{"id":20,"date":"2010-10-22T15:17:00","date_gmt":"2010-10-22T11:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/2010\/10\/22\/music-educator-influences-more-than-students\/"},"modified":"2010-10-22T15:17:00","modified_gmt":"2010-10-22T11:17:00","slug":"music-educator-influences-more-than-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/2010\/10\/22\/music-educator-influences-more-than-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Music Educator Influences More than Students"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greenfield Community College\u2019s Music Department Chair Matthew Shippee\u2019s work as a music educator impacts more than his GCC students, it influences<\/span>music educators in community colleges around the country. An article he published recently in the journal New Directions for Community Colleges encourages community college professors and music educators to teach the class that he wishes was around when he was a student. Titled \u201cThe Sound of Starting Where You Are: Contemplative Practice in Music Pedagogy,\u201d Shippee\u2019s article is part of an issue focused on integrating contemplative practice into higher education.<\/p>\n

Shippee knows there is more to being a musician than being a good technician on an instrument. As a student in college and graduate school, Shippee wanted courses to answer the question \u201cwhat makes some performances have a profound emotional impact on the listener, while others are ho-hum.\u201d Such a course didn\u2019t exist when Shippee was a student, so, as a professor, he created one. Shippee helps GCC Music majors become more expressive musicians and explore the answer to his question in Creative Musicianship, a year-long required course he\u2019s taught since 2003.<\/p>\n

Shippee\u2019s article, a distillation of what he\u2019s learned teaching this course, encourages music educators to help their students develop a greater awareness of themselves in a musical situation and how they respond to external and internal stimuli.<\/p>\n

Shippee said, \u201cMusicians constantly make split-second choices, deciding how to create sounds, how loud, what sound quality they want to achieve, and more. Traditional academic training in the nuts and bolts of music theory, technique, and history only goes so far. With courses like Creative Musicianship we help students be open to an ongoing process of discovery and exploration, help them recapture a sense of \u2018innocence\u2019 and playfulness as they listen to and play music.\u201d<\/p>\n

One exercise featured in Shippee\u2019s article involves Music students playing improvisational music in the Art Gallery while Art students do improvisational painting. In a discussion after the exercise, students become more aware of the emotions they and their listeners experienced and what they can create when they are in a playful, experimental mindset.<\/p>\n

Shippee said, \u201cWe\u2019re really fortunate that GCC is very open to innovative teaching strategies. A lot of colleges aren\u2019t as flexible. Our students become more sensitive musicians and listeners through the process of developing more mindfulness. I hope my article will inspire other music educators to incorporate mindfulness and contemplative practice in their courses. I know there is a demand for this type of course \u2013 it\u2019s very popular at GCC and, when I tell musician friends about it, they all wish they could take it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For more information about Shippee\u2019s article, the Creative Musicianship course, or the GCC Music department, contact Shippee at 413-775-1228, email shippeem@gcc.mass.edu or visit https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/departments\/music\/<\/a><\/p>\n

By Mary McClintock, ’82<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greenfield Community College\u2019s Music Department Chair Matthew Shippee\u2019s work as a music educator impacts more than his GCC students, it influencesmusic educators in community colleges around the country. An article he published recently in the journal New Directions for Community Colleges encourages community college professors and music educators to teach the class that he wishes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gcc.mass.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}