Book Review – “Listen & Celebrate” by Nate Holder and Helen MacGregor
Nate and Helen’s new book cover If you are looking to decolonize your music room or provide a richer musical experience for your...
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Steve Giddings
Apr 13, 20224 min
Figurative Language Through Song for Language Arts and Music Teachers (pt. 2)
This blog post is the second in a series of posts on a song writing unit I delivered for Grade 9 English Language Arts. It is also very...
Steve Giddings
Jan 5, 20221 min
8 Technology and Online Learning Resources from Steve’s Music Room
8 Technology and Online Learning Resources from Steve’s Music Room. To help with your tech or remote learning and in-person technology...
Steve Giddings
Apr 25, 20213 min
How to Create a Safe Place for Improvising and Composing
Here are some simple actions you can take or phrases you can say or think to foster a safe place to explore and experiment with music in...
Steve Giddings
Feb 22, 20214 min
The “Continuum of Creativity”
Some History: I began thinking about the concept of a “Continuum of Creativity” after watching Adam Neely’s video “Why No Rap Covers?” In...
Steve Giddings
Jan 1, 20213 min
9 Ways to Use Google’s Blob Opera
A version of this blog post has been approved for republication in Technology for Unleashing Creativity, written by Steve Giddings and...
Steve Giddings
Feb 27, 20197 min
Tech Ideas for Creative Musicking
Technology can sometimes complicate things but it can also make things much easier for everyone. I know that getting your learners to be...
Steve Giddings
Mar 18, 20188 min
How to Include and Engage Horn Players in Your School Rock/Popular Ensemble
So you have a small class with mostly horns but a couple of kids play guitar and drums, or a group with lots of rhythm players and a...
Steve Giddings
Dec 29, 20174 min
The Pathways to Lifelong Music Making: Classical vs. Popular Styles
Ask a former concert band learner if they still play their instrument after high school. Chances are 80–90% of them will tell you that...
Steve Giddings
Dec 7, 20175 min
Freeing Ourselves of Music Theory and Notation: Classical vs. Popular Styles
Who says you can’t play an E chord in the key of C? Bach maybe? Who decides what sounds good? Bach, perhaps again. We often forget that...
Steve Giddings
Mar 30, 20178 min
6 Steps to Composing With Your Students
Here is a PDF of this blog post (with pictures and easier to print if need be). In other years, I did a lot of explicit rhythm practice...
Steve Giddings
Apr 30, 20167 min
How to Get Your Students Writing Their Own Songs
Lately, at MCS we have been working on learning the guitar. Before this, we had done recorder and many of the students learned what C...
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