'Severity' as a Musicological term?

I frequently fall in love with music, but this one crush-level above the normal. I remember the feeling of picking up a cassette tape with John Coltrane's "Love Surpreme" at a gas-station after a really rainy fly-fishing trip in the mountains years ago. This track contains some of that haunting drive that would play in my mind long after the music had stopped. Perhaps not as experimental, but none the less.

A descriptive and under-used word for music that has struck me in recent years is "severity": When a piece of music is dark, perhaps in a minor key and with a strong sense of rhythm and forward movement; it has strong elements (melody or otherwise) that you cannot help but immersing yourself in — but! it does not put you in a dark mood! Rather, it puts you in a heavy contemplative mood. It unlocks the compartments of the mind that deals with existence, respect, meaning and perhaps even love. But in the case of love, in the sense of understanding its foundations; not joyfully, not sadly, but inquisitively.

Music that brings out the "severity" of life makes you straighten your back and bend your mind. It makes you neither happy or sad, but it sets you on a journey in gloomy light through the corridors of the foundations of the constructions that brings us light — and firm points of reference for our journey through life.

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In ‘The Grain of the Voice’ Roland Barthes reflects on a lacking parameter of musicology. He calls it the grain that you can find in a performer’s voice. The term is more elusive than, say, harmony and perhaps a hard term to discuss with objectivity. But it adds to our terminology something that studying a score cannot lead us to. Likewise, severity is my Barthesian contribution to terms that might help us think outside the established vocabulary of musical understanding.

Perhaps there are stronger examples, and perhaps I should make a whole playlist to explain more properly, but here is at least one recording that fits the term.

PhD Conference at NTNU University, Norway

On the 30^th of March this year the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), held a conference titled: ‘The added value of a PhD – for all sectors of working life’. The audience were mainly: PhD candidates, supervisors and alumni, employees from all sectors including NTNU and other interested parties.

The stated goals of the conference were

• Raise awareness of the added value of a doctoral degree in all sectors of working life.
• Help to boost recruitment of PhDs in the job market through increased insight into the added value of a doctoral degree.
• Strengthen the reputation of our PhDs as highly relevant to society.
• Increase PhDs’ awareness of their own skills, what they can bring to the workplace and the challenges they can help solve.
• Help PhDs improve their ability to market their expertise and the advantage of a doctoral degree over a first degree.

The conference reflected the main focus of the university well. It is a university with a long technical tradition; hence, engineering and science took centre stage. For creatives, you had to look under the radar to connect to the relevance. For me, hearing people’s stories of how their research has influenced the directions their careers have taken; and mingling with others, were the main outcomes. Amongst the attendees there were also people who were doing education research. Mingling was accelerated by dividing the (pretty huge) number of attendees into groups towards the end of the conference for round table discussions. Different tables dealt with different questions. The outcome of the discussions was written down, collected and presented to the whole room towards the end. The tables I attended were composed both of very seasoned people in the higher part of the age-bracket, and younger people. This worked particularly well to widen the perspective of the groups.

What would I like to see in similar conferences in the future? I would love to see a better inclusion of arts and humanities. I do not mean to trouble neither artists nor engineers with the particulars of each other’s interest fields. But people who study learning have something to teach engineers who manage organisations, historians have things to teach anyone who digs deep into any matter, and so forth. And perhaps a final note for a conference in English would be to find a keynote speaker somewhat more fluent in English? ;-)

At any rate, a day well spent by the river in Trondheim while meeting old and new friends over food and round-table discussions.

The conference was held at Royal Garden Hotel Trondheim.
(Image Credit)

ICT in Education Conference

ICT and Education Conference at

Norwegian University of Technology and Science

 

 

Introduction

The National Conference on the Use of ICT in Education and Learning was held in the city of Trondheim, Norway, from the 11^th to the 13^th of May 2016. The conference took place at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)’s science and technology campus, Gløshaugen. The conference is an event for working teachers, pedagogy students, ICT companies, governmental offices, publishers and researchers/ speakers delivering a packed program of presentations. I spent most of my time looking through the stands, but also had time to attend a few presentations. In this blogpost I’ll highlight some of the things that caught my eyes. It won’t be a complete overview over the whole conference, but in keeping with this blog: the blend of technology and creativity, and also technical education-facilities will be central.

