From Seed to Song: Affective Dimensions in Multimodal, Collaborative Songwriting

Increasingly researchers are trying to show how new technologies can be used to provide opportunities for creative and more expansive music education for young children. Accepting that young children’s capacity for self expression is vastly underestimated, two young students and I set about musicking through an example of collaborative songwriting. Drawing on case study methodology using digital visual and audio technology, I offer the reader and listener an experience of the affective dimensions involved in composing music with two preschool-aged children. I challenge preconceived notions of music pedagogies for young children, and provoke implications for generating far greater vitality, self expression, and imagination in music education.