¹McGraw-Hill and ²The Reindeer Company

Music appreciation courses typically rely on several means to evaluate student performance and comprehension. Objective testing can measure student retention of names, dates, and terms but few would argue that the acquisition of this knowledge is the point of the course. Listening identification ("drop the needle" or, perhaps more appropriately now, "drop the laser") tests evaluate students’ ability to recognize specific works or categorize them according to learned style characteristics. Concert reports provide a means for students to describe music they have heard but the real (and valuable) purpose of these reports is to encourage student attendance at live performances. Unless the reader of the report is present at the concert described, however, there is no way to evaluate the student’s listening experience.

This problem goes beyond the need to provide a grading standard for these courses. At the heart of the rationale for music appreciation courses is a desire to bring to students a heightened awareness and understanding of, and appreciation for, the music they will experience in their lives. The inability of students to demonstrate their own experience of music constitutes a real barrier to understanding and improving the educational transaction that takes place.

Software packages designed for music appreciation courses have become increasingly common over the last 3 years, but the trend began with Robert Winter’s first products for The Voyager Company a decade ago. These software packages offered great promise for meeting some of the basic challenges posed to teachers of music appreciation by creating meaningful relationships between textual description of the form and content of music and the music itself. By doing so it permitted students to more clearly understand and appreciate the works they study.

Remarkably, the basic pedagogical design of these software packages has not changed from Winter’s initial products. All products currently available offer the same basic functionality:

• Point and click navigation within a formal diagram of the piece of music being heard
• Hyperlinks to glossary terms and other explanatory content
• Scrolling commentary that changes in time with the music

These features have combined to provide a significant new set of tools to the music appreciation instructor and student. For all of their power and utility, however, they have done little more than to automate the "listening guide" found in traditional music appreciation textbooks. At the same time, the software has been unable to provide the student with any means of engaging with the music in a significant way. Finally, the software has done little if anything to address what is perhaps the greatest challenge facing teachers and students in this course: providing a way for musicians and non-musicians to share their understanding of a musical work without resorting to notation or the imprecision of language.

This feature allows the user to engage the music in a very direct way without recourse to notation or technical description. Careful and active listening is encouraged as the user sets the markers while the CD plays, and the choice of marking points reflects both a critical and creative act on his or her part. The creation of elements that will be assigned to the markers provides the opportunity for the user to demonstrate a grasp of the material learned in the course in a creative context. The final product represents a visual record of the user’s particular listening experience; a record that can be shared with others in conjunction with the music itself.

The flexibility of the Studio allows guides to be made for music of all styles since it does not rely on a single metaphor like time charts or sliding bars. One can use the Studio to portray formal design, emotional response, or other interpretative notions.