I had a great time as a virtual visitor (via Skype) with two of Patrick Schmidt’s music education courses. We discussed my General Music Today article, “General Music as a Cure for the High-Stakes Concert.”

For those in the class, I mentioned two sources you might like to further explore:

1. Tom Turino’s distinction between presentational and participatory music is captured in his book Music as Social Life.

2. My work with the ukulele is best understood through a column for General Music Today (here’s a link to a blog post that describes it, or see the entry after this for some recent press).

3. With the second class, we spoke a bit about the philosophy of technology as it relates to music education. I spoke of how much pleasure and insight I’ve drawn from Albert Borgmann’s Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, and you can read more about my perspective in the recent response to John Kratus I’ve posted.

Email me if you have additional questions, or if you try out some of the things we discussed.