Digital musicianship in post-pandemic popular music education

Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic outbreak brought about unprecedented changes to education systems worldwide, reshaping considerably teaching and learning practices and prompting important conceptual and epistemological shifts in music education (Camlin & Lisboa, 2021). Scholarly works have revealed the multidimensional effects on teachers, learners, and the broader educational environment, including the psychological impact on teachers and students (Rosset et al., 2021), pedagogical approaches and adaptations (Calderón-Garrido & Gustems-Carnicer, 2021), and revisions to both policy and practice (Shaw & Mayo, 2021). The pandemic also ushered in a series of changes ranging from the integration of technology for various modes of learning (de Bruin & Merrick, 2022; Merrick & Joseph, 2023) to music performance in the digital medium (Howard et al., 2021), all of which significantly shaped and transformed many of the conventional pre-pandemic frameworks and practices (Thorley, 2023). Some of these changes within the music education sector have persisted, even as life returns “back to normal,” resulting in the embracing of practices characterized by digital pedagogies and the shifting roles of teachers (Bozkurt et al., 2022).

With a growing presence in education, the practice of popular music learning has become commonplace in both school and informal settings for the personal growth and development of young people (Smith et al., 2017). Technology has been integrated into various aspects of popular music education, including the use of digital musical instruments and computational devices as performance tools, music streaming, and video sharing platforms for the appreciation and understanding of a variety of popular music genres, digital audio workstations (DAWs) for recording and production, and sound synthesis to achieve timbral adjustment for specific musical goals, leading to increased student agency in learning popular music (Cremata, 2017; Powell, 2019). However, amidst the celebrations, a number of challenges, among them a lack of access and technological determinism, have long been present. These have been compounded by inadequate technical competence among music teachers in integrating technology into their teaching practices (Gall, 2017b), and a lack of consideration for educational affordances within the realm of music software design (Cheng & Leong, 2017).

Digital musicianship, a combination of multiple music- and technology-related practices, knowledge, skills, styles, roles, and communities, is a notion that builds upon the existing framework of musicianship which addresses the values of flexibility and versatility in making music with technology (Partti, 2014). While this notion has much to offer in guiding popular music practices in the digital era (Hugill, 2018), its embodiment within the context of popular music education remains unexplored. There is also advocacy from those scholars who claim that even prior to the pandemic digital musicianship as a concept has been slow to respond to rapidly changing music practices within both schools and the industry (Brown, 2015; Partti, 2014), including extending the definition to accommodate the increased participation of young people in online music activities and the ways in which technologies are involved in the music-making process. Given that this is a scenario which concerns music teachers, curriculum leaders and policymakers, there is a strong case to be made for the reconsideration and potential overhaul of current frameworks in ways that can create a more relevant and engaging popular music education for students.

Originating from an invited roundtable discussion at the 35th International Society for Music Education (ISME) World Conference, this position paper proposes a revamp of the notion of digital musicianship to address the aforesaid challenges. It reviews the adoption of technology within the lockdown period, followed by a discussion of its enduring impact post-pandemic. The paper argues that these pandemic pedagogies may not address the existing challenges in popular music education without reframing musicianship as a response to the growing presence of technology and the post-pandemic teaching and learning environment. Recommendations are then provided to synergize pandemic pedagogies with technological integration, aiming to redefine digital musicianship to tackle these challenges.

Digital musicianship and popular music education

Whereas traditional musicianship involves embodied knowledge comprising physical skills and artistic judgements, digital musicianship has been defined as “disembodied knowledge made evident through a set of technical skills and critical judgements” (Hugill, 2012, p. 52). Encompassing aural awareness, cultural knowledge, and the ability to make music in various ways using technologies such as DAWs and sound analysis tools (Moroz et al., 2024), it can be viewed both as a reaction to the transformation of music brought about by the mediated culture of the digital era, specifically one characterized by increased access to technology and an open mindset to its adaptation for music-making (Väkevä, 2012), and as an adjustment to the “seismic shift in music and particularly music education” (Hugill, 2018, p. xvii). Scholarly discussions have explored the role of technology in digital musicianship training in different learning contexts, revealing the diverse skills required in various computer-mediated environments. For example, Cheng (2019) investigated the development of digital musicianship in a laptop ensemble through a mixed-method study, uncovering technologically oriented musical and non-musical development among participating students, while Chen (2022) used mobile devices to explore popular music education students’ engagement, and the collaborative processes involved in group creativity, within the context of the development of their digital musicianship. Partti (2014) conducted a case study analyzing the music-making practices of digital musicians, highlighting the emphasized aspects of musical versatility and flexibility, as well as mobility between various musical communities of practice. These scholarly attempts not only reveal how relevant knowledge and skills in digital musicianship can be fostered in various teaching and learning contexts, but also hint at the shift in music education toward more technologically oriented and digitally mediated practices (Hugill, 2018).

