teaching with writing

music assignments

Typical assignments will vary among Music Appreciation, Composition, Theory, and other courses. Popular assignments for introductory or survey courses include biographical or historical essays, style studies, and concert reviews. Advanced students, who have acquired greater experience in music study and musical vocabulary, may complete more analytical writing assignments such as performance studies, archival and source studies, or assignments that require them to apply particular schools of criticism (cultural, feminist, Marxist, and so forth).

Effective writing assignments in music courses designate both the purpose for writing and the audience to be addressed. It is particularly important that these two aspects are made clear; otherwise, students may be tempted to create personal and expressive responses, which are not always appropriate. Informal, expressive responses to music may be assigned with the purpose of helping students to translate non-verbal reactions into writing. Analytic assignments, on the other hand, are usually assigned in order to push students past this reaction, and past the “safer” territories of description and historical and biographical data. To keep students from responding expressively to an analytical treatment, an assignment should describe the differences, and perhaps model the sorts of questions that students should be addressing. It is likewise important that some information be provided about the assignment's audience. This will help student writers make appropriate decisions about the amount of background or technical musical material to integrate into their prose.

• General Arts, Response Assignment: an assignment requiring close analysis of song lyrics.
  
  

• American Roots Music: a course in which students analyze popular music.
  
  

  • What is Country Music?: an analysis of contemporary music for which students are required to make comparisons between several songs.
    
    

  • Response: an informal assignment asking students to jot down notes on index cards.
    
    

• Music Survey, Writing Assignments: a menu of review and essay assignments.

music assignment resources

• "Writing a Music Business Plan that Works": an article delineating what a music business plan is and how to write one.
  

• Sample Music Papers: from Dartmouth College, a site with sample papers including a CD review, performance review, historical research paper, and comparative analysis paper. 
  

• CourseLib: a service provided by University of Minnesota librarians that enables instructors to build and post customized, course-specific research pages.

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