Alternative Strings: The New Curriculum

Build Skill to Satisfy the National Standards in Music Education

for-credit course through VanderCook College of Music Online with Julie Lyonn Lieberman

Every teacher in America must hone their playing and teaching skills in order to integrate a multi-cultural approach into the yearly curriculum. This course will provide you with those skills and much more.

American music education tends to rely on Western-based repertoire, often sidelining the styles and musical idioms of its own as well as other countries and cultures. Just as no classroom in the U.S. is purely homogeneous, neither should the music we bring them. This course presents an invigorating world-view to string music education and the tools for implementing this enhanced curriculum. Through analysis, discussion and performance of various styles, your students will learn to recognize and appreciate the musical value of world cultures. In addition, this course focuses on the variables that coalesce to generate each musical genre, including structure, groove, ornamentation, preferred rhythmic components, vibrato, inflection and more. Particular attention will be paid to utilizing classical repertoire to generate the skills needed for alternative styles.