music design assignment

• 50+ Lesson Ideas for The Chrome Music Lab

What is the Chrome Music Lab?

About the chrome music lab.

The Chrome Music Lab (CML) – created by Google in 2016 – is a fantastic online resource for music teachers and students. It’s simple to use and its main aim is to allow visitors to explore sound and create with sound .

The Chrome Music Lab is:

• interactive
• bright and colorful
• works on any device
• simple to use

The CML has 13 different areas to explore – known as “experiments” and each one has a different focus. The experiments are:

Spectrogram

Sound waves, melody maker, voice spinner, oscillators, how can i use cml with my students.

Each experiment in the CML is super-useful for introducing or reinforcing a music/sound concept. I love the idea of using it as a starting point for a topic – a springboard activity which is followed by the rest of your lesson or unit of work.

The CML has limitations (for instance, you can’t export or download work), but I don’t think this should be seen as a negative. It’s just something to be aware of and you can plan your lesson accordingly. Some of the experiments allow students to save a link to their work so they can come back and continue at a later stage, but many of them are designed to be used “on the spot”.

The CML Lab will work no matter how many devices you have access to:

• Just one device: plug your laptop, Chromebook or iPad into a data projector with speakers attached so you can use the CML with your class as a group
• Shared devices: students can work in groups and collaborate while using the CML
• One-to-one devices (1:1): students can work individually on the CML experiments

How are other teachers using the Chrome Music Lab?

There are a collection of tweets showing how other teachers are using the CML here.

How to use:

Create a song by clicking notes into the grid. The top section of the grid can be used for high notes, and the lower section of the grid for low notes. There are two rows of dots at the bottom for creating a rhythmic pattern.

Good to know:

• Change the playback sound and tempo with the options at the bottom of the screen
• Click on Settings to change the scale, length of the song, range of notes, time signature and more
• You can use the mic to record notes into Songmaker
• You can save or share a link to your song
• Set up templates or partially completed songs ahead of your lesson to save time during class

A few lesson ideas:

• Recreate a song you have learnt in class (you can provide the starting note for the students)
• Compose a melody using the pentatonic scale (you can change the scale in the Settings area)
• As a class, compose a bassline ostinato using the lower section of notes and then play it on classroom instruments (or sing it).
• Demonstrate visually melodies that move by step or leaps
• Compose simple rhythmic patterns in two parts
• Ask students to create a pattern that demonstrates high vs low pitches
• Explore different meters and beat subdivisions (you can adjust these in Settings)

Click in the grid to see two animated characters play rhythms meters of 3, 4, 5, and 6.

• Add sounds by clicking on the grid
• Remove a sound by clicking on it again
• Switch to each new meter by clicking the right or left arrow
• Each meter uses different instruments
• Select a meter and remove the existing rhythmic pattern. Students can then create their own pattern on the grid. This could be done as a group or individually
• Press play and ask students to keep the beat – they could clap or walk to the beat – while CML plays the rhythm
• Select a meter and set up a simple rhythm. Ask the students to all clap the top line/part only. Then ask them to clap the second line/part. Divide the students into two groups and ask half to play the top line and the other half to play the second line/part. Add in a third part and divide the students into three groups to play the three rhythms
• Ask students to work out which instruments play each horizontal part in the grid beneath the characters (ie. in the 3 meter, the bottom line is played by the low timpani drum)
• Older students can create a rhythm and then – on a piece of paper or in a separate app – notate the rhythm on a percussion staff using traditional notation

FREE LESSON PLAN:

Download a free lesson plan – Explore Rhythm and Meter with the Chrome Music Lab .

Spectrogram shows a visual picture of the frequencies that make up sound. Choose an instrument or sound source from the buttons at the bottom of the screen to compare spectrograms of different sounds.

• You can record your own sound using the microphone
• You can draw freely on the screen to create abstract sounds
• Choose two sound sources and write down 3 differences between each of the spectrograms for those sounds
• Ask students what loud sounds look like on the spectrogram? How about quiet sounds?
• Click on the microphone and say (or sing) “aah”, then say/sing “eee”. How does the spectrogram change? Try an “ooh” sound and compare that to the “ah” and “eee” sounds. Other interesting sounds to try: “k”, “ba”, “ssss”, “shhhh”
• If you have already used the Harmonics and Oscillators experiments with your students you could ask them whether they can see the fundamental and overtones in the spectrogram image. Which sound sources produce the most overtones?
• Display the Spectrogram on your data projector during vocal warm-ups in choir rehearsal. Click on the microphone and let the choir members see a visual representation of the exercises they are singing. A great way to keep everyone eng aged!

Choose a note on the keyboard to see a three-note triad based on that note

• Switch between major and minor using the toggle button below the keyboard
• Use Chords as a visual guide when introducing the concept of triads to students
• Display Chords on the data projector during class and choose one of the notes on the keyboard. Ask one of the students to identify the two other notes that will make up the triad. Then ask them to click/tap the root note to check their answer
• Use the major/minor toggle switch to show students the difference between a major or minor chord based on the same root no te

Play a note on the keyboard to see a visual representation of the way in which a sound wave travels through air molecules.

• Zoom in using the magnifying glass to see a red line tracing the shape of the wave created by one note
• Play a low note and ask students to describe the way the air molecules move. Are they moving slow or fast? What happens when you play a high note? Are they moving faster or slower than the low note?
• Zoom in using the magnifying glass and play a low note. Describe the waveform of a low note. Play a high note and describe the waveform now – is it different to the low note?
• Open Oscillators on a separate tab or on another device and play a low frequency. How does the waveform in the oscillator character’s mouth compare to the sound wave produced by a low note in the Sound Waves experiment?

Click on a chord on the coloured wheel to play a single major or minor arpeggio. Press the play button to hear the selected chord play in the pattern shown at the top of the screen.

• You can use the arrows to change the playback pattern to one of five variations
• There are options to change the playback sound from harp to piano
• You can alter the tempo using the metronome button
• Ask students to define what a chord is in music. Click on the letter names in the circle to hear chords. Then discuss what an arpeggio is – a chord that is broken up into individual notes that are played one after the other. Press the play button to hear CML play different types of arpeggio patterns
• Select one chord and then play the arpeggio that appears on the screen on a keyboard, guitar or other instrument. Switch to a different arpeggio style and play that one, Continue through all the arpeggio style options
• Use the chord wheel to demonstrate visually when chord changes occur in a song. For example, play the common pop song chord progression of I, V, vi, IV (as shown in this Axis Of Awesome YouTube clip ). Select a key – such as C major – and ask students to work out which chord is chord I, which one is chord V, which one is vi and which one is IV for that key. They can then press the Play button, choose one of the playback styles and click on each chord in time to create a backing using that sequence
• Use the chord wheel to experiment with different different combinations of chord sequences for the purposes of songwriting

The artist Wassily Kandinsky compared painting to making music. In this experiment you can draw shapes, lines and scribbles on the screen and hear them turn into sound.

• Different shapes make different types of sounds. Try circle and triangle!
• Click on a drawing to hear it play back
• Press the play button to hear your entire painting
• Vertical placement changes the pitch of a note or timbre of the sound. Try drawing 3 triangles in a column to hear three different percussive sounds
• Use the coloured circle to the left of the play button to change the sounds
• Young students can draw a picture on a piece of paper using 3 or 4 shapes/lines. They can then recreate (copy) their picture in the Kandinsky experiment and press play to hear the drawing. Ask the students: does your picture sound the way you expected? What do you like about the sound of your picture? Anything you would change?
• Draw a picture on the screen and play it back with the different sound/colour options – which one do you like the best? Why?
• Draw some horizontal lines on the screen at different heights – what’s the difference between the lines drawn at the bottom of the screen and those drawn in the middle or the top of the screen?
• Ask students to draw a triangle in the middle of the screen. What sound does it make? Can you recognise the instrument? What happens when you draw another triangle above the first one? Does it sound the same or different? Do you recognise the instrument? Try a third triangle low down on the screen
• Draw a circle on the screen – what happens? Can you draw two more circles that make higher or lower sounds than your first circle?
• Cross-curricular opportunity: learn about Kandinsky the artist in this biography written especially for kids and/or create some art projects like these ones .

The Melody Maker allows students to create a single-line melody using graphic-style notation which represents time (from left to right) and pitch (up and down).

• Melody Maker is a simplified version of the Songmaker mentioned earlier. Melody Maker does not allow you to alter the scale, range or beat subdivision
• Playback the melody you have created by pressing the play button at the bottom of the screen
• Change the tempo or add duplicate notes using the other options
• Compose an ostinato and play it back on tuned percussion or Boomwhackers (the note colours on the screen roughly match those of the Boomwhackers!)
• Demonstrate visually a melody that that moves by step or leaps
• Demonstrate high vs low pitches

Drag the slider left or right to hear the Voice Spinner recording played slow, fast, forward or backward.

• Click on the microphone to record your own sounds: melodies, spoken sentences or other sounds around you
• Ask students to note that as the slider is moved left or right the pitch changes. Where on the line is the pitch of the sound at its lowest?
• When you move the slider all the way to the right or all the way to the left, the spinner moves more quickly. What happens to the pitch of the sound when it moves more quickly? What about when it spins slowly?

Harmonics shows you a set of frequencies consisting of a fundamental and the overtones related to it by an exact fraction – twice as fast, three times as fast, four times as fast and so on.

