Category: Music

What is an earworm? The word alone can launch numerous conversations.  My initial thoughts, while entirely inaccurate, take me to a particular scene from the movie Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. I won’t go into detail, but if you are familiar with the movie, you will know what I’m talking about. If not, and you are curious, please feel free to research the topic on YouTube. For the purpose of this discussion, an earworm is defined as a short musical segment that enters into your mind involuntarily. They are a phenomena that have been around for quite a while, as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary first employed the term in 1802 (Thompson, 2014).

Earworms often center around a short passage of familiar music and rarely involve an entire song or musical movement. In addition, Jakubowski, Finkel, Stewart, and Müllensiefenn (2016) stated earworms often employ an unusual or unexpected interval that lends a unique flavor to the melody. For example:

 

In another example, an earworm may employ a unique rhythmic pattern:

 

 

Or both:

 

As someone who has always been fascinated with earworms, I am happy to learn their occurrences are extremely common. When studying a large international sample (N = 5,989), 85% of participants reported to experience earworms on a weekly basis, while 51% reported to experience them daily (Thompson, 2014). In my case, I would probably fall into the daily group. With that said, it is interesting to note they are more likely to occur among those who consider themselves to be musical, although there does not seem to be a correlation between musical training and the characteristics of certain earworms. I may be wrong, but I believe this can be interpreted to mean that while a person may be an accomplished musician, the music comprising his or her earworms will be similar to rest of the general population.

It is also interesting to note that in most cases, it is best not to fight them, as it is much harder to block an earworm than to simply accept its existence (Beaman & Williams, 2010). What else do we know? Well, while earworms enter the mind involuntarily, they are most likely to occur during low stages of cognitive activity. This makes sense, as they would be quite a distraction while engaged in stressful situations or highly engaging mental tasks. So, if you find earworms to be a distraction, keep your mind working at a high level. 🙂 On the other hand, if you have time to let your mind wander, enjoy the satisfying experience an earworm can offer!

For your weekly assignment, please do the following:

1. Since we have completed the Froehlich text, we are now going to set up a series of blogs that address a variety of topics. All of the readings are available on the course D2L site. This week, your topic choices are:
   1. Advertising
   2. Atonality
   3. Earworms
   4. Fight Songs

I chose to write about earworms, but you can address any of the above topics. The readings are short and interesting. I encourage you to read as many as possible.

2. Choose one of the topics and post a thread (500 words minimum) by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, April 7th. Do not attempt to summarize the entire article.  Instead, try to expand on a particular portion the article  that is of interest to you.

3. By 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, April 9th, please post a response (200 word minimum) to TWO threads created by your classmates.

Beaman, C. P., Williams, T. I. (2010). Earworms (stuck song Syndrome): Towards a natural history of intrusive thoughts. British Journal of Psychology, 101(4), 637-655. doi: 10.1348/000712609X479636

Jakubowski, K., Finkel, S., Stewart, L., & Müllensiefenn, D. (2016). Dissecting an earworm: Melodic features and song popularity predict involuntary musical imagery Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2016/11/earworms.aspx

Thompson, W. F. (Ed.). (2014). Music in the social and behavioral sciences: Anencyclopedia (Vols. 1-2). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

The social realities we encounter as music educators are an inherent part of our professional lives. Froehlich (2007) magnifies these realities by outlining several of the topics we discussed this semester. They include the achievement gap, which can be a result of socioeconomics, race, gender, and culture. Fortunately, music can be integral to students’ lives outside of school. This brings us back to the differences between formal and informal music learning. Informal music learning allows students to voluntarily immerse themselves in the learning process. Such immersion entails much more than just the music, as students admire their favorite music and musicians by a variety of social factors. On the other hand, formal music learning can often seem old fashioned if not addressed appropriately. It is interesting to note that Froehlich believes formal and informal music learning can meet common ground with the introduction of instrumental music (the voice is an instrument, too) in the formal curriculum. Providing students the opportunity to learn a variety of instrumental music styles can help to build their self-esteem. This can go a long way to unite students from diverse backgrounds.

The diverse backgrounds of our students can also prompt a discussion of the hidden curriculum, which is defined as:

“The set of values, attitudes, or principals that are implicitly conveyed to students by teachers. It is believed to promote social control at school and in society at large by training people to conform and to obey authority, teaching them to regard social inequalities as natural, thereby ensuring cultural reproduction” (p. 119).

Music educators now realize that accepted traditions (e.g., how an audience responds between movements) should be explicitly taught. Addressing the relationships between musical conventions and valued behaviors versus musical preferences and cultural traditions will help us to even the playing field between students with extensive musical backgrounds and those with little or no musical experience. How we respond to the educational needs of our students help us to define ourselves as valuable members of the educational community.

