Introduction To Music is a new, accessible music course available from Drake Music and OCNSWR (Open College Network South West Region). The course can be accredited at Entry Level, Level 1 and Level 2 and is designed to be fully inclusive, enabling disabled and non-disabled students to work together.
Introduction To Music combines practical performing and composing activities with learning and assessment resources for Clicker 5 software, which is physically accessible to almost any student. These software resources also provide a useful course framework, although teachers should be prepared to adapt and extend the resources further to match the particular needs and interests of their students, as well as their own teaching style.
Introduction to Music comprises four units that can either be taken individually as stand-alone units, or linked together to form a complete course. The units are (in no particular order):
- Music Skills for Performance: focuses on the key skills needed to perform music as a soloist and as part of an ensemble.
- Creating Soundtracks for Films: students investigate film soundtracks and then compose their own.
- Writing Music Down: looks at how music can be written down, including graphic scores and (at Levels 1 & 2,) the basic elements of standard notation.
- Composing Music using Chance Methods: students explore methods used by composers like John Cage, before composing and performing their own ‘chance’ composition. Although it might sound quite ‘high brow’, this unit can be great fun and is particularly useful for students who may not be in a position to play the same notes in the same way every time (due to a physical impairment for example,) while still providing the opportunity to clearly define the rules and conditions within which a musical performance takes place.
The Clicker 5 screen shots below are from the Introduction To Musical Notation unit. They show an Entry Level learning page in orange on the left, with a corresponding Entry Level assessment page in green on the right.
At present, your school or institution needs to be a registered OCN centre to run the course. For details on becoming an OCN centre in England, Wales or Northern Ireland please go to www.nocn.org.uk. Centre registration incurs a fee, but the course and accompanying resources are free. Drake Music is planning to become an OCN centre in 2012, giving the option instead to register for the course through Drake Music.
Background
Drake Music Associate Jonathan Westrup piloted Introduction to Music with Bradley Warwick, a student at St. Rose’s School, Stroud, between 2008 and 2010. Bradley has cerebral palsy and uses an electronic communication aid (VOCA) to speak, as well as switches to compose and perform music. Bradley successfully completed the course and was accredited at Level 1 on all four units, which is a significant achievement. You can read about Bradley taking the course in Experiences, here. St. Rose’s school staff continue to run the course for a mixed class of students.
What can students who take the course do next?
Students might want to take GCSE or BTEC Music, or simply use the course as a platform to continue participating in music making. Drake Music is piloting an accessible BTEC course at Claremont Secondary School in Bristol from 2010 - 2012.
If you are interested in running the course?
We would really like to hear from you. Please email dougbott@drakemusic.org
'Introduction to Music' Clicker 5 software resources by Drake Music is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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