• Click and hold (or tap and hold) to hear the sustained pitch
• Use the CML Harmonics to explain to students that the timbre of different instruments is affected by the overtones – or harmonic series – that the instrument produces. CML Harmonics visually demonstrates the mathematical relationship between the fundamental and the overtones. If you have older students, this video by Paul Davids offers a great explanation
• Play the fundamental and ask students to work out which note it is (F3). Then ask them to work out the remaining pitches as played by the harmonics on the screen
• Ask students to determine the frequency value of the fundamental and each of the overtones
• Open the CML Spectrogram experiment in another tab (or on another device) and ask students if they can see the harmonic series in the spectrogram for the flute, the harp, the trombone and the wine glass. What differences do they notice between each one?

Inspired by the roll of paper you feed into a pianola, the Piano Roll experiment allows you to view a graphic notation version of a number of well-known pieces.

• Change the music selection by using the left and right arrows next to the play button
• Change the playback sound by clicking on the piano or wave buttons
• Record your own playback sound with the microphone. Short sounds work really well – try a cough, a single sung note, a clap or a dog bark!
• Group activity with older students: before pressing play, ask them if they can guess the piece of music showing on the screen. Switch the selection by clicking on the arrow
• Use the right arrow to move through to the third piece in the Piano Roll experiment (Beethoven’s 5th Symphony). Ask young students to find examples of the following: a repeated note, a group of notes that move by step, a long note, a rest, a short note, a group of notes that move in an upward direction, a group of notes that move in a downward direction
• Just for fun! Click on the microphone and record a dog bark and then play back the piece on the screen

Click/tap and hold on the oscillator character on the screen to hear it “sing” a frequency. Drag your mouse/finger up or down to change the frequency value (and the shape of the character!).

• Use the arrow keys to change the oscillator type
• To hear a very slow oscillator, click/tap and hold the bottom of the screen
• Ask students: does a small frequency value (number) produce a low sound or a high sound? Does a large frequency value (number) produce a low sound or a high sound?
• Ask students what they notice about the wave form that shows in the mouth of each oscillator: what does it look like when you play a high note? What does it look like when you play a low note?
• Older students: click and hold on the bottom part of the screen, listen to the note and write down of the frequency number. They can then multiply that number by two and try to make their oscillator play the resulting frequency value (it’s difficult to make it play precisely the right one!). What do they notice about pitches of the two frequency values? What is the interval between the two? (hint: they should be an octave apart)
• Each of the oscillator types has a unique sound or timbre. Write down 2-3 words to describe each one

Click on a string to explore the mathematical relationship between the length of a string and its pitch.

• Click just one of the sections on the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth strings to hear what happens to the pitch when the original string length is divided into smaller lengths

• Get out a real stringed instrument (such as a ukulele, guitar, violin, viola or cello) and have the students work out how to produce a low sound and a high sound

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Hello! I’m Katie Argyle – an Australian music technology trainer and consultant with a passion for helping music teachers through my business Midnight Music .

I’m a qualified teacher but no, I don’t currently teach in a school. I help teachers through my online professional development space – the Midnight Music Community – where there are tutorial videos, courses, links and downloadable resources.

I like to focus on easy ways to incorporate technology into what you are already doing in your music curriculum through a range of creative projects. I also run live workshops and have presented at countless conferences and other music education events.

If you want simple, effective ideas for using technology in music education, I would LOVE to help you inside the Midnight Music Community. Learn more and take a sneak peek inside

14 Comments

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[…] 50+ Lesson Ideas For The Chrome Music Lab […]

[…] Explore the science of sound with the bright colourful online experiments in the Chrome Music Lab […]

Its a terrible app! Just joking it’s awesome!

Great to use with my students with hearing impairment and when teaching sound-related curriculum! I’d love to see more ideas (web links) related to the sound waves and spectrogram experiments. Such a fun site for kids to explore! Thank-you! Love that’s it’s free!

Thanks Katie!

guys i use this app all the time but some of the things wont work…

What version of Chrome? I just updated this afternoon but I’m seeing message ” . . . browser not supported . . . ” but I can’t get full details. Help?

The latest version should work fine (I just checked mine and it’s working), but if you’re having issues it might be to do with your school network perhaps. It would be best to check with your IT person. You can also test it at home on your home network to see if that makes a difference.

This is the best music app ever!!!

[…] 5. 50+ Lesson Ideas for The Chrome Music Lab […]

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The Art of Music Design: Creating Harmonious Soundscapes

Music design is a fascinating blend of artistry and technical skill, where sound and visuals converge to create an immersive experience for listeners. It involves

January 7, 2024

Music design is a fascinating blend of artistry and technical skill, where sound and visuals converge to create an immersive experience for listeners. It involves the meticulous arrangement of musical elements, such as melody, harmony, rhythm, and instrumentation, to evoke emotions and convey a message effectively. In this article, we will delve into the world of music design, exploring its various facets, techniques, and applications.

Table of Contents

The Elements of Music Design

In this section, we will explore the fundamental building blocks of music design, including melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. By understanding these elements and how they interact, we can create more cohesive and engaging musical compositions.

The Power of Melody

At the heart of every memorable musical piece lies a compelling melody. A melody is a sequence of musical notes that forms the main theme or motif of a composition. It is the melodic contour and phrasing that give a piece its distinct character and emotional impact. Whether it is a simple catchy tune or a complex melodic progression, melodies play a vital role in capturing the listener’s attention and evoking specific emotions.

Harmony: The Foundation of Musical Depth

Harmony refers to the simultaneous sounding of different musical notes to create chords and chord progressions. It provides the foundation for the emotional depth and complexity of a musical piece. Harmonic choices can evoke a range of emotions, from tension and suspense to joy and tranquility. By understanding the principles of harmony, music designers can create rich and captivating compositions that resonate with their audience.

Rhythm: The Pulse of Music

Rhythm is the element of music that governs the timing and duration of notes and rests. It establishes the underlying pulse and groove of a composition, giving it a sense of movement and energy. Rhythm can be simple and straightforward or intricate and syncopated, adding complexity and interest to a musical piece. By manipulating rhythm, music designers can create a dynamic and engaging listening experience.

Timbre: Shaping Soundscapes

Timbre refers to the unique quality of a sound that distinguishes it from others. It is influenced by factors such as the instrument or voice producing the sound, the way it is played or sung, and the surrounding acoustics. Timbre plays a crucial role in music design as it helps create a specific mood or atmosphere. By choosing and manipulating different timbres, music designers can shape the sonic landscape and evoke a wide range of emotions.

Crafting the Perfect Sound Palette

Choosing the right instruments and sounds is essential in music design. This section will discuss how to select and manipulate various timbres to create a unique sonic identity that aligns with the desired mood and genre.

Instrument Selection and Arrangement

Each instrument has its unique timbral qualities and characteristics. When crafting the sound palette for a composition, music designers carefully consider the instruments that will best convey the intended mood and emotion. They also pay attention to the arrangement of these instruments, ensuring that they complement each other and create a harmonious blend. By skillfully combining different instruments, music designers can create a rich and textured sonic landscape.

Sonic Manipulation Techniques

Once the instruments are chosen, music designers can employ various techniques to manipulate the sounds they produce. Effects such as reverb, delay, and modulation can add depth and spatial dimension to the music. Equalization and filtering can shape the frequency response of individual instruments, ensuring they sit well together in the mix. Music designers can also experiment with techniques like layering, sampling, and synthesis to create unique and innovative sounds that enhance the overall composition.

The Role of Music in Visual Media

Visual media, such as films, TV shows, and advertisements, heavily rely on music to evoke emotions and enhance storytelling. We will explore the symbiotic relationship between music and visuals, as well as the techniques used to create effective soundtracks.

Enhancing Emotional Impact

Music has the power to intensify the emotional impact of visual media. By carefully selecting and synchronizing the right musical cues with the on-screen action, music designers can heighten the audience’s emotional response. For example, a suspenseful scene can be intensified by using dissonant and tense musical elements, while a heartwarming moment may be enhanced by a gentle and uplifting melody. By understanding the emotional nuances of a story, music designers can create soundtracks that become an integral part of the overall narrative.

Creating Atmosphere and Setting

Music also plays a crucial role in establishing the atmosphere and setting of a visual production. It helps transport the audience to a different time, place, or mood. For instance, a period drama may utilize classical compositions or orchestral arrangements to evoke a sense of elegance and grandeur. On the other hand, a sci-fi or futuristic film might employ electronic and experimental sounds to create a sense of otherworldliness. Music designers work closely with directors and producers to ensure that the soundtrack aligns with the desired tone and enhances the overall visual experience.

Seamless Integration with Sound Effects

In visual media, music must coexist harmoniously with sound effects to create a cohesive and immersive audio experience. Music designers collaborate with sound designers to ensure that the music and sound effects complement each other and do not compete for the listener’s attention. By carefully balancing and mixing the various audio elements, music designers create a seamless sonic tapestry that enhances the visual storytelling.

Music Design in Video Games

Video games have evolved into immersive, interactive experiences, and music design plays a pivotal role in enhancing gameplay. In this section, we will delve into the world of video game soundtracks, discussing adaptive music systems, thematic development, and the unique challenges faced by composers in this medium.

Adaptive Music Systems

Video games offer a unique challenge for music designers due to their interactive nature. Unlike linear media, where the music unfolds in a predetermined sequence, video game soundtracks need to adapt dynamically to the player’s actions and choices. Adaptive music systems allow music designers to create compositions that seamlessly transition between different musical states based on the gameplay context. These systems can respond to changes in the game environment, player interactions, and emotional cues, enhancing the player’s immersion and engagement.

