Deriving influence from both Kodály methodology and Gordon's Music Learning Theory, Conversational Solfege was developed by Dr. John M. Feierabend, chair of music education at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford. The philosophy of this method is to view music as an aural art with a literature based curriculum. The sequence of this methodology involves a 12 step process to teach music literacy. Steps include rhythm and tonal patterns and decoding the patterns using syllables and notation.
The growth of cultural diversity within school-age populations prompted music educators from the 1960s onward to diversify the content of the music curriculum, and to work with ethnomusicologists and some of the world's artist-musicians in establishing instructional practices relevant to the musical traditions. 'World music pedagogy' was coined by Patricia Shehan Campbell to describe world music content and practice in elementary and secondary school music programs. Pioneers of the movement, especially Barbara Reeder Lundquist and William M. Anderson, influenced a second generation of music educators (including Bryan J. Burton, Mary Goetze, Ellen McCullough-Brabson, and Mary Shamrock) to design and deliver curricular models to teachers of music of various levels and specializations.
The Dalcroze method was developed in the early 1900s by Swiss musician and educator Émile Jaques-Dalcroze. The method is divided into three fundamental concepts - the use of solfege, improvisation, and eurhythmics. Sometimes referred to as "rhythmic gymnastics", eurhythmics teaches concepts of rhythm, structure, and musical expression using movement, and is the concept for which Dalcroze is best known. It focuses on allowing the student to gain physical awareness and experience of music through training that takes place through all of the senses, particularly kinesthetic. According to the Dalcroze method, music is the fundamental language of the human brain and therefore deeply connected to what human beings are.
The Suzuki method was developed by Shinichi Suzuki in Japan shortly after World War II, and it uses music education to enrich the lives and moral character of its students. The movement rests on the double premise that "all children can be well educated" in music, and that learning to play music at a high level also involves learning certain character traits or virtues which make a person's soul more beautiful. The primary method for achieving this is centered around creating the same environment for learning music that a person has for learning their native language. This 'ideal' environment includes love, high-quality examples, praise, rote training and repetition, and a time-table set by the student's developmental readiness for learning a particular technique. While the Suzuki Method is quite popular internationally, within Japan its influence is less significant than the Yamaha Method, founded by Genichi Kawakami in association with the Yamaha Music Foundation.
Carl Orff was a prominent German composer. The Orff Schulwerk is considered an "approach" to music education. It begins with a student's innate abilities to engage in rudimentary forms of music, using basic rhythms and melodies. Orff considers the whole body a percussive instrument and students are led to develop their music abilities in a way that parallels the development of western music. The approach encourages improvisation and discourages adult pressures and mechanical drill, fostering student self-discovery. Carl Orff developed a special group of instruments, including modifications of the glockenspiel, xylophone, metallophone, drum, and other percussion instruments to accommodate the requirements of the Schulwerk courses.
In elementary schools, children often learn to play instruments such as keyboards or recorders, sing in small choirs, and learn about the elements of musical sound and history of music. Although music education in many nations has traditionally emphasized Western classical music, in recent decades music educators tend to incorporate application and history of non-western music to give a well-rounded musical experience and teach multiculturalism and international understanding. In primary and secondary schools, students may often have the opportunity to perform in some type of musical ensemble, such as a choir, orchestra, or school band: concert band, marching band, or jazz band. In some secondary schools, additional music classes may also be available. In junior high school or its equivalent, music usually continues to be a required part of the curriculum. At the university level, students in most arts and humanities programs may receive academic credit for taking music courses, which typically take the form of an overview course on the history of music, or a music appreciation course that focuses on listening to music and learning about different musical styles. In addition, most North American and European universities have some type of music ensemble in which students from various fields of study may participate such as a choir, concert band, marching band, or orchestra. Many universities also offer degree programs in the field of music education, allowing their students to become certified educators of primary and secondary school ensembles as well as beginner music classes. Advanced degrees can lead to university employment. These degrees come with the completion of varied technique classes, private instruction, numerous ensembles, and in depth observations of educators in the area. Music education departments in North American and European universities also often support interdisciplinary research in such areas as music psychology, music education historiography, educational ethnomusicology, sociomusicology, and philosophy of education.
The study of Western art music is increasingly common in music education outside of North America and Europe, including Asian nations such as South Korea, Japan, and China. At the same time, Western universities and colleges are widening their curriculum to include music of non-Western cultures, such as the music of Africa or Bali (e.g. Gamelan music), as well as even rock music (see popular music pedagogy).
Music education also takes place in individualized, life-long learning, and community contexts. Both amateur and professional musicians typically take music lessons, short private sessions with an individual teacher. Amateur musicians typically take lessons to learn musical rudiments and beginner- to intermediate-level musical techniques.