This blogpost will be segmented into two:

1. The post you are reading will deal with publishing, networking, trajectories and reflections around ICT in education.

2. Thesecond post will deal with hardware and physical ICT-related facilities foreducation.

* Links to presentations can be found here.

* Link to conference’s Twitter page can be found here.

Presentation: learning-design in context.

Trends in Publishing

Large Media Companies

National broadcasters NRK (Norway’s version of the BBC) and TV2 have taken a great leap into the education sector by creating online platforms that lets pupils and students tap into the companies’ wells of recorded material. Comprehensive new material has also been created to address the need of Norwegian schools. I have not yet used their platforms, but judging from presentation, TV2 seems to hold the leading edge. The companies are operating as publishers (as opposed to traditional media-companies) when delivering services in the education sector.

Using platforms where extensive video-material covers (at least in the long run) the entire school curriculum has obvious advantages. Topics like modern history and social sciences are perhaps the areas where these platforms are most self-explanatory. However, content for topics like mathematics, science and language also seems to be well developed or under way. I do however, feel that a word of caution is in order. Norway is politically a country that for many decades have embraced left-of-centre politics. This has trickled into its media-coverage, and it’s a well-known fact amongst media-researchers that the media in general covers current events with a slight left-bias. Looking back at my own education it took me many years of travelling and higher studies to un-learn many accepted truths from my school-years that were clearly politically biased, especially in social sciences, but also in history. I’m all for presenting both sides of the story from a neutral middle-ground and if I have one concern with Norwegian media-companies now educating minors, it is an accentuation of an existing political bias. I am not trying to advocate removing certain views from schools, but rather complementing them in a more neutral and holistic sense. Let’s see what the future brings, but for teachers who use these platforms this is currently something one should look out for! To end on a positive note, the tools that have been developed by these media-giants seems packed with interesting content. The companies express a work-in-progress attitude, which tells me there will be more development of content (perhaps also on the delivery-platforms) in the very near future.

Views from around the conference-
area, and the stands.

Other Publishers

BS Undervisning (translates ‘BS Education’) provides a platform for coordinating sales and use of both printed and digital media. They have over 1500 digital learning resources in their catalogue and sports some of the biggest names in Norwegian educational publishing as collaborators. Amongst other things they provide a service that lets you search and link to the online resources that your institute subscribes to. BS Undervisning is part of a larger corporation that provides goods and services for libraries and places of learning.

One of my personal favourites was Norwegian publisher Gyldendal’s stand. Gyldendal had resources, tools for teaching and assessment in one place through their SMART programme. What caught the attention of the music producer in me the most, was that they are now offering guitar-course videos through one of their online platforms. They don’t have immediate thoughts on developing their music-teaching content, but were very open to the idea. As a ‘Sound and Music Production’ lecturer I used Lynda and AskVieo/ MacProVideo for students in vocationally angled higher education. These are great resources as a supplements, and sometimes even as radical improvement from traditional printed resources! It is therefore really good news for the future of music education in schools to see creative and artistic content becoming available alongside theoretical topics. Gyldendal seems to be a publishing house to watch for this sort of development.

Professional Network for teachers
and Online Safety for students

‘Senter for IKT i Utdanningen’ is an organisation that was set up under the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Education in 2010. It can be translated ‘Centre for ICT in Education.’ The centre is there to help lift the quality of ICT use in kindergartens, schools and for pedagogy students. In addition to working with the quality of ICT-education, the centre focuses on internet safety and the training of pupils to exert good judgement in ICT-based interactions. They are one of the initiative-takers behind the webpage and printed material for http://www.DUbestemmer.no/.  ‘Du bestemmer’ translates ‘You Decide’ and is a resource that deals with healthy conduct, law, plus positives and negatives a person encounters when interacting across the internet. The ‘Centre for ICT in Education’ also provides research and initiatives that it goes outside of this blogpost to cover. These include development of regional leadership in the school sector and help with finding the right digital resources for use in education.