Thematic Development and Leitmotifs

Thematic development is a technique widely used in video game soundtracks to create musical motifs associated with specific characters, locations, or events. These motifs, often referred to as leitmotifs, recur throughout the game, reinforcing the narrative and providing a sense of continuity. Music designers carefully craft these motifs, ensuring that they are memorable and easily recognizable. By employing thematic development, video game soundtracks can enhance storytelling and create a deeper connection between players and the virtual world.

Interactive Sound Design

In addition to composing music, video game music designers also work on interactive sound design. This involves creating and implementing sound effects that respond to the player’s actions and the game’s audio engine. Interactive sound design adds another layer of immersion and realism to the gaming experience, creating a more dynamic and engaging audio environment. The coordination between music, sound effects, and gameplay mechanics is essential to ensure a cohesive and seamless audio experience for the player.

Creating Memorable Brand Jingles

Brands often use catchy jingles to create an instant connection with their target audience. This section will explore the process of crafting memorable brand jingles that leave a lasting impression and reinforce brand identity.

Understanding Brand Identity

Before creating a brand jingle, music designers need to understand the essence and values of the brand they are working with. By immersing themselves in the brand’s identity and target audience, music designers can craft a jingle that resonates and aligns with the brand’s values. The jingle should evoke the desired emotions and create a positive association with the brand in the minds of consumers.

Capturing the Brand’s Personality

Each brand has its unique personality, whether it be playful, sophisticated, or adventurous. Music designers must capture and reflect this personality in the jingle they create. The choice of musical style, instrumentation, and arrangement should align with the brand’s image and target market. For example, a children’s toy brand may opt for a catchy and upbeat jingle, while a luxury brand may prefer a more refined and elegant musical approach.

Creating Catchy and Memorable Melodies

One of the key elements of a successful brand jingle is a catchy and memorable melody. Music designers carefully craft melodies that are easy to remember and instantly recognizable. They consider factors such as melodic contour, rhythmic patterns, and repetition to create a jingle that stays in the minds of consumers long after they have heard it. Catchy jingles can help reinforce brand awareness and create a strong association between the brand and the jingle.

Music Design for Virtual Reality

Virtual reality (VR) has opened up exciting possibilities for music design. This section will discuss how sound designers and composers create immersive audio experiences in VR, making the virtual world come alive through carefully crafted soundscapes.

Creating 3D Audio Environments

In virtual reality, sound designers aim to recreate a sense of three-dimensional space through audio. Byusing binaural recording techniques and spatial audio processing, they can create a sense of depth and directionality in the sound. This allows users to perceive sounds as coming from specific locations within the virtual environment, enhancing the immersive experience. Sound designers carefully consider the positioning and movement of virtual objects and characters, and use sound cues to guide the user’s attention and create a realistic audio landscape.

Emphasizing Presence and Realism

In virtual reality, the goal is to create a sense of presence, where users feel as if they are truly present in the virtual world. Music designers play a crucial role in achieving this by creating audio that enhances the realism and believability of the virtual environment. They carefully select and design sounds that match the visual elements and actions in the virtual world, ensuring that the audio complements and enhances the user’s overall experience. By immersing users in a convincing audio environment, music designers contribute to the sense of presence and immersion in virtual reality.

Dynamic and Interactive Soundscapes

Virtual reality experiences are often interactive, allowing users to interact with objects, characters, and the environment itself. Music designers need to create soundscapes that can adapt and respond to user actions in real-time. This involves designing dynamic music systems that can seamlessly transition between different musical states based on user interactions. For example, in a virtual reality game, the music may intensify during action sequences or change based on the user’s choices and progress. By creating interactive soundscapes, music designers enhance the user’s engagement and agency within the virtual world.

The Evolution of Music Design in the Digital Age

The advent of digital technology has revolutionized the way music is designed, produced, and consumed. This section will delve into the impact of digital tools and software on music design, as well as the challenges and opportunities they present.

Empowering Creativity with Digital Tools

Digital tools and software have democratized music production, making it more accessible for aspiring music designers. With a computer and the right software, anyone can now create professional-sounding music from the comfort of their own home. Digital audio workstations (DAWs) offer a wide range of virtual instruments, effects, and recording capabilities, giving music designers a vast palette of sounds to work with. These tools allow for greater experimentation and creativity, as well as the ability to refine and polish compositions to a high standard.

Collaboration and Remote Work

The digital age has also facilitated collaboration among music designers, regardless of geographical location. With the ability to share files and work remotely, music designers can collaborate with artists, producers, and sound engineers from around the world. This opens up opportunities for cross-cultural collaborations and the exchange of ideas and perspectives. Additionally, the rise of online platforms and marketplaces has made it easier for music designers to showcase their work and connect with potential clients and collaborators.

New Avenues for Distribution and Consumption

Digital platforms and streaming services have transformed the way music is distributed and consumed. Music designers can now reach a global audience with their compositions, bypassing traditional gatekeepers and record labels. Streaming services provide a platform for music designers to share their work, gain exposure, and generate revenue through royalties. This shift in distribution has also allowed for greater diversity in musical styles and genres, as niche and independent artists can find their audience more easily.

The Challenge of Standing Out in a Crowded Market

While digital technology has opened up opportunities for music designers, it has also resulted in a highly saturated market. With countless artists and music being readily available online, standing out and gaining recognition can be a significant challenge. Music designers must not only possess technical skills but also develop a unique artistic voice and brand. Building an online presence through social media, networking, and targeted marketing strategies can help music designers cut through the noise and connect with their target audience.

Exploring Experimental Music Design

Pushing the boundaries of traditional music design, experimental approaches offer unique sonic experiences. This section will introduce some experimental techniques and highlight artists who have embraced unconventional methods in their music design.

Unconventional Instrumentation and Sound Sources

Experimental music designers often venture beyond traditional instrumentation and sound sources, exploring unconventional objects and techniques to create unique sounds. They may incorporate found objects, circuit-bent instruments, or even manipulate and process everyday sounds to create unexpected sonic textures. By pushing the boundaries of what is considered “musical,” experimental music designers challenge traditional notions of composition and sound production.

Exploring Alternative Structures and Forms

Experimental music often defies conventional song structures and forms, embracing more abstract and open-ended approaches. Music designers may experiment with aleatoric or chance-based composition, where elements of the music are left to random or indeterminate processes. They may also explore non-linear narratives or create immersive sonic environments that invite the listener to actively engage with the music. These alternative structures and forms allow for a more exploratory and boundary-pushing approach to music design.

Integrating Technology and Interactive Elements

Experimental music designers often incorporate technology and interactive elements into their compositions, blurring the boundaries between music, art, and technology. They may use sensors, controllers, or interactive installations to create music that responds to the listener’s movements or inputs. These interactive elements invite the listener to become an active participant in the music, breaking down the traditional passive role of the audience. By embracing technology and interactivity, experimental music designers create immersive and engaging experiences.

The Future of Music Design

In this final section, we will speculate on the future of music design, considering emerging technologies and trends that may shape the industry. From AI-generated music to interactive music installations, the possibilities are vast.

The Rise of AI in Music Design

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to revolutionize music design. AI algorithms can analyze vast amounts of musical data and generate compositions based on patterns and trends. This opens up possibilities for automated music creation, where AI systems can assist music designers in generating ideas or even create entire compositions. However, the role of human creativity and interpretation in music design remains invaluable, and the integration of AI in the creative process is likely to be a collaborative one.

Immersive and Interactive Experiences

The demand for immersive and interactive experiences continues to grow, and music design will play a central role in meeting this demand. Virtual reality and augmented reality technologies offer exciting possibilities for creating immersive audiovisual experiences, where music and sound design are seamlessly integrated with the virtual or augmented environment. Interactive installations and performances that combine music, visuals, and audience participation are also likely to gain popularity, blurring the boundaries between creator and audience.

Exploring New Sonic Frontiers

As technology advances, music designers will continue to explore new sonic frontiers and experiment with emerging technologies. From spatial audio and ambisonics to generative algorithms and adaptive music systems, there are endless possibilities for pushing the boundaries of sound. Music designers will continue to innovate and challenge traditional notions of music, creating unique and immersive sonic experiences that captivate and inspire audiences.

In conclusion, music design is a captivating field that combines creativity, technical expertise, and a deep understanding of the emotional power of sound. Whether it’s composing for films, video games, or branding, music design has the ability to transport and captivate audiences. By mastering the elements, exploring new frontiers, and embracing technology, music designers can continually push the boundaries of sonic storytelling, creating truly unforgettable experiences.

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Music Composition Techniques and Resources

The following information on music composition techniques is excerpted from Eric Gould ’s Berklee Online course Creative Strategies for Composition Beyond Style .

As a composer, you will find that musical ideas come in various forms. You may be in the car and a rhythm might come to you. A snippet of a melody might occur to you while walking to the laundromat, or you may discover a chord or progression that you like and want to develop further. Any of these starting points can be the beginning of a highly evolved music composition.

Here we will discuss various music composition techniques and resources that will help you get started as you write your own piece of music. 

How to Start a Music Composition

When you’re starting out with a blank piece of staff paper, there are infinite directions that you can go in. This is why you’ll want to begin with some parameters to narrow down those possibilities. Whatever your starting idea is, you’ll have several aspects to consider before embarking on your music composition. Some of the considerations are practical in nature and some are purely aesthetic, but having a grasp on the key issues from the beginning helps ensure the success of a project. 

Let’s establish the things you should consider when kicking off a piece of music:

Why Are You Writing This Piece?

