Didactic Changes in Sound Compositions with Synthesizer Apps
Philipp Ahner · Divergence Press · 2023
How can tasks and learning environments be designed to activate young people artistically and - in an aesthetically experienced attitude - enable them to turn to these sound worlds by designing them themselves and inventing sounds? The project deals with simple forms and formats of making music, improvising, and composing with digital devices used as musical instruments. This article outlines the effects of adaptations of digital and analog things in collaborative learning processes with smartphones. The design research project "Inventing Music with Smartphones" combines everyday practices of young people using mobile devices with music-related tasks in music lessons at secondary schools. The design research focused on collaborative phases of making or inventing music with smartphones in music lessons in secondary school and sound materials that learners encounter in everyday life as ringtones on smartphones, alerts in public transport, background music in computer games or videos. Due to the rapid technological change during the years of research, the project also documents these enormous changes in the use of digital technologies - and is thus already after a short period already partly a part of history of technology-based music.