Alex Ruthmann’s Blog

One of the challenges for art educators is to know how a student visually experiences a work of art. What do they notice first? What are the students’ visual pathways through the artwork? More broadly, how do they see the artwork?

Similar challenges exist for the music educator in knowing how students listen to music and what they perceive during that process.

In my classes I have used Frank Jonas’ Geoscape 6 as a way to better understand how my students see a work of art. A common conception that my students often have is that a work of art is static in that it does not change over time, unlike music which is almost always in motion through time. One way to challenge this conception is to challenge students to compose a piece of music that expresses their visual pathway through a work of art.

I have had students compose to Geoscapes 6 with both acoustic and computer-based instruments. When I present the painting to the students, I often ask them?

• What do you see?
• What did you notice first? Second? Third?
• How might you represent what you see through sound?
• What does this artwork sound like to you?

Whether students work together in small groups with classroom instruments or work alone or in small groups with loop software, I have found my students’ pathways through this artwork to be very different from each other. Some students see the background squares first, then additional layers of “chaos” on top. Some view it holistically noticing “chaos” first, then moving “downward” through the artwork to the order of the squares. Others focus on the shapes or colors and try to represent those aspects of the artwork through their music.

Perhaps the most interesting has been our class discussions when sharing our compositions. My students always came away with a better understanding that not everyone sees an artwork in the same way. Also, they come to better understand how an entire class of students can create totally different pieces of music from the same visual artwork and the different techniques composers can use to express through sound.

Musicians often approach composing with music software in an additive way–starting by creating music one layer, voice, or note at a time. We might lay down a bass or drum track, then a melody or another instrument as we build our compositions. Most music software is designed to facilitate this approach. However, what might happen if we took advantage of the design of loop-based software programs like Super Duper Music Looper, Acid Music Studio, or GarageBand by allowing students to compose in a subtractive way, similar to that of sculptors who start with a piece of rock or wood, removing portions to reveal the finished work? What might a piece of music sound like if we borrowed the process that sculptors use and applied it to composing?

To start the project, students viewed four Marshall Fredericks sculptures entitled Pony Express. These sculptures were created by sculpting a block of clay to reveal the images. A mold of the clay carvings was created which was then used to cast the final sculptures in bronze. The process that Marshall Fredericks used was a subtractive process–he removed portions of clay to reveal his final sculpture.

Drawing on the sculpting process, students used Acid Music Studio to create their own “sound mass” similar to a block of clay, wood, or stone. Students were asked to create an Acid file comprised of 10 to 15 layers of different sound loops that lasted for a total of two minutes. The result was a screen painted solid with a variety of different sound loops, creating a cacophonous “sound mass.”

After students had created their sound masses, they traded them with their classmates. The task for the classmates was to use a subtractive process of removing or altering portions of the sound mass (parallel to the sculpting process) to create a music composition. Students could not add anything to the sound masses, however, they could use the erase tool to make changes to the the texture and form of the compositions. Students also transform the musical layers through the use of filter, key change, and tempo tools to create their composition.

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Engaging Technology-infused Composing Experiences for the General Music Classroom