Richard McCready teaches Music Technology and Advanced Guitar at River Hill HS in Maryland. He is a frequent presenter on Music Technology at local, state and national conferences, and is also an education consultant for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, The Maryland State Department of Education, and the International Baccalaureate. He is the author of “Make Your Own Music” (2016, Hal Leonard).

How has technology changed music teaching since the beginning of your career?

The greater availability and lowered price of technology have been a boon. When I started teaching, I requested one computer for my classroom with sequencing software and the school could not afford that for me, so I ended up teaching with cheap mini keyboards and four-track tape recorders. Over the years, my ambitious requests for funding for gear have been met with less skepticism, and I now count myself lucky to teach in a well-equipped purpose-built Music Tech lab with 25 stations, all with 88-key keyboards and Ableton Push controllers.

Briefly describe your journey in building a technology infused music curriculum (or integrating tech into a traditional curriculum)

I have always taught in a way that centers around keeping the kids creative and happy. Creative kids are happy kids, and happy kids are creative kids. From my first day of teaching I have found that kids love to make, hear, and perform their own music, and enjoy the safety and guidance of a curriculum that places that positive experience as the core method of learning and expression. The technology simply enables this to happen. I teach the kids from day one that they are musicians and producers, but instead of playing bass clarinet in the band or singing second alto in the choir, the DAW is their instrument. Our job in the classroom is to improve our art every day through our learning of music and our expertise in the DAW. 

“Creative kids are happy kids, and happy kids are creative kids.”

Richard McCready, on using technology to make creative music experiences for students.

What technology are you using in your music lessons on a daily basis?

I begin teaching simple production and listening skills through a browser-based DAW such as Soundtrap or Bandlab, and we also learn how to use some notation software to export MIDI files which we can import and manipulate in the DAW along with recorded audio. As we learn more theory of chords, modes, drum beats, and melodies, we move into Ableton Live and begin to use the Push as our main method of creating MIDI and controlling our presentations through mixing and sound processing. Each child is working on their computer and keyboard/Push every day. I give ten minutes or so instruction at the start of class using my own computer, overhead projector and document camera (for keyboard and Push) and the rest of the class time is devoted to composition and individual work. Each student has their own workstation, so they may work individually, but I also encourage collaborative projects where the kids get to work together on a full-scale project such as the narration of a children’s book, or a score for a movie scene. 

In Guitar Class I use a Jamstik Studio Guitar, which is a MIDI-enabled guitar made by the Zivix company. It enables me to display the fret positions, note names, and chord shapes from my guitar onto a screen using my regular projector. It is an amazing benefit to students as everything I play becomes represented on a chord diagram on a virtual fretboard. It makes learning the guitar much easier plus I don’t have to spend all my planning hours printing chord charts!

What is a particular success story from using technology in your music classes?

I am so proud of many students who have gone into the industry, working for companies such as Dreamworks, Blackbird, Sweetwater, as well as some who manage their own solo performance and recording careers. However, I will never forget Clare. She sat down in her first class and before I could even welcome the new class of students, she said “I don’t want to be here”. She was a tough kid, and many teachers had given up on her, but I reassured her and worked with her day by day on finding how music could help her make sense of a tough upbringing, how her skills in gymnastics could become inspiration for her to write music that made her want to dance to her own story. Clare, to my surprise, signed up for Music Tech again every year, and then became my student aide during her senior year (and some admin had predicted she would drop out of school by tenth grade). On the last day of her school career, she waited behind after all the other seniors had left class, and then she burst into tears and said “I don’t want to ever leave”. Clare was your typical forgotten child, but she found how music could soothe her hurts. She’s now a successful young adult, and she comes by every few months just to let me know how she’s doing. Clare’s mom gave me her graduation banner, which now hangs proudly on the wall in the lab, as my daily reminder of how keeping even one child creative and happy made all the difference. 

What advice do you have for others reshaping their music classes with technology-based lessons?

Begin with Common Core National Arts Standard number 10 in everything you do, and shape your lessons and curriculum with that as a starting point. National Standard number 10 is a Connect standard, and asks students to “synthesize and relate personal knowledge and experiences to make art.” It places the student at the centre of the learning and ensures that they are always connecting what they learn to the neural pathways they already have in their brain. Your curriculum and the music you choose to teach should be a reflection of the children you have in front of you, and by using the students’ lived experiences and culture to guide your work honors them and gives them true ownership of the classroom experience.