Having a purpose to do a project is one of the best ways to get you to sit in the chair and do the work. It also defines what you’re trying to accomplish musically. Think about how many great pieces of music are about some person, event, or story. When you have a motivating factor, it tends to lend musical clarity as well.

Ask yourself, what is the motivation for writing this piece of music? Is it…

• for your next recording?
• to commemorate something or an event?
• for a tribute?
• for a competition?
• as an exercise or etude?

Understanding how to use a template for the drafting phase can greatly enhance the compositional process. Templates allow you to get to the creative ideas faster by eliminating the steps involved in setting up a score just to record your ideas, and by helping to refine a method for getting to those creative ideas.

Here are three types of music composition templates:

Lead sheets.

• Two staves, with the melody on the top staff
• Harmony and rhythm on the bottom

Small Ensemble

• Three staves
• Horn voicings, or words and melodies on the top staff
• Rhythm section and bass lines on the bottom staves
• If voice and horns, you can use the bottom staves as a lead-sheet sketch

Large Ensemble

• Two grand staffs
• Allows for overlapping voicings or bass lines

Music Composition Software

Software templates are extremely helpful because, with a few clicks in a good software package, you can use the materials from your sketch directly in a score that you can build from the same file. Software templates also allow for easier editing, and allow you to take extensive notes on your piece or sketch as it evolves. Erasing the notes is as easy as selecting and deleting.

Sibelius and Finale

Sibelius and Finale are the two major music composition software programs, and Berklee Online offers courses that will give you thorough instruction on how to use them. 

• Music Notation and Score Preparation using Sibelius Ultimate
• Music Notation and Score Preparation Using Finale

Berklee Online also has courses that will teach you how to use digital audio workstations (DAWs) such as Ableton Live , Pro Tools , Reason , Logic , and Cubase .  

What is the Instrumentation?

Sometimes instrumentation is a practical consideration, and the piece of music is simply adapted to the resources and expertise available to the composer. Many times, however, the decision about instrumentation is part of the aesthetic of the piece. You may want to write a tune for your band to perform. Perhaps a string quartet has asked you to write a piece of music. Maybe a vocalist just wants a tune to add to their repertoire, and all you need to create is a lead sheet. Somewhere down the road, you may get an opportunity to write for a big band or full orchestra.

If you’re an inexperienced composer, you should start off writing for smaller ensembles, and then expand upon the arrangement. For example, you can go from a lead sheet to a quintet arrangement, to an octet, and then to a big band, building upon what you have at each step.

What Key or Tonal Center Will You Start in?  

This decision can be influenced by many factors, including the instruments for which you’re writing.

How Long is the Piece?

Will your piece be a tune, a short arrangement, or an extended composition? You don’t want to start your composing career with a 30-minute-long masterwork. Build toward longer works by first coming up with a good melody, adding an intro and a coda, and then extending the piece. Many times, the length will be dictated by practical constraints like radio airplay, concert length, or budget.

What is the Form?

Defining the form of the music composition beforehand will help you to write the piece. If you know that you’re going to have an intro, bridge, and coda, you will approach the other sections in a way that will prepare for their incorporation into this larger framework. Planning the form in advance of the composition will also help you in deciding the character of the piece, as you will have to think about what will distinguish one section from another.

How will the Harmonic Rhythm Move? Statically or Modally? Are they:

• Long durations (more than one bar)?
• Short durations (one bar or less)?
• All of the above?

What do you want the character of the piece to be?

• Jagged and edgy?
• Traditional?
• Something else?

Do You Have a Time Signature in Mind?

If a song is a waltz, you would write it in 3/4. Funk and dance rhythms are most often in 4/4 time. Afro-Cuban rhythms are typically 6/8, 12/8, or 4/4. Any combination of beats per measure is possible. With compound meters (e.g., 7/8, 7/4, 9/8, etc.) the potential for complexity increases, and this can create a feeling of tension, but these time signatures can be very engaging. The bottom line is whether or not it sounds good!

Harmonic Rhythm

If you’re employing static or modal harmony, choose a chord or two that captures the character of what you’re trying to convey. If it’s a chord progression, decide what the duration of the chords (harmonic rhythm) will be.

Melodic Character

Sing or imagine a few beats that capture the character of what you’re trying to convey. Don’t worry about coming up with the perfect notes, and don’t try to write a piece—just come up with a fragment that has character, understanding that you can adjust it later.

In building the skill required to start from various points, limiting your options allows you to focus more on the process itself. You can transfer what you learned to a larger set of options as you grow. Like any other skill, compositional skills are cumulative—each thing you learn will prepare you for another set of challenges. Also, like any other skill, solid fundamentals are essential to sustained growth.

While this doesn’t mean feeding your musical fragment into your favorite sequencing software, the concept is very much the same. Sequencing involves repeating an idea with some sort of variation, most commonly involving pitch. The most common type of sequence involves simple transposition of the fragment to various starting points either in the key or tonal center or outside of it. If the transpositions occur within the confines of a key, then you will most likely need to change the intervallic relationship of the notes while retaining the basic shape.

Augmentation and Diminution

The value of a rhythmic element or an interval can be either increased (augmented) or decreased (diminished) upon repetition to create a variation. This is another widely used compositional device.

Pitch Augmentation (widening) and Pitch Diminution (contracting)

Likewise, you can widen the intervals within a melodic fragment, creating a sense of drama in the music while varying only one element.

Varied Harmonic Rhythm

One of the most common places for the harmonic rhythm to increase is in cadential passages. Increasing the frequency of harmonic change creates a sense of excitement and anticipation. Likewise, slowing down the harmonic momentum creates a sense of reflection, allowing the composer and listener to dig more deeply into the harmony of the moment. 

I hope you find these music composition techniques helpful as you begin your piece. Keep in mind that there is so much more to learn in my 12-week Berklee Online course, Creative Strategies for Composition Beyond Style . Below I’ve included some resources to help you continue to learn music composition, including music composition books and more music composition courses from Berklee Online.

Music Composition Books

If you want to know how to learn music composition on your own, music composition books are a great place to start. Berklee Press has published several music composition books that will help you learn the basics of music notation. Here are a few music composition books from Berklee Press to check out:

• Music Notation: Preparing Scores and Parts
• Finale: An Easy Guide to Music Notation
• Berklee Contemporary Music Notation

Discover more music composition books from Berklee Press

Music Composition Courses

Berklee Online has more than a dozen music composition courses that will help you take your skills to the next level, all while composing professional work. You can also earn a professional certificate in Music Theory and Composition. Check out the following music composition courses:

• Contemporary Techniques in Music Composition 1
• Jazz Composition
• Music Composition for Film and TV 1
• Music Theory and Composition 1
• World Music Composition Styles

EARN A PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATE IN MUSIC THEORY AND COMPOSITION

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Berklee is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education "NECHE" (formerly NEASC).

Berklee Online is a University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) award-winner fourteen years in a row (2005-2019).

What this handout is about

This handout features common types of music assignments and offers strategies and resources for writing them.

Writing about music

Elvis Costello once famously remarked that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” While he may have been overstating the case, it is often difficult to translate the non-verbal sounds that you experience when you listen to music into words. To make matters more difficult, there are a variety of ways to describe music:

• You can be technical and use terms from music theory. Example: “The cadential pattern established in the opening 16 bars is changed by a phrasal infix of two bars (mm. 22–24), thus prolonging the dominant harmony in the third phrase.”
• You can describe your feelings and personal reactions to the music. Example: “I felt that the chorus of the song was more gripping than the opening.”
• You can try to give a play-by-play description of what’s happening in the music. Example: “The saxophone soloist played a lot of scales in his improvisation, and the pianist added sparse chords to it.”

Without an extensive knowledge of music theory, you will most likely wind up doing a combination of 2 and 3. However, in all of these examples, you are only describing the music. Most music professors want you to analyze it. (So what if the dominant is prolonged? What is the effect and meaning of this?) How your description of music becomes an analysis of music depends on the kind of assignment you are answering. Consult our handout on understanding assignments for help in getting started.

Making an argument about music

Often, you will be asked to make an argument about a particular piece of music. In its most basic form, this is a statement about the piece with evidence that persuades your reader to agree with your argument. Clearly presenting your overall argument will help you organize your information around that main point. See our handout on argument.

For example, if you are writing about the historical importance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, you might develop an argument like this:

“Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, completed and first performed in 1824, is historically significant because of the ways that it challenged and expanded audiences’ expectations of symphonic structure.”

If this is your argument, then you should research what the audience expectations for a symphony might have been in 1824 based on other pieces of the time. How many movements did symphonies typically have? What were their formal structures? What were the performing forces? Once you understand the expectations of the day, you can identify the specific ways that Beethoven’s Ninth is different as well as what specific moments of the work (the entrance of the choir, the grand recapitulation which begins the last movement, etc.) you can cite as evidence for your argument. As you can see, making an argument in music involves historical or cultural evidence AND specific observations about the piece itself which combine to give a richly textured picture of the music and the composer, as well as the context from which they both emerged.

Even when making evaluative or interpretive claims about music, you should always provide evidence to support your claims. Music often evokes strong emotions in listeners, but these may not be the same for everyone. Music that you experience as “powerful” or “triumphant” may be experienced by another listener as “angry” or “violent.” Giving specific examples from the music will help explain your emotional reactions and give your reader a context for understanding them. For example, instead of saying

“The chorus of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit” sounds angrier than the verses,’ you might argue that, “The added distortion in the guitar, increase in volume, and additional strain on Kurt Cobain’s voice give the chorus of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ an angrier or more critical tone than the verses.”

