Using vernacular to drive secondary instrument proficiency

This poster was presented at the 2016 National Association for Music Education Research and Teacher Education Conference

This presentation is designed to describe and illustrate the activities and practices within the String Band Project curriculum unit for pre-service music education students and to provide literature support for the organization and choice of curricular activities. The curriculum project begins by the “whole-part-whole”, a variation on rote style, process of learning songs idiomatic to string instrument playing. In addition to this, students are asked to identify a song from their music vernacular from which they can create a lead sheet and brief comprehensive musicianship profile (CMP). Students from a string techniques or string pedagogy class then are grouped into small 3 to 4 person ensembles, or “string bands”, in order to prepare for performances of collected songs that will be shared on YouTube or another video sharing website. In addition to having a compiled a set of song material specifically arranged and pedagogically analyzed for string teaching, students will have also had a chance to perform various melodies, baselines, and improvisations in semi-authentic performance settings. Giving music education undergraduate students the experience with arranging and organizing small improvised performances allows them a structured space to think creatively about performance and the teaching process.