While musicianship in conventional teaching and learning contexts concerns competencies in creating, performing, listening, and analyzing music (Willoughby, 2021), the kinds of knowledge and skills required in popular music are notable for their focus on technical ability, versatility, musical understanding, and musical creativity (Green, 2002). Several common themes can be identified between the divergence of digital musicianship and popular music education from conventional musicianship. For example, aural engagement is also foregrounded in popular music group practices when compared to other instrument ensembles in schools (Boespflug, 1999), offering students substantial freedom to develop their creative musical ideas through activities such as composition, improvisation, listening, analysis, and performance (Rodriguez, 2012); popular music education emphasizes culturally responsive teaching, centering music that reflects young learners’ realities and interests (Hess, 2019); while technological advancements have facilitated the emergence of informal learning environments that favor the development of digital musicianship (Partti, 2012), the teaching and learning of popular music often integrates informal learning practices (Green, 2006), in which students learn outside school as a self-directed pursuit (as opposed to operating under the direction of a teacher) involving interactions with peers and group activities (Lebler, 2008). Because of these common grounds, there have been pedagogical synergies where popular music pedagogies can facilitate the development of digital musicianship, and vice versa. Certain genres, such as electronic dance music and hip-hop, require more specialized and customized pedagogies that incorporate technical training in DAWs and other music production tools for a more precise and efficient learning process (Kuhn & Hein, 2021). Concurrently, those school students who are “digital natives” and technologically “tethered” are capable of learning popular music autodidactically through the convergence of technology (Waldron, 2017). As an aural tradition, the integration of technology has the potential to offer innovative teaching and learning opportunities in popular music education, in the process taking advantage of the vast amount of online learning resources accessible (Giddings, 2008, 2010); the attributes of a do-it-yourself (DIY) culture, facilitated by digitally-rich environments, including self-direction, self-monitoring, autonomy, diverse skills, and the capacity to continue learning, can empower popular music learners to become more independent and self-sustainable (Lebler & Hodges, 2017), while the improving quality and accessibility of computer-based recording platforms can help democratize the music-making and learning process (Bell, 2015a, 2016).

Popular music pedagogies during lockdown

The pandemic’s resultant lockdown witnessed a sudden shift toward a largely online modality (Daubney & Fautley, 2020); in many cases, this inevitably led to practices across the broad spectrum of music education being oriented toward digital musicianship (Brown & Dillon, 2018; Väkevä, 2013). With in-person activities, such as live performances and ensemble rehearsals, prohibited, the majority of music teachers’ efforts focused on teaching students to create music at home (Stark, 2020). Without classroom music equipment available, the use of browser-based DAWs was widely adopted by teachers to facilitate meaningful music-making experiences for their students and to sustain their interest in music learning. Pendergast (2021) proposed project ideas for teachers to design simple music-making tasks with free or low-cost DAWs, which can assist students in learning fundamental musical, creative, and technological concepts. Cayari (2021) introduced dispositions toward online music-making and outlined steps for creating virtual ensembles with DAWs, offering a creative approach to adapting disrupted music education during lockdown. Knapp et al. (2023) found that there was explosive user growth of Soundtrap, a freemium online cross-platform DAW, during the lockdown period. Although the data does not indicate specifically what these users were doing with Soundtrap, its affordances best support the creation of beat-driven electronic music in various popular idioms such as techno, hip-hop, and rock music. In an open-ended survey, Schiavio et al. (2021) discovered that students actively sought connections that go beyond their relationship with the teacher during remote learning periods, demonstrating their capability to form collaborations within and beyond the classroom in ways that echo how popular musicians typically learn (Green, 2002).

Documentation concerning online communities of practice has discovered the availability of learning within digital “spaces,” revealing in the process what can be achieved collaboratively and remotely from one’s own home. Veblen and Waldron (2021, 2023) surveyed digital music education in formal and informal settings, revealing a readiness to adapt social media networks so that they function as online communities which emphasize learning as a social process; within this framework, information sharing, collaboration and supportiveness, and participation are all seen as shared social/cultural capital. Such practices create opportunities for intercultural collaboration and the maintaining of sustainable connections when in-person meetings are not possible, prompting a shift of learning goals and pedagogical aims (Gibson, 2021). Knapp et al. (2023) noted a tendency to embrace project-based learning, peer learning, informal pedagogies, an emphasis on play, composition, and improvisation, and “a lack of direct, synchronous instruction” (p. 3). Resembling “pandemic pedagogies” adopted by educators during lockdown (Ryan, 2023), this tendency relies heavily on the use of technology to make learning available in the home environment. Unified by a concern for pedagogical change during the pandemic, these innovative teaching and learning practices have shifted popular music education toward more participatory, collaborative, creative, and reflective models that can be disruptive of traditional pedagogies (Olvera-Fernández et al., 2023). As the threat of the pandemic has receded, the roadmap out of lockdown has reintroduced in-person music-making activities to schools. While gathering in the same room to produce sounds remains crucial to the music curriculum, certain performance practices in relation to the use of technology, such as the adoption of mobile devices for music-making and learning, have persisted in the ensuing post-COVID landscape. More diversified approaches integrating technology into ensemble practices (Palamara, 2023), social engagement (Veblen & Waldron, 2023), and hybrid learning (Songmuang, 2023) have all been adopted in popular music education, where online and remote collaborations have become accepted aspects of music practice, whether these be in the format of live performance, co-production, acoustic, or digital music-making.

