and film industries combined, is of particular relevance, as Gina Zdanowicz and Sean Devlin explain in their presentation.
The changes that need to be made are too big for a single organisation to make alone. It is crucial that we work together as a sector, pooling our time, energy and funding, and see the process not as a threat, but as a way to share our love of music-making in new ways, and with new audiences.
