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MMEA Conference: Integrating Film and Video Game Projects into The Music Classroom

This clinic was with Sean Hagon of The New England Conservatory. Focusing on creating music for film and videogames, this clinic brought lesson plan ideas that could be used in any music classroom.

In order to create quality music, we talked about the value of listening to quality music. The way we used to teach music was here is the composer, here is his biography, here are five of his songs, memorize this! Sean's technique is to ask the students critical listening questions to music, however it is not just the same old same old. He will have multiple pieces for students to listen to from many different genres including the classical era, movie soundtracks, and videogame soundtracks. By slipping in new music with the old, students will be able to draw connections between them and thus appreciate them more.

I currently use a Bugs Bunny cartoon as part of our film soundtrack project in Music Technology I. I learned about archive.org in this clinic which offers public domain videos, pictures and music royalty free. I will be using this to create new film projects in my course.


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