Talking Music

A WebQuery for 9th through 12th Grade

Designed by

William Thornton
thorntonw@cwu.edu

 Just a Picture of People Singing

Introduction | Task | Process | Resources | Evaluation | Conclusion

Introduction

A few weeks ago you went and took some papers off Mr. Thornton's desk as a joke.  In the pile of mail and such you came across a form for submitting to present at a national academic music conference.  As a joke, you decide to fill out the form and say you're an authority on some type of music you really like.  After a few weeks, you forget about your hijinks, until you get a letter in the mail from the conference accepting you as a member of a panel discussion about the merits of your favorite music (Next time you need to remember to fill out someone else's name and address when your pulling a prank, not your own!).  When you go and tell Mr. Thornton, he tells you it would be a really bad idea to back out of the presentation (as well as a paid trip to where the conference is being held), and you should really brush up on your area of expertiese; figure out how to describe your favorite music in more "academic" music language.  He suggest that you find aspects of your favorite music and how to describe them in "music jargon", as well as biographical information about the composer of your favorite piece whithin your new area of expertiese. 

Task

At the end of this project, you should be able to reasonably describe your favorite music's charicteristics with academic musical terms, give a brief historical narrative about a composer or the entire musical genre (but try to keep it brief enough to actually deliver the information successfully!), and have a prototypical example of the music to play for the presentation.

Your final product will consist of a paper, and a week of brief "panel discussions" in class, where you and your peers will be the experts, the rest of the class will be the conference audience, and I will mediate the proceedings.  Group work is allowed and encouraged, but everyone will turn in an origional paper for evaluation.  

    Things you may want to consider:

The Process

Here are some questions you may want to ask yourself over the process of your project to aid self-guided learning.

Resources

            Need some music terms and their definitions?  I'd start here.
            Another site with terminology and definitions, as well as general information about other music topics.
            Very well regarded music school's library.  This specific link is to a list of individual musical artist biographies.
            A number of fairly good biographies are found here. Some searching is needed, but not too tough to navigate.
            As the name says, an international society for appreciating and studying popular music.  
            A site dedicated to arguing that popular music holds no value.
            A site with an interesting method to analyze popular music.
            Good old Wikipedia.  Double check the facts here, but it can be better than most encyclopedias.

If you find a website you would like to use that is not on this list, try to let me check what content it has before you begin using it extensivly for your project.  I trust your judgement, but I don't want you chasing information that is incorrect or incomplete.

Evaluation

The vast majority of this assignment will be on a "credit/no-credit" basis for each criteria I will list below.  I do reserve the right for partial credit in areas, but these will be decided on a case by case basis.

If you work in groups, your discussion panel grade will be calculated together, but the papers will be graded seperatly.

There are 18 possible points for this assignment.  When questions arise about grading ambiguity, please don't hesitate to ask me what may be expected.

Grading Rubrik
2
0
 
 
Understanding of Topic
The team clearly understood the topic in-depth and presented their information clearly and in an organized nature.
Did not demonstrate a competent knowledge of the subject material.
 
 
Information
All information presented in the debate was clear, accurate and thorough. Used Musical terminology to describe musical phenomina.
Did not use musical terminology properly or at all to describe the music.
 
 
Presentation Style
Team consistently used gestures, eye contact, tone of voice and a level of enthusiasm in a way that kept the attention of the audience.
One or more members of the team had a presentation style that did not keep the attention of the audience.
 
 
Use of Facts/Statistics
Every major point was well supported with several relevant facts, statistics and proper musical examples.
Many points had no support and musical example was lacking in relevance.
 
 
Individual Paper
Paper is well written, uses sources from multiple reputable sources, and conveys the writer's ideas well (OUT OF 10 POSSIBLE POINTS).
Paper is not written at a High School writing level, is not supported by facts, and is lacking in the use of proper musical terms.
 
 


 

Conclusion

Hopefully after this assignment you' will have learned to never steal mail off of someone's desk and then fill them out without really knowing what you may be getting into.  Also, you should have a better grasp on the terminology musicians use to describe music, the history of some aspect of your favorite music, and possibly arguments for and agains your music as an artform.

We all benefit by being generous with our work. Permission is hereby granted for other educators to copy this WebQuery, update or otherwise modify it, and post it elsewhere provided that the original author's name is retained along with a link back to the original URL of this WebQuery. On the line after the original author's name, you may add "Modified by (your name) on (date)". If you do modify it, please let me know and provide the new URL.

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