Musical terminology

On occasion, or in some assignments, you may feel overwhelmed by the amount of technical vocabulary used to describe even the simplest musical gestures. Over the past thousand years, the study of music (particularly Western classical music) has acquired a host of specialized terms from Latin, Italian, German, and French, many of which remain untranslated in common usage. Do not be intimidated! If you have questions about these terms, ask your instructor or consult a reliable music dictionary . Typically the terms that will be most helpful to you and most essential in your writing will be ones that have been covered in class and explained in the textbook.

In addition to all the terms that you DO want to use, musical discourse also comes with some terms that professors and TAs might find particularly unhelpful. Generally these include casual value judgments such as  “good,” “bad,” “lame,” “awesome,” “girly,” “soulful,” etc. These words may be fine when discussing an album with your friends, but they are not acceptable descriptors in academic writing. The most glaring of these words, however, and the one that your instructors will undoubtedly be on the lookout for is “authenticity” (and its close relatives “authentic,” “real,” genuine,” etc.). Instructors are particularly bothered by this word for two reasons:

• “Authenticity” is bound by a whole host of cultural and historical assumptions that make it impossible to pinpoint with any accuracy. Music that is considered “authentic” by one person might be considered deeply inauthentic to another and vice-versa. Similarly, music that was considered “authentic” by a group of fans in the 1960s may have lost its “authenticity” in the 1980s, but may have enjoyed a newfound “authenticity” in the early 2000s.
• “Authenticity” is not a claim about the substance of the music. Describing a performer as “authentic” is shorthand for referring to one’s personal conception of how musicians should look, sound, and act. What was it, specifically, that led you to interpret a particular artist as authentic? Was it an effective use of anti-commercial rhetoric in their lyrics or public persona? Was it their references to a particular tradition of music-making such as “folk” or “the blues”?

Examining the ways in which a particular style, band, or song came to be understood as “authentic” by its fans can be a valuable subject of inquiry, but any time you come across the word—in your or someone else’s writing—you should imagine it in scare quotes and try to more closely examine what the author is trying to say with the word in that particular context.

Common music assignments

Concert report.

You may have the opportunity to attend a live concert and report on it. Pay careful attention to the types of questions in the prompt. This is different from a music review in which you pass judgment on how “well” the players performed. Your professor might be okay with you adding your opinion, but most professors want you to listen closely to the music and try to describe it as accurately as possible using some of the vocabulary you’ve learned in class. A typical prompt usually asks for information about the performance venue, the performers, the music itself, and quite possibly your reactions to it. Make sure your report answers all of the questions!

Strategies: Read through the concert program. Sometimes there are program notes that provide background information and formal discussion of the music. This might act as a model for your own report. If your “concert” is more like a jazz jam session, you may not know the names of any of the pieces you hear. Sometimes you can just pick out your favorite performances to discuss. Elements to listen for might include (but are not limited to) instrumentation, variety of pieces performed, interaction of the performers, the setting (size, type, and location of the venue, acoustics of the space, etc.), audience reaction, and your own subjective interpretation.

Historical analysis: placing a piece in context

You may encounter this assignment in a music history or appreciation course. An instructor might ask you to pick a piece of music and discuss its historical context. This usually requires research, whether on the composer, the original performance, or the historical meaning. Sometimes you will be asked to relate the music itself to its historical setting. You may also need to make an argument about the piece. See our handout on writing history papers .

For example, you could write a paper relating how Mozart’s 1778 visit to Paris affected the compositions he wrote while there.

Strategies: Make sure you feel comfortable with the basic historical information before beginning an analysis. If you don’t know exactly what Mozart did and when, you will have trouble making any kind of argument.

If you are crafting an argument about how music relates to historical circumstances, then you should discuss those musical elements that most clearly support your argument. A possible thesis might be “Because Mozart wanted a job in Paris, he wrote a symphony designed to appeal to Parisian tastes.” If that is your argument, then you would focus on the musical elements that support this statement, rather than other elements that do not contribute to it. For example, “Though his Viennese symphonies featured a repeated exposition, Mozart did not include a repeat in the symphonies he composed in Paris, which conformed more closely to Parisian ideas about musical form at the time.” This observation might be more helpful to your argument than speculation about what he ate in Paris and how that influenced his compositional process.

Song analysis

How do the music and text (a song’s lyrics, an opera’s libretto) work together? You may complete this assignment for a music history or appreciation class. You should aim to make an argument about the song in question, using both text and music to support your claims.

Strategies: Look at how the text is set to music. This often requires you to first examine the text. Is it in a regular poetic form on its own? Does it have some type of pattern or other play with words? What is the meaning of the text? For more on word play and rhyme schemes, see our handout on poetry explications .

Now look at the text and listen to the music with it. Does the composer set it in an unusual way for the genre? Does the music seem to fit with the general meaning of the text, or does it seem to be at odds with it? Does the composer bring out certain words or lines of text? Why?

For example, you might say, “In the chorus of ‘Poses,’ Rufus Wainwright sets his first line of text to a long, arching melody, reminiscent of opera.” This describes the music and lets the reader know what part you are talking about and how you are hearing it (it reminds you of opera). Now tell the reader what is significant about this. What does it do for the meaning of the text? “The text suggests that ‘you said watch my head about it,’ but this rising operatic melody seems to suggest that the singer is really floating away and gone into another world.” Now your description of the music functions as evidence in an argument about how the song has two layers of meaning (text and music).

If you can do more theoretical music analysis, this might be a good opportunity to look at how the harmonies and phrase structures do or do not line up with the text. “Schubert sets the regular metrical pattern of the text to even four-bar phrases until he gets to the line ‘Ich will den Boden kuessen’ (I want to kiss the ground), whereupon it changes dramatically from there.” Once again, go further by explaining how this observation helps us understand the meaning of the text. “This technique extends the time spent on these lines and makes it seem like the singer is so frantically trying to reach green earth (through the snow), that he can’t maintain a steady pattern. He is overcome by desperate emotion when he thinks of seeing the ground again.” Now you have elucidated a moment in the music that casual listeners might have missed, and you have told them how, and why, it heightens the meaning of the text.

Performance/media comparison

For this assignment, you will compare different performances of a piece, different stagings of an opera, or different settings of a story (e.g. a stage version of an opera versus its movie adaptation). See our handout on comparing/contrasting for more tips on this type of assignment.

Strategies: Make sure you know the basic work before you begin comparing different versions of it. If you are comparing different instrumentalists’ or singers’ interpretations of a piece of music, then familiarize yourself with the piece. Listen to many different versions until you feel comfortable with it. Then you can focus on whatever elements of the individual performance the professor asks you to analyze (tempo, rubato, inflection, articulation, tone color, vibrato, etc.). Make sure you are familiar with these basic elements of music as well. Then ask yourself, what is the overall effect of the different performances? Do they interpret the piece differently? If they are not distinct in terms of overall interpretation, how are they different? How are these differences significant to your understanding or experience of the piece? Now you can use your musical elements to explain why.  Remember to go beyond simply listing differences and similarities by making an argument about the music and its significance.

Let’s say you were asked to compare two performances of J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations: one recorded by Glenn Gould in 1955 and the second recorded by Jory Vinikour in 2001. You might observe that Gould’s performance is significantly faster than Vinikour’s and that Gould does not always repeat each section as the score indicates. How does Vinikour’s decision to play more slowly and with more repeats impact your experience of the piece? What might this tell you about the approach that Vinikour takes to Bach’s music versus the approach that Gould takes? You might also observe that Gould’s performance is on the piano while Vinikour’s is on the harpsichord. How does the instrumentation affect your experience of the piece? Is it historically significant that the two performers chose different instruments? Does this tell us something about the status of Baroque-period performance in the 1950s versus Baroque performance in the early 2000s?

In the case of opera, there are more elements beyond the music to take into consideration. Your assignment might ask you to focus on the staging (costume, set design, lighting, action). Remember that just as a play may be produced in different ways, there is no one “correct” staging of an opera. Some may be very traditional and attempt to portray the setting and time period used in the libretto (text). Others may try to make social commentary by “updating” the scenario to something that seems more relevant today. Others may try to comment upon the opera/story itself by making even more avant-garde productions.

For example, a production of Handel’s opera Giulio Cesare in Egitto (Julius Caesar in Egypt) might be set in Egypt in 47 BC, as it is in the original storyline. Or a modern opera producer and stage designer might collaborate and “update” it to appear to be about a Western superpower in the Middle East. Same exact text and music, different costumes, set design, lighting, and on-stage action. Does one production seem more believable to you? Does one make you think about the implications of the story more than the other?

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Bellman, Jonathan. 2007. A Short Guide to Writing About Music , 2nd ed. New York: Pearson Longman.

Herbert, Trevor. 2009. Music in Words: A Guide to Researching and Writing About Music . New York: Oxford University Press.

Holoman, D. Kern. 2014. Writing About Music: A Style Sheet , 3rd ed. Oakland: University of California Press.

Wingell, Richard. 2009. Writing About Music: An Introductory Guide , 4th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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The MakeMusic Blog

Tips and news for musicians, educators, and composers, new assignment tools to support music educators.

Ask ten educators how they handle the MakeMusic Cloud assignment process and you will get ten (probably great!) ideas about how to create meaningful assignments for your own students! Our research and conversations with you tell us that there are many unique approaches to make our powerful cloud work effectively for teachers, students, and performers. 

Recently, and based on customer feedback, we’ve been working on expanding the options that you have when creating and assigning assignments in MakeMusic Cloud. We are excited to be able to expand these options for you and continue to explore even more ways to level our tools up! 

