Finding your voice: February 2024 Editorial

A warm welcome to our February issue. By the time you’re reading this, hopefully the floods, strikes and January blues will have subsided, and the new term has started with aplomb (a word I still can’t say with a straight face, but you get the drift).

The focus of MT this month is Early Years, with articles addressing pedagogy, resources, getting back to basics, and encouraging creativity. Penny Osmond shares her experience with music and storytelling, drawing on research and creative ideas for using space, and established author (and teacher-trainer) Sue Nicholls explains the role music plays in tackling underdeveloped language skills – a worrying legacy of changes in societal behaviour and, of course, Covid-19. We’re grateful to Sue for generously sharing with MT readers her eBook Singing Circles, a comprehensive resource of songs and recordings freely available to download at end of her article.

We also hear from Christina Lydon, a music therapist working in Early Years and hospitals, and from Christie Haddad, an educator pursuing a PhD on the use of music tech in EY. ‘If you want children to use music production tools like Logic Pro’, explains Christie, ‘then earlier experiences support that learning journey – children need to learn how to walk before they run’. Most will welcome this joined-up approach, the continuity, however incongruous music tech feels at this early stage. For a general overview of current EY thinking, meanwhile, I encourage you to explore Susan Young’s impressive Music in Early Childhood, starting with MT’s book review.

For both primary and EY practitioners this month, we get a taste of how music and songs are taught in the US, thanks to Anne Barry, associate professor and director of choral activities at Lake Forest College, Illinois. Anne surveys the global song repertoire and the resources available in US schools (much of it unknown on these shores), while highlighting the work of leading educators in bringing authenticity to singing and embracing the diverse make-up of our classrooms.

For our mental health and wellbeing column this month, I’d like to welcome our newest MT partner: Nordoff and Robbins. This is the UK’s largest music therapy charity, around for over 60 years, and we begin their mini-series of articles with a look at the role of the music therapist – Dr. Simon Procter elegantly captures the benefits of music therapy for musicians wanting their music to make a difference to others.

Elsewhere in this issue, Wizdom Layne of Sound Connections makes the case for closer ties between the commercial music industry and music education sector, spurred on by his work on the forthcoming Media Broadcast & Production T Level. Andy Gleadhill, a household name in percussion teaching, provides a brilliant overview of Latin American rhythms for use in the classroom. And, for help dictating your cumbia, calypso and rumba, Dice Wood is on hand with advice for teaching rhythmic dictation.

If you haven’t registered already, don’t forget it’s not too late to join us at the Expo on 22 & 23 February. I look forward to catching up with as many MT readers as possible.

– Phil Croydon, editor

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