Hybrid spaces and hyphenated musicians: secondary students' musical engagement in a songwriting and technology course

Abstract This case study investigates how secondary students (three individuals and three groups) engaged with music and acted as musicians in a Songwriting and Technology Class (STC), a course involving the creation, performance, recording and production of original music with instruments and music technology. The following research question guided the study: In what ways are students engaging with music in the STC? Findings suggest that students engaged as 'hyphenated musicians' by thinking and acting as songwriters, performers, sound engineers, recordists, mix engineers and producers in ways that were recursive and often overlapping. Students' engagement in these roles was particular to their individual and group contexts. Music education might broaden curricular offerings and reconceptualise classrooms as hybrid spaces to address the shared and idiosyncratic ways of knowing and doing music that students encountered through each role and holistically as hyphenated musicians. Keywords: music educationsecondarytechnologypopular musiccurriculum Notes 1. All names included in this study are pseudonyms. 2. Excerpted from a curricular document created by Ron Wittwill. 3. Participants self-identified race/ethnicity in a demographic information sheet completed at the end of the study. 4. A current pre-requisite of a course involving students performing on keyboard, guitar, bass, vocals, drum kit or in a large ensemble context was not in place during the year of this study though many of the participants had formal and informal instrumental experience of varying degrees. 5. A session refers to the entire Pro Tools file, what I have been referring to as the 'track'. 6. This dynamic may change in the third- and fourth-year levels of the STC as Ron planned on having students perform mixes of other group's Pro Tools sessions to gain experience mixing a project that they had no role in the songwriting, performance or recording. 7. Pro Tools, which was used in the STC due to its presence in the music industry, may be expensive for some. Similar software programmes such as Anvil, Ardour, Garageband, Logic Express, Mixcraft, Reaper, Tracktion or web-based applications such as Aviary's Myna or IndabaMusic's Mantis are currently more affordable, free or open-source though in some cases more limited than Pro Tools and other advanced digital audio workstation applications.