Solo Challenge.....s

A big challenge that I faced during my placement this semester was the use of ICT in my year 11/12 VCE music class. My friday morning double period contained:

1 year 12 student completing units 3/4

4 year 11 students completing units 3/4

7 year 11 students completing units 1/2 AND

3 year 10 students completing units 1/2

A receipe for disaster? Almost....on several occasions I spent a lot of the lessons waiting for them all to pipe down. BUT they all love music and were all preparing for either their solo performance exams or their ensemble work exams.

So aside from the obvious what role did ICT play in this class? My main focus out of this group of students became the 5 students completing units 3/4. A lot of my time was spent revising their music theory and supervising practice aural exams - with the help of Auralia and Musition I was able to design practice exams for them easily and effiently that they were able to complete in class and in their own time. The program also allowed them to save where they were and go back to it at their own pace. Those programs were also great for tracking my students progress over a long period of time. From the data I collected my mentor and I were able to plan for future lessons on what knowledge they were lacking.

The other part it played during my time with this class was preparing the students for their performance exam.

Requirements for the performance program:

The program will include at least

•    two of the works which will be examples of twentieth or twenty-first century music.

•    one which will be an unaccompanied work.

•    two which will be works performed with piano accompaniment or other accompaniment by another instrument as specified in the introduction to the relevant instrument list. For some works on some instrument lists, students must perform works with a pre-recorded backing.

All 5 students used backing tracks (1 saxophone, 1 voice, 2 guitar, 1 bass) so our focus during the performance seminars was having students not only rehearse their pieces in front of one another but make sure they had practiced setting up their equipment. The exam requirements stipulated by the VCAA state that students have only 25 minutes for performance including 5 minutes to set up. They are also given limited time to change instruments and adjust volume etc during the exam.

Issues raised were:

• Ipod or c.d? If Ipod then they must remember their own connecting cable.
• Make sure they had organised an amplifier and extension chords if needed.
• Is the ipod charged? Phones are not permitted at anytime during an exam so what do you do if you dont have an ipod/if your phone is your ipod?
• Is your song list in order? How do you press play/stop etc?
• How do you test your volume so it meets requirements?
• Are laptops allowed?

And so on....what the students did learn was that even if they knew their programs inside out the technology side of things seemed to throw them. So often as musicians and artists we concentrate so hard on the music and only have tunnel vision for what were working on that we forgot about the logistics of how were going to get there or go during the performance.

I am still waiting to hear how they went so I'll keep you posted :)