Numerous institutions worldwide now offer popular music pedagogy as a component of their degree programs. The following is a partial list of institutions that offer advanced degree programs in popular music pedagogy and related fields:
Popular music pedagogy — alternatively called rock music pedagogy, popular music education, or rock music education — is a recent development in the field of music education consisting of the application of the systematic teaching and learning of rock music and other forms of popular music both inside and outside formal classroom settings. The origins of popular music pedagogy may be traced to the gradual infusion of rock music into formal schooling since the 1960s, however in recent years it has expanded as a specialization to include the offering of entire degree programs — even graduate degrees — in institutions of higher education. Some notable community institutions, such as Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and Seattle's Experience Music Project have also contributed to the development of popular music pedagogy through symposia and educational outreach programs
Even more than most other musical genres, rock and roll emerged gradually from many artists work over a number of years, so any attempt to label a record as the first rock and roll song is an exercise in narrowing things down farther than they can reasonably be narrowed. But that hasn't stopped many people from asserting one song or another as the first. According to music historian Peter Guralnick, the first rock and roll record was "Rocket 88," by Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats (written by 19-year-old Ike Turner, also the session leader) and recorded by Sam Phillips for his Memphis Recording Service in 1951 (the master tape being sold to and later released by Chess Records). Wynonie Harris' 1947 cover of Roy Brown's "Good Rocking Tonight" is also a claimant for the title of first rock and roll record, as the popularity of this record led to many answer songs, mostly by black artists, with the same rocking beat, during the late 40's and early 50's. (Roy Brown's original had a shuffle blues beat, not quite rocking, but Wynonie Harris changed the rhythm to a rocking gospel beat with hand clapping on the backbeat, which distinguishes it from previous records). Ray Charles referred to Little Richard as being the artist that started a new kind of music, which was a funky style of rock n roll that he was performing onstage for a few years before appearing on record in 1955 as "Tutti Frutti." Others have pointed to the broad commercial success with white audiences of Chuck Berry's "Maybellene" or "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and his Comets as true starting points. Still others point out that performers like Arthur Crudup and Fats Domino were recording blues songs as early as 1946 that are indistinguishable from later rock and roll, and that these blues songs were based on themes, chord changes, and rhythms dating back decades before that. Crudup's "That's All Right" recorded with an electric guitar in 1946 is similar in style to Elvis's version recorded in 1954. R&B saxophone player and band leader Louis Jordan actually broke into the pop charts in the mid-forties with the rocker "Caldonia." In 1947 Jack Guthrie and his group The Oaklahomans had a hit with "Oakie Boogie," basically a mix of boogie woogie with hillbilly and an electric guitar thrown in (a fairly new invention in 1947). Benny Carter, a co-author of "Cow Cow Boogie" (Capitol Records first gold single) back in 1942, wrote the jazz-swing song "Rock Me to Sleep" with Paul Vandervoort II in 1950.
The first coupling of the words "rock" and "roll" on record came in 1916, in a recording of a spiritual, "The Camp Meeting Jubilee," by an unnamed vocal "quartette" issued by Little Wonder Records. The lyrics include "We've been rocking and rolling in your arms / Rocking and rolling in your arms / In the arms of Moses." In 1922, blues singer Trixie Smith recorded "My Man Rocks Me (with One Steady Roll)," first featuring the two words in a secular context. Twelve years later, The Boswell Sistershad a hit with "Rock and Roll" (1934).
However, for many years and probably centuries previously, the term "rocking and rolling" had been used as a nautical term to denote the side-to-side and forward-and-backward motion of ships on the ocean. This meaning was used metaphorically in such records as Buddy Jones' "Rockin' Rollin' Mama" (1939) - "Waves on the ocean, waves in the sea/ But that gal of mine rolls just right for me/ Rockin' rollin' mama, I love the way you rock and roll".
Rocking was a term also used by gospel singers in the American South to mean something akin to spiritual rapture. A double, ironic, meaning came to popular awareness in 1947 in blues artist Roy Brown's song "Good Rocking Tonight" (also covered the next year by Wynonie Harris in an even wilder version), in which "rocking" was ostensibly about dancing but was in fact a thinly-veiled allusion to sex. Such double-entendres were nothing new in blues music (which was mostly limited in exposure to jukeboxes and clubs) but were new to the radio airwaves. After the success of "Good Rocking Tonight" many other R&B artists used similar titles through the late 1940s including a song called "Rock and Roll" recorded by Wild Bill Moore in 1949. These songs were relegated to "race music" (the music industry code name for R&B) outlets and were barely known by mainstream white audiences.
In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio, disc jockey Alan Freed would begin playing this type of music for his white audience, and it is Freed who is credited with coining the phrase "rock and roll" to describe the rollicking R&B music that he brought to the airwaves. The term, with its simultaneous allusions to dancing, sex, and the sound of the music itself, stuck even with those who didn't absorb all the meanings.