‘Klassetrivsel’ is a term that describes how pupils feel (positive or negative) about their class and their social interactions. It is an online tool for teachers that can assess how students feel about their every-day life and social interactions in school. It provides feed-back to teachers that helps them assess and address the experience of being a pupil in their class. It started as a project at a school in 2007, and is now a tool available for all Norwegian schools who subscribe to the service. Their webpage is: http://www.klassetrivsel.no/

Creative Software

Creaza is a platform where you can make mind-maps, video and audio presentations, and cartoons. Let’s say, the teacher shares a mind-map with the students. The students pick up the mind map and follow up with their own research. In the end a multimedia presentation is produced by the students over a topic given by the teacher. The tool is very well geared towards creative responses to assessments and incorporates ICT-skills in a fluid way. The video and audio editors looks familiar for users of Mac-software. I don’t believe tools like Creaza can take the place of reading and writing in a traditional sense, but it is a very diverse ICT-supplement. It is diverse in the sense that it covers all the bases of muli(ple)-media in óne platform — this should make it easier for the teacher, who don’t have to relate to three or four different software-packs but who rather can relate to óne. Creaza has won several awards and I encourage you to:

1) Look at their web-site, as the different tools included in Creaza is described in a very accessible way by clicking on the banners under the ‘Product’ banner. There is also a Creaza-blog that keeps you up to date on news about the software.

2) Look at Creaza’s YouTube user, which is packed with tutorials and examples.

In my own teaching experience, I’ve worked with higher-/ vocational education. We used softwares like Cubase and ProTools which are professional tools from the creative industries. Creaza, as far as I can see, belongs in primary and secondary education. The ICT-skills acquired from Creaza should be easy to transfer to professional platforms when pupils/ students reach a higher level of studies. I believe I would find it easier to train higher-education students who are familiar with platforms like Creaza on professional platforms. Apart from the obvious use in a modern classroom, I can see two other uses for Creaza:

1) Students who struggle to follow regular teaching for various reasons. Creaza is engaging and forces you to create, and not just respond like to a computer-game. It also looks particularly good at creating ‘narratives.’ Work with narratives is no foreign thought in pedagogy or social sciences. In 2012 I wrote about the research of Electro Acoustic composer Louise Rossiter, who explored the use of Electro Acoustic composition as a therapeutic tool for pupils from troubled backgrounds. The results were positive. Creaza is not an Electro Acoustic composition platform, but if used in similar ways I’d expect results pointing in the same direction.

2) Use for adult learners with limited skills, either in: 1) ICT, or 2) the topic of the class (including language). A good example would be for teaching immigrants with limited language and ICT skills, and limited skills on local society. Creaza would combine an intuitive ICT platform, and basic use of language in presentations; while allowing the learner to feel success in making a good product while still not in full command of the language. (As opposed to a presentation where everything is resting on language.) Examples of interaction and aspects of society can be animated in the simple-to-use Cartoonist application.

As this software caught my imagination I’ll add a quick YouTube video just to give you a visual idea of what it looks like:

Trajectories in ICT

New Media Consortium’s (NMC) Horizon Project has published a rapport about the trajectories the use of technology in Norwegian education. The rapport was published in 2013 and covers 2013-2018. It analyses the matter on three time horizons: one year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. The Norwegian rapport is a collaboration with The Norwegian Centre for ICT In Education. NMC have done rapports on several countries. Here is the link to the Norwegian rapport. NMC runs a conference and the website has a blog with their current news.

Is ICT The Way?

ICT is certainly a buzzword in education right now, but can we trust that ICT-tools really can take over for traditional learning tools? I think the answer is both yes and no. A future with more ICT and automatization clearly needs a workforce who is able to address the new tasks. But I’m also worried that we sometimes are over-emphasising the constantly changing technical aspects of the future at the expense of the not-so-changing human aspects of the future.