Video Assignments 

The new video assignments feature allows you to be even more specific with your feedback to students. Students can easily self-analyze their performance with access to their video recording during the practice and recording process. We’ve also heard about educators using video for assessment security, specifically in audition situations using MakeMusic Cloud. These video capabilities have unlocked lots of potential for creative assignments and lessons! 

Ungraded Assignments 

Breaking news: a new option to designate an assignment as “Ungraded” has just been released! 

We heard you—there are times you want to assign a piece of music to your students, but don’t necessarily want to take a grade on it. This solution allows you to select whether you’d like to Use custom rubric or create an Ungraded assignment. Selecting Use custom rubric will take you through the flow that you have used before and will give you the opportunity to select and manage rubric items. Selecting Ungraded will bypass the rubric page completely as you continue on with the assignment creation process. 

When a student opens an assignment that you have designated as Ungraded , they will see instructions similar to these (including the Rubric Points and Assessment Grade of 0).

While there is no grade associated with an assignment like this (and one cannot be added later), students can still submit assignment recordings to you for feedback, review, and more. 

The Gradebook legend has also been updated (and is now visible automatically in the Gradebook ). You’ll notice a new color (purple) to indicate that a student has submitted a recording for an Ungraded assignment. There have also been some additional color alterations to make the grid far more accessible to colorblind users.  

Have a great tip that may help other MakeMusic Cloud users? Share it with us here —we would love to hear from you and can accept your thoughts in a variety of ways! 

Inspired to experiment with assignments in MakeMusic Cloud? New users can sign up for a free 30 day trial!

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My Top 5 Favourite Music Assignments

In Australia, we are three quarters of the way through our academic year. For me personally, this means, as Head of Faculty, that most of our HSC major works are due or are being examined over the next couple of weeks. We had our Year 12 Visual Arts class submit their Body of Work last week, and next week we have the Year 12 Music class completing their performance exam for the team of External markers. It is at this time that Drama students are also marked, among many other subjects. So while teachers in the Northern Hemisphere are starting their year, we are feeling like we are winding up! Especially as holidays are in 3 weeks 🙂

It is about this time every year, that I start evaluations on our programs, assessments schedules and the assessments themselves. With this in mind, I would like to share with you my top 5 Music Assignments that I love to use, the students love to complete and the ones that have the biggest overall engagement by our students. This order is about my preference for the assignment, not the order I teach them in!

Each of these assignments have been designed with the purpose of developing music performance skills, music analysis skills, creativity, along with the simple fact that they can’t use Wikipedia or Google to complete it!!!

• African Music Composition Project – link here

This one is my all time favourite!! This assignment is a part of my Beginnings of Rock unit and in this unit students learn about African and Jazz Music. In this assignment, students learn the simple melody, then they form groups to create their own arrangement of the piece by composing both melodic and rhythmic ostinatos. I give the students plenty of class time to compose, arrange and rehearse this assignment before they are filmed in performance. The students are marked individually on their actual performance as well as the completion of the written review that they write on another group’s performance. In the past I have had class groups use video editing software to create little film clips of their performances as well!

Students learn lots of valuable skills in this assignment—cooperation, independence, writing skills as well as more musical skills such as composing, arranging and performing.

• Rock Music Design Project link here

I usually teach this one with my Pioneers of Rock unit or the Kings and Queens of Rock and Pop unit. It also usually coincides with the Year 12 HSC Music performance exam. I plan it this way so that the students can work independently in class on something they enjoy while I am busy ensuring my senior students are ready for their exams!!! Work smarter, not harder I say!

In this assignment students start by watching either School of Rock or Bandslam. In both movies, the story follows the formation and branding of a Band. I have not had a student not enjoy either of these movies ever! Students are then asked to be creative by designing their own logo, t-shirt, CD cover and song list for a real or imaginary band. A couple of years ago I had to put a ban on any female student creating versions of One Direction logos, I even told them that if they did—I would fail them, and I wasn’t kidding!

The creativity of the students never ceases to amaze me, I have had students create for very specific audiences such as Autistic children, family members, particular sports, motivation and even relaxation.

Students learn about the actual business side of Music—merchandising, as well as, fun, design skills and music for a purpose.

• Make an Instrument Assignment link here

This assignment accompanies the Instruments of the Orchestra unit of work. In this assignment, students have to design, make and perform on an instrument that they have made. In the early days, I would just get students to make an instrument—and I got lots and lots of shakers. I soon got very sick of the lack of creativity, so I made it a bit harder. Students had to create and perform on their instrument for 30 seconds—this soon got students realising that they had to create an instrument that could last 30 seconds in performance, but also had a variety of sounds that it could create. Again, the creativity always astounds me with what the students bring in on their due date. Along with creating and performing on their instrument, students have to write a procedure on how they made their instrument as well as classify their instrument and answer a series of questions about the process of the assignment.

Students learn many skills in this one—instrument classification, performance, composition and self reflection/evaluation skills.

• Song Writing Assignment link here

This assignment is one that I have used with both Year 9 and 10 music students. It does help that students can play an instrument with some sort of proficiency with this one. It has been designed as a small ensemble assignment, and each person in the group must perform a part in the final demonstration of the composition. Included in this little time saver is everything that you students will need to find success. It has brainstorming pages, ensemble combination pages, chord progressions in different keys, all chord charts for both guitar and keyboard and even some suggested lyrics!

When I teach this assignment, as a class group we will have a go at performing the different chord progressions in the assignment. As a group we will come up with ways to make the class performance interesting – tempo, texture, performance techniques, block chords, arpeggios, etc… I have used this assignment often, and I know that I will continue to, simply because the end result is always pleasing for both the students and myself!

• Radio Advertisement Assignment link here

This assignment is usually completed by my Year 9 Music classes, but the last couple of years I have had my Year 10 classes do it as I have changed schools, and I can do what I want as I am Head of the Department!!!!

In fact, my Year 10 students are actually have been completing this assignment today. We have been working on it in class for a few weeks and today was recording day—nearly all done, only two groups to go tomorrow.

In this assignment, which is really a whole unit of work, I teach the students about the different types of ways music is used in advertising. We analyse a few different ads that I find on YouTube, and then they have to form a small group and create an ad for a real or imaginary product. Students have to write their script, decide on what music will be used in the ad and I encourage them to compose a jingle. This assignment requires a lot of patience and guidance through the different types of technology needed in the recording process. I often get students to use the free program Audacity to record and edit the ads, but today we even just used my IPad with another free recording program— RecordPad. This program is easy to use and what I really like about it is that you can email the recordings to yourself for students to use later in editing.

My students have to not only record their 30 second ad, but they also have to complete and submit the booklet for marking. In this booklet there is a lot of music analysis, recording of their process, paragraph writing and reflection on their finished product.

The skills that students learn in this assignment include—cooperation, independence, composition, music for a purpose, use of technology, self reflection and writing skills.

If you would like to know more about teaching music, join my Facebook group be clicking the image below. In the group you will fins tips, tricks, videos and lots of information about music teaching and education

Until next time

Happy teaching

Julia from Jooya

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How to Build Your Music Portfolio in 2024 (With Examples)

Whether you're applying for music school, showcasing your latest tracks, or need a website to vouch for your production skills, a strong music portfolio is essential for any modern musician. An online portfolio goes beyond the snippets of music you post on social media accounts - in many ways, your portfolio website serves as a digital representation of your music career thus far, enabling you to reach new heights.

Not sure where to start? Below, we have put together several music portfolio examples so that you can get inspired to build a website of your own. We'll also share some online resources to help you build your website from scratch and cover a couple of essential elements you'll want to include in your portfolio to make a great first impression.

Why You Need a Music Portfolio

An online music portfolio can serve as your gateway into the music industry, offering interested parties a glimpse into your backstory, similar to an EPK (a.k.a an electronic press kit). Here are a couple of scenarios in which you might need a music portfolio readily available:

Applying to Music School

When applying to an art school of any kind, most institutions will request a portfolio to sample your work. Each school will ask for different assets, so it's important to cater to each application individually. For example, check out the requirements suggested by the NYU Steinhardt School of Music :

This portfolio type will be radically different than what you use in the professional world for pitching and displaying your past work experience, but it's still equally important.

Pitching for Projects

Whether you're hoping to land your next score or work at a recording studio, you most definitely need a robust portfolio to speak to your skills as a composer, engineer, or musician. Think of your portfolio as your resume as an artist.

Building a Modern EPK

A music portfolio, in some ways, serves as an extended electronic press kit, giving fans, labels, and other industry folks a full picture of what you can offer as a musician. You might have a "link in bio" or EPK, but it's a good idea to have your own website that you can count on to display your creations in the way you intended, without having to worry about the mercy of algorithms.

Get Inspired by These Music Portfolio Examples

Are you having a hard time picturing a strong music portfolio? Here are a couple of examples to spark inspiration

Simple Portfolio: I put these strategies to the test and created a basic website using the Adobe Portfolio tool mentioned below. This way, I can showcase my composing reel, audio engineering experience, as well as sponsored content I've created for audio brands.

Multi-purpose: Multi-hyphenate musician Emile Mosseri dawns a basic but effective portfolio, showcasing his bio, live events, and most recent projects:

Composer: Accomplished composer Ariel Marx provides an excellent overview of her work, using high-contrast text to help her credits stand out on the page.

Artist: At a glance, you can quickly see that Yeule's artist portfolio website is visually striking, packed with their branding while still providing convenient access to all of their projects.

DJ: DJ Mary Droppinz does an excellent job of communicating her brand with visual imagery and clickable buttons to some of her most popular social profiles on Instagram and Twitch, where fans can find live streams of her work.

