Creative Music Education

Creative Music Education Online Resources

CNMN offers this list of online resources for facil­i­tat­ing cre­ative music, so that when you host a cre­ative music class, les­son, work­shop, con­cert etc., you have resources at your fin­ger­tips to inspire you with great ideas.

The Nation­al Arts Cen­tre has com­piled a list of resources in dif­fer­ent units that ele­men­tary school teach­ers can cus­tomize. Arts Alive includes songs, les­son plans, activ­i­ties and resources on Indige­nous Arts writ­ten by Indige­nous musi­cians and teach­ers Sher­ryl Sewepa­ga­ham (Cree-Dene) and Nicole Schutz (Métis), as well as activ­i­ties and resources on three Clas­si­cal Com­posers, includ­ing R. Mur­ray Schafer.  You will find engag­ing lis­ten­ing activ­i­ties, games, pic­tures, bio­graph­ic infor­ma­tion, and audio tracks appro­pri­ate for grade lev­els from Kinder­garten to Gr. 12.

Sound­mark­er is devot­ed to demo­c­ra­t­ic music edu­ca­tion mod­els and to the col­lec­tion of effec­tive, easy-to-use free-impro­vi­sa­tion and com­po­si­tion exercises/games that explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the cre­ative, social, and eth­i­cal space between music and noise. Be sure to vis­it the top menu item titled “Exer­cis­es.”

R. Mur­ray Schafer’s amaz­ing edu­ca­tion hand­books col­lect­ed in The Think­ing Ear as well as two books filled with one-page ear clean­ing exer­cis­es and cre­ative music edu­ca­tion games.

From the Coali­tion for Music Edu­ca­tion, get help­ful resources for par­ents, teach­ers, admin­is­tra­tors, and oth­er con­cerned com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to help pro­mote music edu­ca­tion, assess your music pro­gram, and facil­i­tate advo­ca­cy and discussion. 

The Société de musique con­tem­po­raine du Québec (SMCQ) offers an edu­ca­tion plat­form to dis­cov­er com­posers and musi­cal cre­ation in class­rooms, with fam­i­ly or in concert.

Sound­Mak­ers is an iPad app that invites you to engage with the process of cre­at­ing music through explor­ing, com­ment­ing on, shar­ing, reusing, cre­at­ing with, and build­ing upon Sound­streams orig­i­nal content.

The Fono­fone is a sound cre­ation and col­lec­tive per­form­ing iPad appli­ca­tion that has an online teach­ing guide with activ­i­ties, ear train­ing games, scores and many ressources. 

For UK-based teach­ers, Lis­ten Imag­ine Com­pose offers a Mas­ters in Teach­ing and Learn­ing as part of its Con­tin­u­ing Pro­fes­sion­al Devel­op­ment pro­gramme for sec­ondary music teachers.

Do you know of URLs not listed here? Please tell us so we can share!

E‑mail Louise Camp­bell.