Matthew Thibeault

I was extremely honored to receive the Outstanding Emerging Researcher Award, presented by the Center for Music Education Research at the Suncoast Music Education Research Symposium at the University of South Florida. I was particularly moved after hearing the exemplary papers of the conference, many of which will find an audience through a book Clint Randles is editing.

The plaque resides on my shelf at the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, where I am a Faculty Fellow at work on a related book.

My paper, The Shifting Locus of Musical Experience from Performance to Recording to New Media: Some Implications for Music Education, will be published in an upcoming issue of Music Education Research International. For the conference, I prepared brief remarks, drawing on my paper to set up a discussion, and for those interested in the basics of my paper I have posted those remarks on IDEALS.

For those considering attending the next SMERS Conference (2015), may I leave you with Continue reading →

How might music educators expand their consideration of virtual ensembles? From Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir to the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, to the PS 22′s chorus, there are an increasing array of ensembles with a substantial Internet presence. The term “virtual ensemble” is itself ambiguous (some would say these are virtually a real ensemble), but it seems to be sticking. I find that students and faculty are interested in VEs, but there is not yet much out there.

For those curious to start thinking critically about VEs, here’s a collaborative manifesto from my undergraduate music education technology course. They tried to assess the good, bad and problematic, and comments are welcome! (Thanks to the students in MUS 243, and Chris Cayari, the TA for the course.) I helped a bit with the discussion, but the end product is truly the work of the students. Here’s a PDF version of this content.

Draft Manifesto for Virtual Ensembles in Music Education 

We perceive the following strengths for Virtual Ensembles (VEs):

• VEs allow musical performances to be accessed by limitless audiences
• VEs allow a diverse community from different places to be a part of something together
• VEs allow a social and musical connection across space and time
• VEs allow for a varied palette of interpretations, supporting diversity of expressions Continue reading →

I’m delighted to be taking part in “Is it the technology? Challenging technological determinism in music education,” at the ATMI/CMS/NASM conference (November 16, 2012).

Here’s the short paper I’ll present, “The Sense of Technological Determinism.” In it, I make a case that we have to understand how determinism makes sense in order to better confront these accounts, and close with some recent scholarship that better accounts for changes that occur in concert with technology. The paper will likely end up edited and expanded and included in something somewhere, so feedback is welcome.

I had the pleasure of working on some really interesting musical games with a team of researchers based here at the University of Illinois, and a paper we wrote has just been published in the GLS 8.0 Proceedings. I’ve added the paper to my publications page, or just click here. The proceedings are freely downloadable under a CC license, or you can purchase a bound copy. Our article, “Developing games that can create real heroes on real guitars: Using acoustic musical instruments and the human voice as controllers” begins on page 269 in the proceedings.

To download the games, visit my previous post (Mac-only at this point).

Click to view either one, and thanks to the authors for getting the gist of the group beautifully. As always, you can also visit the home of the HUU online: http://homebrewukuleleunion.wordpress.com

I was asked several months ago to contribute some remarks for an episode of Inside the Academy, ASU’s version of Inside the Actor’s Studio. The episode features the work of my mentor, Elliot Eisner, and the video and supplementary materials are wonderful.

For those who’ve read Eisner, or the dozen or so others including Jerome Bruner, Linda Darling-Hammond, Maxine Greene, Lee Shulman, this is a great way to bring the thinkers to life in their own words and those of friends and students. Highly recommended. My remarks are in the separate section “reflections on Elliot Eisner.”