8 Key Components of a Great Music Portfolio

Here are all the elements you'll want to include when building your music portfolio. Note that you should still start building your portfolio, even if you haven't earned all of these assets yet . Some portfolio is certainly better than no portfolio whatsoever.

Videos/Reels

The more interactive your portfolio is, the better! Start your portfolio off with a strong video reel showcasing your compositions. Make your reel short and snappy, but be sure to include several different types of media to show your range as a musician. Check out this example of a composition reel:

Playlists of Your Work

If you're a composer, music producer, or songwriter with plenty of material, create and embed a streaming service playlist directly into your portfolio. This way, interested parties can see your flexibility at a glance and listen through your soundbites without navigating across several tabs.

Credits Page

Create a section dedicated to your credits, ideally with linked assets that interested parties can quickly scan to check out your work. Separate your credits by subcategory if you wear multiple hats.

Put together a biography that summarizes your experience and goals as a musician. Be sure to point out any notable accolades and differentiate your genres or niches if possible.

Press Quotes

Few things are as powerful as a client testimonial, and scoring opportunities in the music industry is no exception to the rule. Get in the habit of asking your favorite clients for a simple review after a positive work experience - quotes and references are golden.

Live Dates and Other Commercial Work

Be sure to include any live performance dates past and present, along with any other commercial work examples, such as assisting in live sound at a venue or otherwise.

Contact Details

One of the main purposes behind a portfolio is to bring in new clients and fans. Make sure you have a contact page, submission form, as well as links to your social media profiles, and a newsletter sign-up portal if applicable.

Any Other Request From Potential Clients or Interested Parties

As mentioned above, any high education application will contain specific requests for a certain number of assets which should be included in your portfolio accordingly. Moreover, potential clients may ask for links to past examples of certain types of work.

5 Resources for Building a Music Portfolio Website

Building a strong portfolio is just a matter of gathering assets and putting together a compelling website. Here are a couple of popular options at different price points to take into consideration:

Wix is a free website builder that provides premium features at an additional cost. Regardless, you can use this intuitive platform to build a basic portfolio, drawing inspiration from one of the many templates.

Adobe's My Portfolio

Many creatives already have access to the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. If you're part of this category, note that you can head to Adobe Portfolio to build up to 5 websites, included with your Creative Cloud Subscription.

Squarespace

If you're looking for a sleek, easy-to-build portfolio and have a bit of a budget, Squarespace is certainly worth considering. You can get a site up and running within a matter of minutes, thanks to Squarespace's professional themes that only take a few clicks to customize.

In a pinch, a collection of social media links serves as an easy-to-access portfolio for anyone browsing your respective profiles. While not a substitute for a polished website, Linktr.ee is free and easy to customize.

Google Drive

Some college applications will frequently ask for a Google Drive or Dropbox folder to serve as a part of your application or portfolio. In this case, make sure all of your files are well labeled, and double-check your permissions before sending over your links.

Music Portfolio FAQ

Do you find yourself becoming stuck? Consider these commonly asked questions and answers to help you bridge the gap while you're building your website.

What is a portfolio in music?

Like in any other discipline, a portfolio offers a glimpse into an artist's best work, along with background information, booking information, and any past or upcoming performances. This portfolio can be used to pitch to different parties within the music industry or serve as a reference when applying to art school.

How do I make a musician portfolio?

You can make a musician portfolio by creating the individual assets mentioned in this article and compiling them within a website builder like Squarespace or Wix. You can use services like Google Drive and Linktree in a pinch, but a customized website certainly comes off as more professional.

What should be included in a music portfolio?

What you include in your portfolio will vary depending on your intended audience and what you have available. In most cases, you should aim to have video reels, playlists, listed credits, press quotes, an artist bio, and current contact information readily available as a solid foundation for your portfolio.

How do you format a music portfolio?

The way you format your music portfolio will depend on the use case, but generally speaking, you want to make it as simple as possible for viewers to play your audio tracks and experience your music. Video reels, playlists, and any interactive elements should be at the forefront of your portfolio.

Why is a music portfolio important?

Building a music portfolio is important for any musician since it provides a place for you to showcase your best creations and accolades all in one place. With all the content and ever-changing algorithms of social media accounts, you cannot depend on social media links alone to convey your expertise.

A music portfolio provides a dependable place to display your work and credits irrespective of any platforms' algorithms. Hopefully, this guide makes it easier for you to compile your career and package it into a stunning portfolio presentation for the music business and beyond. Enjoy highlighting your best work to further your trajectory as an artist and creative.

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Alum's Musical Career Enables Her to Be an Artist and an Industry Professional

Jenna McIlwrath '22 is a singer-songwriter who has also excelled in the music industry. Whether she's releasing her own new music or helping to sign new artists, she enjoys making connections and sharing her love for music.

May 30, 2024

By Renee Chmiel, Office of Marketing and Communications

When Jenna McIlwrath '22 first began to think about her future goals as a kid, she knew she wanted to be a writer and to make an impact on the world. As a high school student, she thought she wanted to be a doctor, but she then discovered a path that was a "magical combination" of her initial two dreams. She discovered music.

McIlwrath's path of discovery continued at the University of New Haven. As a music and sound recording major , she was excited to get time in the recording studio – even as a first-semester student. She helped host a live show with the University's Music Industry Club , and even had her writing published on local blogs. She credits her time as a Charger with helping her to discover her interest in audio engineering.

"In school, I began realizing my passion for the industry side of things," she explains. "As a songwriter and artist, I think it's really cool to work with other artists and to work to stand up for our rights as creators."

A singer-songwriter, McIlwrath is involved in music both as an artist and as an industry professional. She is an Artist Services Program co-director for Greater Than Distribution , a music entertainment company created by Randy Jackson of American Idol fame and Paula Moore, a leading A&R (artists and repertoire) research executive. McIlwrath, also an A&R scout, writes for MIC Magazine , a new publication, as well.

McIlwrath says she's already learned a great deal while working with the Artist Services Program. Using the Virgin Music system, she helps distribute music for artists, something she describes as "extremely cool" and fun. As a scout, she helps sign new artists.

Earlier this year, McIlwrath attended South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual event in Austin, Texas, comprising film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences. She recently wrote about her experience for MIC Magazine . It was McIlwrath's first time attending the popular festival, as well as her first experience visiting Texas. She says SXSW was unlike anything she'd ever experienced, and that it was an incredible opportunity for her, both personally and professionally.

"Every night I went from show to show to show," she recalls. "It was really cool getting to do that and to see so many incredible artists. It was also great to get a taste of Austin as the great music city that it is! I won't lie and say I wasn't nervous...I was. My time at SXSW was worth the nerves though. I'm so grateful to have been able to go and to add such a valuable experience (and fun!) to my career."

McIlwrath is also grateful for the opportunities she had as a Charger that helped prepare her for experiences such as SXSW, as well as for her career in the music industry. She describes being an active member of the University's Audio Engineering Society as one of her "most impactful experiences" as a Charger. She began as the club's secretary and, eventually, served as president during her senior year. She says the organization enabled her to hone her teamwork and leadership skills while also helping her to learn how to develop valuable programming and training for her fellow Chargers.

McIlwrath also appreciates the support of her professors – particularly Patrick Rivers, Ph.D. , whom she says made a "huge impact" on her. She's grateful for his guidance, both as her professor and as her adviser.

While she enjoys her many exciting roles in the music industry, McIlwrath's primary passion is her work as a singer-songwriter. She recently released "Little Thoughts," her first new song in nearly two years. She hopes to continue to be involved in music, both on the industry side and as an artist.

"Being able to pursue a career both as an artist and an industry professional is something I'm so grateful I have the opportunity to do," she said. "I love both sides of the business, and my experience with both benefit each other. My experience as an independent artist gives me a valuable perspective working inside the industry, and the knowledge I gain as I work for a music company helps me navigate the waters of the industry as a creative."

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YouTube Music will let you search by humming into your Android phone

It’s a very good shazam replacement, but you’ll have to up your humming game..

By Wes Davis , a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

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The Android YouTube Music app is rolling out a feature that’s part Shazam and part your friend when you say, “hey what’s that song that goes...” right before you hum out a bar. The feature lets you hum, whistle, sing, or play a recording of a song to figure out what it is.

If you have the new feature, you’ll see a new waveform icon next to the microphone icon that appears when you tap the search button in the upper right corner of the app. Tap this, and the app will start listening. It’s not too shabby, either! When I tested, it was able to identify actual recordings with what seemed like uncanny speed, making it a great replacement for Shazam.

As far as listening to me hum, it accurately picked out most of the songs I sang, whistled, and hummed at my phone, but there were some funny misses:

This is not Tom Waits’ “ Fumblin’ With the Blues .” Even a little bit.

This was supposed to be “ Dead ,” by They Might Be Giants.

I was whistling “ Bat Out of Hell ” by Meat Loaf here. At least Finnish hair metal throwback band Reckless Love is at least in the ballpark, kind of?

I can’t fault it too much for the misses. I was throwing songs at it that I’d guess most people wouldn’t pick out from a few seconds of humming. Overall, it works quickly, perhaps faster than the same feature that Google Assistant has had for years . Humming to search has reportedly been spotted in YouTube Music for iOS in recent months, too, though it doesn’t appear to have gone out widely there, yet.

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Eat outside, play mini golf and more things to do this weekend

See a tribute to Prince and David Bowie at Portland House of Music on Saturday.

