Teacher's Guide
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We wrote this book because the other textbooks that we looked at were long and had hundreds of names. We supposed that students react to these with the TLDR reflex ("too long, don't read!"), and that even if they make the effort, they don't remember most of the content, and therefore missed an opportunity to achieve the outcomes listed on the syllabus. We decided to be brief in order to foster a new attitude towards studying (NTLR, or "not too long, read!") and focus on a few key figures like Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan in order to develop a solid framework that students can use to relate other music to. Each chapter has a couple of sidebars with related artists like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, James Brown, Diana Ross, Pete Seeger, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Queen, and Bruce Springsteen. We include bonus chapters on singers and guitarists, the music business, and technology in order to review and reinforce the information from other angles.
We hope students enjoy studying this material, and that as a result of working through it come out at the end of the course are actually able to:
As you will see in the "Preview and Review" section, each chapter starts with some knowledge survey questions designed to help alert the reader's subconscious what to watch for and introduce the main topics. The review questions at the end are related and ask for more specifics. In this way students will consolidate what they've read and see the benefits of their efforts.
Other pedagogical techniques include mindmaps and timelines. We think that structuring information spatially makes it easier to process and store in memory than linear outlines.
We wrote this book because the other textbooks that we looked at were long and had hundreds of names. We supposed that students react to these with the TLDR reflex ("too long, don't read!"), and that even if they make the effort, they don't remember most of the content, and therefore missed an opportunity to achieve the outcomes listed on the syllabus. We decided to be brief in order to foster a new attitude towards studying (NTLR, or "not too long, read!") and focus on a few key figures like Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan in order to develop a solid framework that students can use to relate other music to. Each chapter has a couple of sidebars with related artists like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, James Brown, Diana Ross, Pete Seeger, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, Queen, and Bruce Springsteen. We include bonus chapters on singers and guitarists, the music business, and technology in order to review and reinforce the information from other angles.
We hope students enjoy studying this material, and that as a result of working through it come out at the end of the course are actually able to:
- Explain some of the contributions of African-American culture to the development of popular music.
- Cite some of the economic, political, social, and cultural factors that shaped popular music since the 1950s.
- Describe the styles that are related to rock including how the feel of the beat has evolved.
- Analyze the lyrics to a song and put them into context.
- Explain the impact of the music business on the options one has for choosing artists to listen to.
- Explain the impact of changes in technology on the way music is created, transmitted, and listened to.
As you will see in the "Preview and Review" section, each chapter starts with some knowledge survey questions designed to help alert the reader's subconscious what to watch for and introduce the main topics. The review questions at the end are related and ask for more specifics. In this way students will consolidate what they've read and see the benefits of their efforts.
Other pedagogical techniques include mindmaps and timelines. We think that structuring information spatially makes it easier to process and store in memory than linear outlines.
Listening examples in the eBook are linked to Spotify and YouTube, making it easy to listen to, and watch, the music while reading about it. Each song is accompanied by a list of things to pay attention and questions to answer about it. There is also a Spotify playlist for each chapter.