Critical review for post-pandemic popular music education

While the fusion of technology and pedagogy has become integral to nurturing students’ musical creativity and engagement during lockdown, little attention has been paid to the negative consequences of these disruptions. The urgency of facilitating emergency remote teaching has overshadowed efforts to uphold universal values that are indistinctive from acts of teaching and learning advocated in critical pedagogy (Giroux, 2020), such as social justice and democracy (Benedict et al., 2015; Woodford, 2005). As a philosophy of education developed from critical theory, critical pedagogy views teaching as a political act that involves the politics of power relation and agency both within and beyond the classroom boundaries (Freire, 1970). In time of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, critical pedagogy has seen difficulties and tensions that have moved away from democratizing the learning spaces (Gentles, 2021), further emphasizing the market-driven approaches and encouraging neoliberal practices in education (Teräs, 2020). Within the context of higher education, institutions have demonstrated their capacity to offer remote and hybrid learning for the majority of academic studies during lockdown, including music-related disciplines. While music teachers have experienced the need for a “pandemic pivot” as it relates to music teaching in/through/with technology, they have also experienced the need for access (Bell et al., 2022). Actions have been taken to facilitate emergency remote teaching, retain students’ learning interest, prioritize the health and safety of teachers and students, and ensure the fluency of the kinds of technology used to leverage and support music learning. The pandemic has demonstrated that when the majority of society needs access, it can be made to happen; conversely, when the majority does not require access, the support dissipates without announcement. This is but one example of how “back to normal” can be detrimental for those people in need of assistance, including disabled and socially restricted individuals. Many of these sorts of structural and material inequalities are rife at the best of times (e.g. Daubney & Fautley, 2020; Nichols, 2020), but have been greatly exacerbated by well-intentioned pandemic pedagogies that foreground digital music-making. The provision of access is a political choice; however, the “new normal” presents an opportunity to foreground meaningful inclusion in our day-to-day practices, making it the primary factor of what, where, when, why, and how technologies are being applied to music education, ensuring they cater to all students (Draper, 2022).

While the achievements of music learning have often been tied to the ability to manipulate certain technologies commonly used in the industry (Harkins & Prior, 2022), the centering of particular tools and their adoption in teaching and learning contexts requires careful consideration, not least given the natural proclivity of the tools to lean toward workflows and outcomes that mirror current practices in the music industry. Recent trends in popular music education have seen the increasing presence of commercial music platforms and products from tech giants, including Spotify, YouTube, TikTok, and many DAWs, in various teaching and learning contexts (Almqvist, 2019; Waldron, 2023). Although these technologies have been helpful in terms of facilitating emergency remote teaching and enhancing their relevance with young people, there can be unintended consequences for teachers and students regarding potential barriers created by the underlying cultural epistemologies concerned. For example, the music recommendation system behind the aforementioned social media and sharing platforms provides suggestions to customers based on their preferences and listening history, prioritizing engagement over educational value. There is also a lack of safeguarding mechanisms to ensure the accuracy and relevance in relation to their pedagogical purposes, that the popularization of short-form videos limits the depth and complexity of educational content that can be embedded. Although integrating technologies can make available music learning experiences that are “easy” (Bell, 2015b) and “fun” (Simon, 2020), there are critics who claim that the use of these tools may potentially dictate the way music is practiced and learnt, leading to technological determinism (Ruthmann et al., 2014). As a reductionist theory that goes hand in hand with the capability of technology as an “extension of the human body” (McLuhan, 1964), technological determinism views technology as an agent of change capable of exerting a “causal influence on social practice” (Bimber, 1994, p. 83). In music education, this deterministic tendency can be found in the use of loop-based DAWs by students, in which their ability to make music is magnified and facilitated, but also constrained by the prepackaged workflows embedded in the software design (Bell, 2015b). The widespread adoption of DAWs as a pedagogical tool has not only turned a willful blind eye to their deterministic characteristics and potential negative impacts on students’ learning, but also privileged those who can afford to pay for downloadable content or alternative options. This is compounded by other inequality issues as a result of resource constraints (e.g. Crawford, 2008; Gall, 2017a), serving primarily to expose the widening gap between music learners among developed and developing countries (Bates, 2014). Given that these technological resources are almost mandatory within the context of a successful online learning environment, the technological divide is anticipated to remain a yardstick as it relates to the equity and access of popular music education worldwide.