I guided in the Norwegian mountains for many years and I remember a study from the early 2000’s stating that children who attended ‘outback kindergartens’ (close proximity to outback, and much use of outdoor activities. Norwegian expression is: ‘friluftsbarnehage’) were better at a range of things, including problem-solving than children from inner-city kindergartens. Studies like these remind us that modern society is built on harnessing the potential that exists at the core of creation and of the human mind. Basic inter-human skills will not be addressed sufficiently through online platforms for collaboration, and the future will not be secure for job-seekers in decades to come just because they are proficient at today’s technology. With a growing number of companies not just addressing, but also helping to create demand for new technology in education we have to constantly evaluate whether we are developing the human potential in pupils and students as much as we develop our ICT-skills. I’ll underline this with an example from one of my own areas of study, Music Technology. I go to trade-shows and know several distributors and manufacturers of music production gear. Every year there are new equipment-releases and you’ll be constantly reminded you need the new products to really stay at a current professional level. However, most of the classic albums we teach in music-history classes are more than a decade old, and hence the technology is practically from the stone-age in the world of the technology-manufacturers. But tomorrow’s musicians, music educators and producers won’t be much effective if they can’t play low-tech wooden guitars, collaborate in bands and appreciate the potential in the tools at their disposal. To put it to its edge, I believe in a future where the most adaptable persons can chop down trees for fire-wood, counsel someone in trouble and write with a pencil; while operating technology, making global interactive collaborations and assessing the deployment of the tools they have available.

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Thanks to NTNU for creating a meeting-ground for an impressive array of educators, researchers and ICT industry! This was more of a meeting-ground and an ideas-exchange, than an academic conference in a traditional sense. I’ll be going back!

Read the follow-up to this post, on ICT-equipment!

ICT in Education Conference — Equipment

This is the second blogpost from the National Conference on the Use of ICT in Education and Learning in Norway, 2016. The first post deals with publishing, networking, trajectories and reflections around ICT in education. This post will deal with hardware and physical ICT-related facilities for education.

* Links to presentations can be found here.

* Link to conference’s Twitter page can be found here.

The event took place at NTNU's
Science and Technology Campus.

Hardware Electronics

‘Senter for IKT i Utdanningen’ had set up two rooms with new technologies that could be used in technology education. As a former FE College Electronics student I took special interest in the Arduino electronics kits. Arduino has made a lot of interesting electronics and a neat manual of circuits. The circuits could be wired to some unusual sensors, such as apples and bananas. The idea being that the fruit contains water, and by touching them you can make small currents flow from point to point by touching the fruit. My emotions about this are mixed. It is no doubt fun, but by the time students become advanced enough to understand electronic circuitry, they might be better off understanding how real sensors work — I have still to see apples and bananas wired up to hub-tops and security systems. However, the electronics was flexible and a good manual with circuits makes it easy to conduct exercises. Even if teachers were to have limited training in engineering.

 

Arduino's manual of electric circuits.

Two of Arduino's trainer-boards can be seen. The left handling
networking and peripherals.

Second Hand Computers and Gear-storage

Arrow Value Recovery had an interesting stand that caught my attention for two reasons:

1) as the name suggests, the company ‘recovers value.’ That is, they specialise in sourcing, refurbishing and re-selling used computer equipment. This means that you can buy well-specked second hand computers at a sensible price, and at a reduced environmental impact.

2) Arrow sells storage systems for tablets and computers. The GoCabby case for smartboards was on exhibition and provided a compact, safe and transport-friendly way of storing and hauling tablets around. This was one of my favourite items from the conference as it isn’t just focusing on learning and technology, but also on providing Teachers and Facilities Officers with good storage solutions.

GoCabby System.

AV-installations

Scandec Systems is a Norwegian company that specialises in sound and multimedia solutions. Their company name brings back memories for old sound-engineers like me as they were the distributor for large format mixers like the DDA Q2 back in the 1990’s. Scandec of 2016 offer AV-installations for everything from large venues to conference-halls and schools. Recently, they’ve added Panasonic’s professional screens to their distribution-portfolio. Other products include the Promethean ActiveBoard and the FrontRow Juno speaker system. They latter they are happy to lend to schools for a two-week period.

Africa

Microsoft won’t need any further introduction, but I was excited to learn about the ‘Microsoft 4 Africa’ initiative as I have a particular interest in creative technologies education in Africa.

Mathematics

Casio had a stand with a variety of mathematics resources and calculators. This is not my specialty area, but as one of my close friend’s work for them I’ll give them a shout. You can learn more from Casio’s education web-site.

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Missed my main post on this conference? Read it here!

