A Reflective Lens: Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice | Page 17

A Reflective Lens:
Music Pedagogical Research to Transform Practice

I designed the tasks such that they were given in bitesizes with proper scaffolding so that students were able
to internalise the concept one at a time. Students were
provided with clear instructions written on the whiteboard
(Wiggins, 1994) and they were given prompts on which
musical elements to focus on (i.e. melody, melodic ostinato,
rhythmic ostinato, and so on) (Peterson & Madsen, 2010).
Students were allowed to use graphic notation or alphabets
(letter names) instead of staff notation, whichever they
were more comfortable with, so that they could channel
their creativity naturally (Auh & Walker, 1999). The first
composition task had more prescriptive parameters (i.e.
the rhythm pattern for the melody) set for the students to
work on, whereas the second composition activity allowed
students free reign with the rhythm patterns for their melody.

In Lesson One:

In Lesson Two:

Students were only asked to change the lyrics
and the melody of the song. Here, the rhythm
patterns were prescribed for them. For
beginners, I deemed it advisable to prescribe
every aspect of the composition except for
the melody. Before the composition exercise,
I determined the rhythm and meter signature
commensurate with the students’ level of
understanding (Brophy, 1996); in this case,
the meter signature chosen was 4/4. Students
were also asked to change the melody of the
song using a five-tone scale set – pentatonic
scale, which is good and manageable for
beginners (Ginnochio, 2003).

Students were tasked to create various 1-bar
rhythm patterns using stick notation before
deciding on a rhythmic ostinato to accompany
the song. Afterwards, they were to add
pitches to the rhythm pattern to turn it into
a melodic ostinato. Students were provided
with opportunities for random exploration
while figuring out the task (Wiggins, 1994).

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