Have students play their compositions in front of the rest of the class.
And make the students all comment on each other’s work with something they like, and something they recommend doing to take it to the next level (comments must be specific and referred to the elements of music, no ‘wishy washy’ comments allowed).
There… simple (feel free to stop reading now and do this. But if you want to know why it’s my #1 tip please keep reading).
Since I’ve started making students share their music to the rest of the class I’ve noticed the following things happen:
The quality of music in term 2 increases a huge amount compared to term 1.
Students who were not putting much effort into their composing suddenly realise they’re behind others in the class and work harder so as not to embarrass themselves
If one student does something pretty clever (such as the creation of a hook in a song, or their use of reverb in GarageBand, or a chord progression on the guitar, etc) the other students get to see it in action, and are free to borrow that idea for their works.
When many students provide similar feedback to the composer the composer then gets to see how their works are being perceived by their ‘audience’, and can refine their works accordingly.
Culture
For this to work, you must have set some clear expectations around the culture of your classroom. Students need to understand that they must always be prepared to share their work, no matter what stage they are at. The song will never be ‘perfect’, it will never be complete, there are always things to improve. So students should be ready to share their work, even though it’s incomplete and they may not be too happy with it.
When classmates comment on the work the comments must ALWAYS be helpful and constructive. No criticisms or negative language. If there is something that someone doesn’t like, they need to frame it in a way of identifying an issue, and what they would do to solve the issue or improve the work.
And the people receiving the constructive feedback need to remember that there is nothing personal about the comments. They are talking about the work, not them as people or them as composers and songwriters.
Collaboration
One of the delightful side effects of this process, is that students go to each other and offer their assistance.
I recently had a student the composed and produced an amazing song in Logic, but she lacked the ability to programme a good drum part, and as a result the track never really had the emphasis that it needed in the chorus sections.
However, a few days later she resubmitted her song to me and it had an amazing drum part. One of the boys in the class went and helped her out and make a track with her. This is how the music industry works and I couldn’t be happier!
Ignore NCEA
Seriously, I mean it. Don’t teach to assessment!
Every student needs to make their songs and compositions better, but not because NCEA says so. This means your weak students are focusing on developing their compositional skills, and your super advanced students aren’t limiting themselves to NCEA or curriculum levels, but are pushing themselves to be the best they can be.
My students aren’t allowed to ask, “what do I need to do to get excellence”. For me the question is irrelevant. I challenge them to produce something they can put on Soundcloud or Spotify and be proud of. It needs to be in keeping with the genre they are composing in.
I usually dedicated 3-4 periods each term to this process. And since then my student compositions have never been better.
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