Visit to Leeds College of Music

This is a blog-post from a visit to Leeds College of Music (LCoM) in 2012. LCoM was in 2012 in the process of transforming its programmes. They were cutting down on the number of degrees and made the degrees they provided more flexible. They also opened for more studio-time for everyone and much longer opening-hours. Mac-labs, studios and rehearsal rooms are now also open till 3am! Level 1 and 2 HE students now had access to facilities only level 3 students and above had access to before. Music students also had access to more of the technical facilities that only technology and production students used to have. You may think this makes everyone fight more for studio-time, but I won’t believe it. Last time I checked LCoM had about 60 teaching and practice rooms, seven recording studios, three mixing studios, a large in-house venue and a small recital-hall. The college is not lacking in facilities. The library is well-provided in literature for practical skills and academic knowledge. There is also a substantial collection of printed and recorded music—especially the latter category was important for us production students. (Although, today most music can be streamed if you risk the lower resolution for critical listening.) In 2012 Leeds College of Music also got its ‘all Steinway status,’ which means that close to all pianos are made by Steinway.

My 2012 visit to the college was part of a private study-trip in the UK for a prospective student. At LCoM we had an appointment with lecturer Brian Morell to talk about admissions and student life, and we met with a number of other staff. I am not going to present the current line-up of degrees here, but I’ll rather provide a few highlights from my own experience as a Leeds College of Music student (I graduated autumn 2009):

- The college is a dedicated music conservatory and it is strong in both jazz, pop, classical and production studies. This meant that I always had access to top-of-the-range musicians for collaborations. LCoM’s old slogan ‘where music happens’ described our student-days spot on.

- Leeds is a great city for music, and the legendary venue ‘the Wardrobe’ is just across the street.

- LCoM always had great facilities. Significant upgrades have been undertaken in recent years. If I have any critique on the current state of the studios, may I suggest that they are so well-equipped that no studios now represent the lower end of the industry? Though that luxury is hardly a problem!

- During my post-graduate studies in Music Production our little class had four doctorate-holders overseeing us. That gave us a density of PhDs to Masters-students of almost 3 to 1. That’s even before counting visiting lecturers.

- Several of my friends from LCoM have gone on to great places in both music and academia. For me, being linked to the LCoM-community today means I’m linked to a living organism of musicians and producers. And it means being linked to a college that is big enough to conquer new ground and increase my CV-prestige as a degree-holder, but small enough to receive us alumni back in a family-like fashion.

…but then again, I’m the wrong guy to ask for an objective outside-perspective! Cause I loved it too much!

Big thanks to Senior Studio Technician Keith Smith and all the other staff who spent the day with us!

Norwegian Singer/Songwriter, up-and-coming Producer

and future LCoM Student Oda Kveinå Tonstad

in the G-series SSL studio.

Film meets music and sound. This suite has quite a big canvas

and a Genelec surround-system built into the walls

Studio 113 used to have a TOFT ATB when I was a student.

Now it has an Audient 8024 and the college uses Audient

consoles in several studios.
Read more about the relation to FunkyJunk here.

Here’s an updated picture from Studio 422.

From the musical scores section of the library. On the far wall you
can see parts of the extensive record collection.

The library's wall of magazines and journals

Read more about the College's facilities on this link.

Visit to School of Sound Recording SSR, Manchester

This post is from a 2012 visit to School of Sound Recording (SSR) in Manchester. I first visited SSR in 2008 during a workshop on new features in Pro Tools for the launch of PT 8. Back then it was an industry training academy with no degree programmes. They were quite clear on it: ‘we don’t want any red tape!’ Four years later they had welcomed the red tape (even though you can’t record on it!) because many students want academic credits to show if they spend a year or more studying something. I would want the same thing! SSR has been broadening its appeal in several ways. Currently, I can’t see the name ‘School of Sound Recording’ anywhere strategic on their web-page, and their logo has gotten four new words attached to it: ‘Music, Film, Games, Education.’ Evidently, SSR isn’t just a school of sound recording any more.  But true to their beginnings, the school still offers short courses and industry training. Notably amongst these is an impressive range of Avid Pro Tools certifications.

I was travelling with two Norwegians and we had booked an appointment to see the school, since one of them considered applying. We got a full private tour of the facilities and a long talk with (then) Vice Principal Ian Carmichael. Big thanks to everyone, as we were incredibly well received, and especially to Vicky Batrak (link to her company) who gave us a glimpse of what a student’s life is like at SSR.

