Musikskapande genom digitala artefakter : – En kvalitativ läromedelsanalys av digitala musikskapande applikationer

Sammanfattning

The increasing use of digital technologies has reshaped some parts of music education, particularly the composition and music-making aspects of the musical classroom. This study analyses three digital music-making applications as learning materials, with a particular focus on what they offer in terms of built-in support and affordances and how they can be understood as pedagogical artefacts in lower secondary school music education. The study adopts a theory-driven, qualitative approach grounded in a sociocultural framework. Three commonly used digital music-making applications, Soundtrap, GarageBand and BandLab are analyzed through a theoretical analytical matrix created around central concepts within the sociocultural framework. These concepts are mediating artefacts, affordances, scaffolding and the zone of proximal development (ZPD). The analysis focuses on the design of the applications, how the interface and built-in functions such as loopbased-work can be used inside the application, and in what ways these shape the musical classroom and how they can be integrated into composition and music-making education. The aim of this study is not to find out which of the three applications is the best, it is rather to show what they offer to the musical classroom. The results of this study show how the analyzed applications cannot be understood as neutral digital tools. Instead, they function as pedagogical artefacts that actively shape and structure how music-making can be carried out in musical education. Visual representation such as rhythm, pitch and harmony, together with built-in features such as loop-based work, scale filtering, quantisation and chord generators structure musicmaking and enable students to make music beyond their own technical and theoretical knowledge. These built-in functions can be understood as scaffolding which supports students towards becoming independent. Although, the study shows that such support may limit creative choices and musical expression depending on how the tools are integrated into the classroom. Overall, the study contributes a systematic analysis of digital music-making applications and how they relate to and can be understood as pedagogical artefacts and highlights how affordances and built-in features structure and shape the conditions for music-making and composition in lower secondary music education. The study also provides an analysis matrix which can be used in similar studies.