Rooted in the Western music tradition, many music technologies exhibit biases toward the Western canon, which may inadequately represent diverse musical cultures. This includes the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI), in which the models for generating music are trained with databases consisting of mostly Western repertoires (Barenboim et al., 2024; Civit et al., 2022). The situation has not been aided by music teacher training programs around the globe, which have long focused on the history and related performance practices of Western art music traditions (Cheng, 2023; Howard et al., 2014; Wang & Humphreys, 2009). When these programs address electronic music, they have similarly tended to align with the Western art music idiom, rather than promote a global outlook that incorporates other musical cultures (Hein, 2022). Coupled with a lack of training in relation to the integration of technology (Bauer & Dammers, 2016; Cheng et al., 2023; Dorfman, 2016; Haning, 2015), instructions found in school music classrooms often orient toward a Western classical sensibility, prioritizing technique over expressivity or musicality (Bartel & Cameron, 2004). While there have been changes in curriculum standards, subject matters, and classroom practices post-pandemic, there remain multiple opportunities to shape and redefine the role of music technology within school music education. This should be assessed in line with an examination of the racialized divide between “Western’ and “non-Western,” and “art” and “popular” music, with the intention of yielding a more critical pedagogy and a culturally responsive music education (Elliot, 2007).

Revamp of digital musicianship in popular music education

Technology has often been used as a stimulus to motivate students to explore and engage with music in ways that are meaningful to them, yet there can be unintended and negative consequences if teachers and policymakers are not aware of the affordances of these tools and their appropriation in different teaching and learning contexts. To this end, the authors assert that digital musicianship should encompass the ability to perceive and adopt technologies for online and remote music-making, alongside a critical mindset that help learners differentiate the pros and cons of applying particular tools to best suit different situations. This move echoes that of other scholars who have addressed the important role of educational and technological affordances (Bauer, 2015; Cheng & Leong, 2017; English et al., 2021), but with an added emphasis on those online and music-making tools and environments that are more relevant to young people’s creative practices and learning experiences in the post-pandemic digital age.

The revamp can potentially rectify some of the neglected and hidden pitfalls as a result of the aforesaid pandemic pedagogies being persisted after lockdown. Kuhn and Hein (2021) observed that it is more common to teach the “nuts and bolts” of DAW and audio recording than project-based, popular-oriented pedagogies that might support “an art class for music” (p. 12). While technical training has very little to offer in terms of fostering creative expression and musicianship development, it risks reducing music education to a series of mechanical tasks rather than nurturing the holistic development of students as creative thinkers and well-rounded musicians capable of navigating both the technical and artistic dimensions of music-making. To address this, students should be able to apply the learnt skills, adopting the technology for self-directed music learning and creative experimentation, allowing them to explore their musical interests while critically evaluating the delimitations posed by the technology. Specific teacher training is required to make this happen, where the pandemic has already reshaped how a significant proportion of music teachers are trained, enabling them to embrace the digital convergence of instructional models beyond traditional teacher-led ideologies, using technology to navigate more open-ended approaches in teaching popular music, and developing students’ creativity within these parameters (Kladder, 2022). Furthermore, there is scholarly advocacy for emphasizing the inclusion of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) to prepare music teachers’ addressing of the inclusion of popular music practices into existing models of music education (Campanini, 2023).

Concluding remarks

This position paper problematizes the adoption of technology within and beyond the lockdown period in relation to some of the existing issues within popular music education, and discusses the potential revamp of the notion of digital musicianship in addressing these challenges. While pandemic pedagogies have primarily focused on emergency remote teaching during lockdown as an adaptation to disruptive circumstances, there are enduring challenges associated with the use of technology that may serve to worsen existing problems within popular music education, including technological determinism, the homogeneity of musical culture, accessibility and inequality issues, and the relevance to real-world practices. In an attempt to synergize pandemic pedagogies with technological integration, the authors propose a revamp of the notion of digital musicianship in a bid to tackle these challenges. These include the ability to perceive and adopt technologies for online and remote music-making, and critically evaluate their validity and quality in various contexts.

The ways music is learned, created, disseminated, and accessed are changing rapidly, driven by technological advancements and the pandemic-driven shift toward digital platforms and remote collaboration. In response to the ever-changing educational landscape, music educators need to be aware of the impact of appropriating or centering technologies in their teaching practices, along with considering how these may lead to unintended consequences, regardless of the perceived benefits they may bring. Moving forward, it is important to cultivate an awareness of the expanding influence of digital musical cultures and explore different ways in which popular music education can be more culturally responsive (Hess, 2019), and consider how technology can help to stimulate these positive changes.