Music teachers seem to either embrace or fear music composition and those that hold to composition differ on how to teach it. Instructors tend to war between two approaches to music composition; either standard music notation or non-notational composition strategies (Bauer, 2014). Both composition strategies have value and are a needed for all students. However, some would say one strategy has more value than the other. The best way for an educator to not undervalue an approach is to analyze and highlight the positives of each approach and consider the overall benefits for the students they teach.
The music notation composition approach is a tried and true approach to teaching music composition. The argument for notation based composition is the belief that students should learn to read and notate music because it is a fundamental part of music literacy (Bauer, 2014). Notation based strategies are valuable because those that can read and write music can also perform the music they have created. When considering how to begin to teach composition to student an educator must consider the skill level of the students. For novice students, an educator can start teaching composition with simple rhythm patterns of quarter note, quarter rest, and eight notes with a time signature of 4/4. After students show mastery of rhythmic composition and educator can move on to pitch starting with so mi in C major. After students compositions skills have developed more, the educator can add so mi la, do mi so la, do re mi, C major pentatonic scale, and C major scale.
The non-notation composition approach involves the use of promoting music creativity in technology without tradition composition. The advocates of non-notation strategy argue that a large majority of their students have an interest in music that are not involved in tradition music settings like band, choir, or small ensemble. Students use digital audio workstations (DAW) to record, manipulate, and arrange sound. Music teachers that use DAW tend to use technologies that are cost effective and easy to use for students. Bazan states that some students have DAW technology on their home computer. GarageBand is a popular software for Apple products some students already have. Those students that have an iPad or Apple Computer at home can explore the software on their own time. Soundation and Audacity are DAWs that are free and students can download the technology on a PC (Audacity) or use online (Soundation).
Music teachers are going to discover that not all of their students are going to want to sing in a choir or play an instrument in a band, but they will want to be creative with music. Digital audio workstations allow students to become creative with music in their way. On the other hand, music educators will always have students that want to sing concert chorus or play in a jazz band. Students that want to go on to play instruments and sing in choirs need traditional music literacy methods that include composition. The good news is there is composition software like Noteflight and MuseScore that can aide in teaching traditional music composition.
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