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Outdoor seating at Terlingua. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer

It looks like we’re in for a stellar weekend, so let’s dive into some of what’s going on, beginning with outdoor dining.

Several restaurants have opened their patios and decks , including Ocotillo and Terlingua, both in Portland. For those of you farther south, Bake Maine in Wells has a 40-seat patio.

Here’s what’s new this summer on Maine’s outdoor dining scene

People enjoy a sunny day on the river walk along the Presumpscot River in downtown Westbrook. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer

Westbrook Together Days , on Friday and Saturday, features events and activities including a parade, live music, pancake breakfast and fireworks. Or you can hit the Confetti craft fair on Saturday in downtown Biddeford.

Westbrook Together Days, Confetti Craft Bazaar in Biddeford, The Ballroom Thieves in Portland

Moose Mountain Mini Golf in Richmond. Courtesy of Jeremy Purington

It’s also looking to be an ideal weekend to get in a game or two of mini golf, so we’ve compiled  20 places in Maine for you to work on your putts.

Choose from 20 places to play mini golf in Maine

A carrot cake whoopie pie, one of the seasonal varieties at Two Fat Cats Bakery in South Portland. Photo by Ray Routhier

Satisfy your sweet tooth with one of these  twists on a classic Maine treat . Read up on the differences between the Maple Sunday whoopie pie from Cape Whoopies and the carrot cake variety from Two Fat Cats Bakery and decide which South Portland bakery to visit.

There’s more than one way to make whoopie pies in South Portland

The Prince/Bowie tribute act performing live. Photo by Tammie Birdwell

If you’re a fan of Prince or Davie Bowie (or both), you’ll want to head to Portland House of Music on Saturday night for a Prince/Bowie tribute show. Expect all the hits and a few deeper cuts from two of the greatest artists who ever lived.

Fear you’ll never hear your favorite band live? These Maine tribute shows might do the trick

Coffee By Design is a must stop during Cherry Lemonade’s perfect day. Derek Davis/Staff Photographer

If you’re worried that your weekend is going to be a drag,  just follow in the footsteps of drag queen Cherry Lemonade . Her perfect day includes a cold brew from Coffee By Design, a ride on a Casco Bay Ferry and crab cakes at Island Lobster Company.

My Perfect Day: Walk in Cherry Lemonade’s heels from Coffee By Design to Landrace Cannabis

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John Koerner, Bluesman Who Inspired a Young Bob Dylan, Dies at 85

A spindly guitarist nicknamed Spider, Mr. Koerner was Mr. Dylan’s first friend in the scruffy world of Minneapolis bohemia where he learned about folk music.

By Alex Traub

Spider John Koerner, a blues and folk singer whose work drew praise from the Doors and the Beatles (if not the general public) and who, in 1960, taught his friend Bobby Zimmerman about traditional American music, then watched as the young man metamorphosed into Bob Dylan, died on Saturday at his home in Minneapolis. He was 85.

The cause was cancer, his son Chris Kalmbach said.

On a self-made seven-string guitar and also on a 12-string — like his idol, Lead Belly — Mr. Koerner (pronounced KER-ner) yowled and foot-stomped his way through songs about gold miners and frogs who went a-courtin’. He played the bars and coffeehouses of the nation’s university towns, and he performed both standards and his own original songs, which came out, as one critic put it , “pre-antiquated.”

Musically, he was best known as a member of Koerner, Ray & Glover, along with Dave “Snaker” Ray , another guitarist and vocalist, and Tony “Little Sun” Glover , who played harmonica. Their debut album, “Blues, Rags & Hollers,” released in 1963, was an early attempt by young middle-class white men to imitate Black blues musicians whose hard-to-find recordings they had obsessively collected.

“Demolishing the puny vocalizations of ‘folk’ trios like the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Whatsit, Koerner and company showed how it should be done,” David Bowie wrote in a 2003 article in Vanity Fair in which he included “Blues, Rags & Hollers” on a list of his 25 favorite albums.

The Doors decided to sign with Elektra Records in part because it had issued that album. The founder and chief executive of Elektra, Jac Holzman, often said the Beatles authorized him to issue an album of baroque interpretations of their work after John Lennon told him, “Anyone who records Koerner, Ray & Glover is OK with me.”

Mr. Koerner’s other Elektra releases included “Running, Jumping, Standing Still” (1969), which he recorded with the pianist Willie Murphy. In 1997, The International Herald Tribune called it “one of the most important early folk-rock records”; in 2016, Billboard wrote that it was “a slab of ragtime psychedelia and a high-water mark of the artistic freedom that characterized the time.”

For all that, Mr. Koerner entered the annals of history less for his own music than for his role in the musical development of someone else.

In 1959, Bobby Zimmerman moved from Hibbing, the little city in Minnesota’s northern reaches where he had grown up, to Minneapolis. As an incoming freshman at the University of Minnesota, his new home was Dinkytown, the neighborhood around the university and a provincial capital of America’s counterculture. His new neighbors were beatniks, tweedy anarchists and assorted other young people on holiday from families and careers. It was hip to quote Allen Ginsberg and Lenny Bruce.

In this milieu, rock ’n’ roll was pop — worse, it was square. Authenticity lay in the roots of American music, then being cataloged for the first time by folklorists like Alan Lomax and Chris Strachwitz . Flannel-wearing hipsters blared newly discovered classics on their harmonicas at places like the Ten O’Clock Scholar, a narrow room with uncomfortable stools and a tiny stage.

“The first guy I met in Minneapolis like me was sitting around in there,” Mr. Dylan wrote in his memoir, “Chronicles: Volume One” (2004). That guy was John Koerner.

The two of them knew some of the same standards, like “Wabash Cannonball,” but Mr. Koerner was older — he had entered the University of Minnesota in 1956 — and he had been studying folk music longer. He owned old 78s of Delta blues and spirituals, and he knew about mythical figures like Robert Johnson.

“Authentic folk records were as scarce as hens’ teeth,” Mr. Dylan wrote. “Koerner and some others had them, but the group was very small.”

He was drawn to Mr. Koerner in part for the “look of perpetual amusement on his face,” Mr. Dylan wrote. “When he spoke he was soft-spoken, but when he sang he became a field holler shouter.”

The two young men lived together briefly and began performing as a duo, at the Ten O’Clock Scholar and elsewhere. Bobby Zimmerman began using the surname Dylan and, like Mr. Koerner, dropped out of college. Singing harmony with Mr. Koerner, he learned new material.

“I was beginning to feel like a character from within these songs, even beginning to think like one,” Mr. Dylan wrote.

Mr. Koerner got glimpses of his friend’s artistic ambition. Dave Matheny, another local folky, once took a break during a concert. Mr. Dylan whipped out his guitar and harmonica and began playing from the audience. From the stage, Mr. Matheny begged him to stop. Mr. Dylan refused — and held the spellbound attention of the audience for about an hour, literally stealing the show.

“Dylan wanted an audience and just took it away from Dave,” Mr. Koerner was quoted as saying in Bob Spitz’s biography, “Dylan” (1991). “That was his way in the early days; he took what he wanted.”

Back then, Mr. Dylan’s voice was soft and sweet. “He always knew that you’d fall in love with that shyness,” Mr. Koerner told Mr. Spitz, “yet he knew how to rattle people’s cages.”

Mr. Dylan experienced an “epiphany,” he wrote, when he heard the music of Woody Guthrie and read Guthrie’s memoir, “Bound for Glory.” He soon hitchhiked east to find Guthrie and make a name for himself in Greenwich Village, the national center of the folk revival.

Mr. Koerner saw him again in 1965, when Koerner, Ray & Glover were on the bill at the same Newport Folk Festival at which Mr. Dylan infamously “went electric.” At the same time, the once-obscure Black blues musicians Mr. Koerner and others had revered were touring and gaining more widespread fame.

“It made us a little bit obsolete,” Tony Glover told The Star Tribune in 2012.

A lapsed aeronautical engineering student, Mr. Koerner briefly retired from music in the 1970s and spent his time tinkering with inventions and building telescopes.

“I wouldn’t want the kind of success that Bob Dylan has,” he told The Star Tribune in 2005. “He’s got people picking through his garbage.”

John Allan Koerner was born on Aug. 31, 1938, in Rochester, N.Y. His father, Allan, was an executive at Kodak, and his mother, Marion (Fenske) Koerner, managed the home.

John got the nickname Spider when he climbed around the bottom of a bridge one night while out with friends, who noticed his long-limbed physique.

His marriages to Jeanie Buranen, Lisbet Gerlach Madsen and Laura Cavanaugh ended in divorce. His son Chris Kalmbach was mainly raised by his mother, Bonnie Kalmbach, and uses her surname. In addition to Mr. Kalmbach, Mr. Koerner is survived by a son, Matt Koerner, from his first marriage; a daughter, Mia Koerner, from his second marriage; and five grandchildren.

In 2011, The Boston Globe reported that Mr. Koerner “finally looks like he’s always sounded”: “a grizzled sage who has lived the hard times he sings about.” He played in bars “where you’ve got to punch it out or people will go to sleep on you,” he told The Globe. In 2012, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival for the first time in decades. Now he was the geezer with a storied but forgotten career who had been dug up for folk fans.

He was often asked about his youthful friendship with Mr. Dylan.

“People have told me I influenced Dylan,” he told Billboard in 2016. “I wouldn’t put it that way. What’s the quote? ‘A great artist doesn’t copy … they steal.’ You take something and make it your own and it’s fair enough.”

Alex Traub works on the Obituaries desk and occasionally reports on New York City for other sections of the paper. More about Alex Traub