Understanding Music In Relation To Everyday Life And Culture

Introduction

Nowadays music can be found everywhere: In shops, in restaurants, ...and even on the street you can listen to music. But are you really always paying attention to the music? Are you really aware of what is going on around you? Let's use this virtual learning environment to go for an exploration of the meaning of music in our daily life...

Task

Your are asked to identify and describe various uses of music in your everyday life. While going on a real field trip and combining your results with web-research you analyse which characteristics fit best to outline the appearance of certain sounds of music in our present societies.In your final reflection you draw a picture of several functions of music and their present role in societies and ifferent cultures.

Process

1. Find a pair and take a walk through your city. While visiting several different places of the outside as well as inside everyday life in your community (shops, market place, church, library, ect.) you sensitize your ears and listen very carefully to locate the source of the sounds or music. It doesn't matter if you cannot identify the sound immediately. In any case, approach all places as close as possible and take notes of your observations seperately from each other. Take the following questions as guidance on your musical exploration:

• Where does the sound come from? What kind of place is it?
• How would  you characterize the sound? (volume, tempo, instruments, ect.)
• What are your fellings about it? What atmosphere is evoked? Do you feel comfortable or disturbed?

2. After exploring your musical city life you exchange your observations and notes with your partner and write a summery about your conclusions stating your different and similar views. 

3. Together with you partner you go on a web-search to expand and match your field trip results with information that you find online. Here are some links that you can use to find out more about music in our daily life. With the help of the online information create a chart demonstrating which of your observed and other possible music is suitable for what purpose. Use the following websites first and then try to find others that semm suitable for your interest.

• http://www.angle-rec.net/the-positive-effects-of-music-in-everyday-life/
http://levitin.mcgill.ca/pdf/LifeSoundtracks.pdf

4 .  Now you have found out yourself which role music can play in your surroundings. You have also matched your observations with some research results. But what about other cultures? Do they always perceive music in the same way as we do? 

Your task is now to search for musicians from different cultural backgrounds online. Find out what they tell about their experiences with music. What do they say about they purpose of playing or composing music? Again, first you take some notes and write down some key points. Later on you create a poster (using powerpoint) to represent the role of music in different cultures. If you know a musician from a cultural background in your city you can even interview her or him. Here are again some weblinks you can use among others.

• http://www.musicfromchina.org/
• http://www.about-germany.org/music/music1.php
• http://www.answers.com/topic/samba
• http://www.hindu.com/mag/2011/02/27/stories/2011022750180200.htm

5. Now you have received a small overview of what kind of role music can play in our daily life. You finally, try to apply your knowledge by reading and thinking about the questions in the following paper:

• http://www.louisianavoices.org/Unit6/edu_unit6w_everydaylife.html

Evaluation

The Evaluation is based on your observation as well as on your web-research and reflection. It is important that your learning process becomes clear in the final paper.

Tasks	5	4	3	2
Summery of Observations	demonstrates very sophisticted observation and reflection	demonstrates sophisticated observation and reflection	demonstrates general observation and reflection	demonstrates rudimentary reflection
Chart demonstrating general purposes of music	demonstrates complete understanding of purposes	demonstrates considerable understanding of puposes	demonstrates partial understanding of purposes	demonstrates little understanding of purposes
Poster about music functions in different cultures	demonstrates broad research, knowledge in and creativity in representation	demonstrates good research, knowledge and creativity in representation	demonstrates basic research, knowledge and creativity in representation	demonstrates little research, knowledge and creativity in representation
Final Worksheet	application broad of knowledge	application of good knowledge	application of basic knowledge	application of little knowledge

Conclusion

You have experienced what it means to become aware of music in your closer surroundings. By this you have learned that music is used in different ways with different purposes. Now, when you wander through your environment in future you can pay much more attention to the sounds and music surrounding you. It will help you understanding your society better.