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Learning Theory through Pop Music by Matthew F. Finnegan














Did you know that most pop music has a four beat pattern where the snare drum usually accents beats two and four? Example: "Get a Grip" by Aerosmith!

At 8:00 am I attended what I consider my favorite clinic thus far at the MENC All-Eastern Music Educators Conference. Titled "From Simple to Complex: Leading the Listener to Learning," clinician Mathew F. Finnegan gave great examples of how popular music can be used in the classroom to teach music theory.

The idea is this: teaching music theory through the old school fashion of notes on a page and through classical music does not work in today's classroom. In order to create the motivation for students to want to learn theory, we need to reach out and use the music which relates to them the most and connect it with the content we want to teach them.

I found this clinic to be very inspiring. Here we just focused on the beat, but this clinician has already established how to incorporate pop music with the teachings of rhythm, instrumentation, voices, song form, tonality, dynamics, text and solos.

I am excited to bring back these ideas for our Music Production I course and the virtual music composition course I will be teaching next year.

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