Originally Freed used the name Moondog for himself and any concerts or promotions he put on. This arose from the fact he used a piece of music called "Moondog Symphony" by the street musician Moondog as his repeated opening music for his radio show. Moondog subsequently sued Freed on grounds that he was stealing his name. Since Freed was no longer allowed to use the term Moondog he needed a new catch phrase. After a night of heavy drinking he and his friends came up with the name "The Rock and Roll Party" since he was already using the phrase "Rock and Roll Session" to describe the music he was playing on his radio show. Since his show was extremely popular the term caught on and the subsequent public used it to describe a certain form of music.
Throughout its development, pop music has absorbed influences from most other genres of popular music. Early pop music drew on the sentimental ballad for its form, gained its use of vocal harmonies from gospel and soul music, instrumentation from jazz and rock music, orchestration from classical music, tempo from dance music, backing from electronic music and has recently appropriated spoken passages from rap. It has also made use of technological innovation. In the 1940s, the development of inexpensive 45 r.p.m. records for singles " revolutionized the manner in which pop has been disseminated" and helped to move pop music to ‘to a record/radio/film star system’. The 45s were much more durable than the fragile 78 r.p.m. records, which meant that 45s could be "distributed far more easily". This led to a "market led by pop singles". As well, 45 rpm records were cheaper to produce. Another technological change was the widespread availability of television in the 1950s; with televised performances, "pop stars had to have a visual presence ". In the 1960s, the introduction of inexpensive, portable transistor radios meant that teenagers could listen to music outside of the home. By the early 1980s, the "promotion of pop music had been greatly affected by the rise of Music Television (MTV)", which "favoured those artists such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, and Prince who had a strong visual appeal".
Other technological innovations that affected pop music were the widespread use of the microphone (in the 1940s) –which allowed a more intimate singing style: multi-track recording (in the 1960s) and digital sampling as methods for the creation and elaboration of pop music. Pop music was also communicated largely through the mass media, including radio, film, TV and, particularly since the 1980s, video.
Pop music has been dominated by the American (and from the mid-1960s British) music industries, whose influence has made pop music something of an international monoculture, but most regions and countries have their own form of pop music, sometimes producing local versions of wider trends, and lending them local characteristics. Some of these trends (for example Europop) have had a significant impact of the development of the genre.
According to Grove Music Online, "Western-derived pop styles, whether coexisting with or marginalizing distinctively local genres, have spread throughout the world and have come to constitute stylistic common denominators in global commercial music cultures". Some non-Western countries, such as Japan, have developed a thriving pop music industry. The "output of the Japanese record industry, most of which is devoted to Western-style pop, for several years has surpassed in quantity that of every nation except the USA". The "spread of Western-style pop music has been interpreted variously as representing Americanization, homogenization, modernization, creative appropriation, cultural imperialism, and/or a more general process of globalization".
Hatch and Millward define pop music as "a body of music which is distinguishable from popular, jazz and folk musics" and they state that the "birth of the pop music industry" was with the "discovery of Jimmie Rodgers in 1927". Hatch and Millward claim that pop music is distinguished from other popular music, such as Hollywood soundtrack music or Tin Pan Alley music in that pop music relies on an "aural tradition" (learning "by ear" from records or other musicians), whereas other popular music forms were transmitted via sheet music.
Grove Music Online also states that "...in the early 1960s the term ‘pop music’ competed terminologically with Beat music in England, while in the USA its coverage overlapped (as it still does) with that of ‘rock and roll’." Chambers' Dictionary mentions the contemporary usage of the term "pop art"; Grove Music Online states that the "term pop music...seems to have been a spin-off from the terms pop art and pop culture, coined slightly earlier, and referring to a whole range of new, often American, media-culture products".
From about 1967 the term was increasingly used in opposition to the term rock music, a division that gave generic significance to both terms. Whereas rock aspired to authenticity and an expansion of the possibilities of popular music, pop was more commercial, ephemeral and accessible. According to Simon Frith pop music is produced "as a matter of enterprise not art", is "designed to appeal to everyone" and "doesn't come from any particular place or mark off any particular taste." It is "not driven by any significant ambition except profit and commercial reward...and, in musical terms, it is essentially conservative." It is "provided from on high (by record companies, radio programmers and concert promoters) rather than being made from below...Pop is not a do-it-yourself music but is professionally produced and packaged."
Although pop music is often seen as oriented towards the singles charts, as a genre it is not the sum of all chart music, which has always contained songs from a variety of sources, including classical, jazz, rock, and novelty songs, while pop music as a genre is usually seen as existing and developing separately. Thus "pop music" may be used to describe a distinct genre, aimed at a youth market, often characterized as a softer alternative to rock and roll.
Pop music (a term that originally derives from an abbreviation of "popular") is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented towards a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short and simple love songs and utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes. Pop music has absorbed influences from most other forms of popular music, but as a genre is particularly associated with the rock and roll and later rock style.