Since I first set foot there, I have liked SSR. It has a number of studios spread across three floors. All smaller recording-studios are set up with Soundcraft Ghost consoles. These are easy and intuitive to use, while teaching in-line work-flow. Different Ghost-studios are set up with different tasks in mind: tracking or mixing, compact studio or larger studio with more outboard. Beyond the Ghost-studios we find consoles from Avid, DigiCo, Amek and Neve, plus a live venue with several traditional analogue consoles, a large analogue Midas and an Avid Venue system. The whole building is served by an Avid ISIS shared storage server and the venue has lines running to several of the studios.

SSR has long-standing collaborations with the audio industry and have very close ties with Wigwam. I believe there has also been some donations of gear towards the school from the industry who recognises that it attracts a lot of young talents. In my last post I mentioned how Leeds Beckett University has been teaming up with accrediting body JAMES. SSRs close collaboration with the industry is the traditional way of handling industry-connections in music and sound production. For prospectus students who might wonder, in my opinion there is no need for further validation of SSR Manchester’s various audio-courses as the institute has always been closely woven into the fabric of the industry.

Over the last few years SSR has branched out from Manchester to London, and further on to Asia. As a former resident of Singapore myself, I am really happy to hear they have set up a school there. Another school is set up in Jakarta. Both the Asian campuses are distinctly simpler than the UK campuses, but they provide a valuable addition in a part of the world that has a very short history in educating audio engineers. One of the areas you can specialise in at the Jakarta campus is live sound for ‘Houses of Worship.’ Let me put this into context for you! When I studied Music Technology in Singapore one of my classmates came from Jakarta. His cousin is from Surabaya and was one of my best friends. After Christmas brake I asked my classmate what he had been up to over the holidays. He said he had played at a festival. Ok, festival sounds good I thought! How big? Sixty thousand people, came the calm reply! I was a bit taken aback and later told his cousin. She just went “oh, well… it was just for his Church” (we attended a pretty big Church ourselves). “Just Church” doesn’t make the crowd smaller. Live sound for Houses of Worship in Jakarta makes great sense! Indonesia is also a great place for live music (think: Jakarta Jazz Festival) and has a music scene prominent with funk, RnB and soul.

SSR in Manchester is on my shortlist over great places to do professional courses and industry-training. It sports up-to date and extremely varied facilities for teaching sound engineering for both venue and studio. It also has computer-labs and short courses for certification on DAWs and the likes. I have never studied at SSR myself, but visiting always feels like coming home!

Studios

SSR use Soundcraft Ghost consoles in a number of studios.
It is a simple console with good pre-amps that teaches the use of
traditional analogue in-line consoles without too much clutter. Consoles
are set up with patch-bays and a few pieces of nice outboard.

Amek Einstein console. The room is well-stocked with outboard
and has lines running to the live venue and one of the other studios.

Judging from the SSR web-site, it looks like this Control 24 is now
changed to a newer C 24. These are great little consoles for integration
with ProTools and represent a cost-efficient solution for students
eventually setting up their own facilities. The room is set up with
screen and projector.

ICON studio with screen and projector. The current incarnation of
Manchester SSR's ICON studio looks a bit different. It sports both
a stereo and a 5.1 monitoring system.

A room set up with a DigiCo mixer. It has lines to the live venue.
This is a great facility for anyone wanting to record live concerts
or train for working in high-end sound-trucks or modern theatres.
Interestingly, the room also has synthesizers and software for music
production, so this will also work as a place for music-creation.

The Neve studio is said to be 'loosely built on Abbey Road Studio 1.'
It is a desirable recording facility and it has been attempted booked
by the recording industry in Manchester several times. Often they are
turned down, since it would interfere with student-work. This studio
is for training of advanced students.

It is set in a large room where you can record without having to
be separated by a wall of glass. There is an isolation booth
for when separation is needed.

 Venue and Live Sound

DigiDesign Venue

Midas Verona

SSR have several analogue consoles on tables with wheels.

The workstations have HD recorders with multi-track recordings
of performances in them for mixing-practice.

Monitor mix at the side of the stage

Thanks again to everyone we met during our visit for their generosity with time!