Music Outside the Lines: Ideas for Composing Music in K-12 Music Classrooms

Music Outside the Lines is an informative and practical resource for all who are invested in making music composition an integral part of curriculum. Author Maud Hickey offers both a well-grounded justification for teaching music composition and also a compendium of useful instructional ideas and classroom activities. Hickey begins with a rationale for teachers to begin composition activities in their own classrooms, with a thoughtful argument that demonstrates that all music teachers possess the skills and training needed to take children along the path toward composing satisfying musical compositions even if they themselves have never taken formal composition lessons. She also addresses some of the stickier issues that affect teaching music composition in schools such as assessment, notation, and technology. Most importantly, she introduces a curricular model for teaching composition, a model which provides an array of composition activities to try in both the music classrooms and studio. These activities encourage musical and creative growth through music composition; while they are organized in logical units corresponding to well-known teaching modules, they also offer jumping off points for music teachers to exercise their own creative thinking and create music composition activities that are customized to their classes and needs.