These aforementioned issues are extremely important as they help us to realize that teaching and learning music are social acts. Furthermore, students who immerse themselves in a formal music education are able to develop their cultural capital. Cultural capital involves (a) musicianship, (b) music literacy, (c) performance skills, and (d) the ability to discern different musical styles. Hopefully, such capital will result in a lifelong appreciation and commitment to music, but is this always the case? How often does a committed high school musician stop performing once he or she graduates from high school? This leads us to an important question: What can music educators do to assure their students become lifelong music makers?

What we do is important. Whether you teach music as a compulsory subject in the elementary schools or as an elective in middle school and high school, it is important to remember that you are not only an educator. You are a musician. You are an advocate for the arts. You are a public relations manager. You are a liaison between the school and community. For your weekly assignment, please do the following:

1. Read the seventh chapter of the Froehlich text, which is titled, Application of Sociological Constructs in Education to Music Schooling.
2. Post a thread (500 words minimum) by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, March 10th. Do not attempt to summarize the entire chapter.  Instead, try to expand on a particular topic within the chapter that is of interest to you.
3. By 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, March 12th, please post a response (200 word minimum) to TWO threads created by your classmates.

As you work on this chapter, please feel free to draw from following statements and questions:

• What knowledge and skills would you consider to be important in a culturally literate person? Discuss strategies to teach toward such a goal for different school settings.
• Examine the place of competitions in the world of music learning. Where is competitive behavior appropriate and where does it inhibit learning?

Froehlich, H. C. (2007). Sociology for music teachers: Perspectives for practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

When discussing music and social context, Froehlich draws upon the important connections between philosophical and sociological perspectives in Western music. Since our course is sociological in nature, please allow me to offer a few traditional philosophical approaches, which provide a basis for establishing the meaning of music:

• Referentialism: Musical meaning is extrinsic. Musical meaning is derived from nonmusical factors (e.g., objects or ideas).
• Expressionism: Musical meaning is extrinsic. Musical meaning is derived from emotional states.
• Formalism: Musical meaning is intrinsic. Musical meaning is derived from the music itself (e.g., volume, pitch, theory).
• Absolute Expressionism: Musical meaning is intrinsic. Music may contain extrinsic attributes, but they are a direct result of music’s intrinsic qualities.

Weber and Adorno’s influence in the sociology of music plays a predominant role in this chapter. Weber suggests that musical meaning is intrinsic. He also set forth the idea that Western classical music is superior to non-Western pitch systems. Please keep in mind that recent philosophical thought has drifted away from perspectives that support musical superiority. For example, Nattiez (1990) states, music can be whatever you want it to be. Music can be defined through a process that is unrestricted, and each culture is responsible for defining music in accordance to their values.

Adorno, a member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, drew a line between classical and popular music. Specifically, since the marketplace manipulates the role of popular music in Western society, such music cannot provide an authentic listening experience to its audience. I have always been intrigued by Adorno’s thoughts on the market’s control of popular music, and given the manner in which the recording industry has changed over the past 17 years in reaction to file sharing, streaming, and the Internet, how would you interpret Adorno’s views today?

Froehlich refers to additional texts (Silbermann, Supicic, Kaplan, Etzkorn, etc.), and I encourage you to take all of these thoughts into consideration when making your curricular choices. By establishing informed curricular decisions based on sociological theory, you ensure that what you teach is musically, socially, and educationally relevant (Froehlich, 2007, p. 63). Most importantly, does the music you teach connect to the lives and experiences of your students?

For your weekly assignment, please do the following:

• Read the fourth chapter of the Froehlich text, which is titled, Music and Social Context: Macro, Micro, and Interactive Perspectives in Selected Texts on the Sociology of Music.
• Post a thread (500 words minimum) by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, February 17th. Do not attempt to summarize the entire chapter.  Instead, try to expand on a particular topic within the chapter that is of interest to you.
• By 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, February 19th, please post a response (200 word minimum) to TWO threads created by your classmates.

As you work on this chapter, please feel free to draw from following statements and questions:

• Find examples of dialectic logic and living in your everyday life.
• Consider what high school students nowadays might call “authentic music.” What is authentic music in your own experience? How useful is the term in your view to determine what to include in music listening lessons for a middle school general music classroom?
• Discuss your view of the relationship between music as a leisure pursuit and music as a school subject. Identify similarities and differences as you have experienced them.
• In your point of view, how useful is it to distinguish between commercial and aesthetic purposes of music? Where and how would such a distinction be beneficial in setting curricular goals and objectives?
• Which of the books described in this chapter are most relevant to you and why?

Froehlich, H. C. (2007). Sociology for music teachers: Perspectives for practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Nattiez, J. J. (1990). Music and discourse: Toward a semiology of music (C. Abbate, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.