PHILOSOPHY
EDUCATIONAL APPROACH
My classroom is based-on transformational education and I teach concepts of isomorphic mapping focusing on background knowledge, skills, and practical application. Background knowledge refers to core concepts, both scientific and theoretical, in music and technology that support and inform the acquisition of skills and their application. Students must be able to identify acoustic principles, electrical components, digital software, and historical context before learning skills for the professional application of technology. In many classrooms, theoretical information is disseminated via lecture and tested via examination. However, to better engage students, I use online course hubs that contain a variety of audio lectures, chapter synopsis, technology support, and tangential materials. Furthermore, I use Facebook discussion pages to encourage students to concisely report their opinions about classroom topics and materials. This “flipped classroom” approach makes the dissemination and acquisition of information the student’s responsibility, and allows class time to be used for discussion, listening, and further refinement of opinions and critical thinking. As an educator in a transformational classroom, I facilitate discussion and shepherd students towards the learning objectives of the course. To evaluate students’ progress, exams are a mixture of information they had gathered from online materials and application of class discussions. This examination approach is less stressful to students because they are partners in the focus and depth of the course content.
For the last 20 years, I have been a recording engineer in industry, composer, and performer of musical compositions, and professor at three different Audio Recording and Music Technology graduate and undergraduate programs. I began as a student of sound recording technology at a conservatory of music, and later focused on electronic and experimental composition at the Master’s level. Upon entering the recording industry, I worked with many colleagues who went directly into the music industry after high school. While I had many technical skills and musical background knowledge, these colleagues excelled at other skills, such as working with demanding clients and managing studio time. This disparity between my co-workers and myself, made me questioned how much my collegiate education helped me in my music and sound recording career in industry. I wondered what is at the core of music education that best prepares students in an industry that is demanding technically, musically, and socially.
TEACHING VIDEOS
Speaker Placement Experiment
Advance recording experiment to teach students the Micheal P. Stavrou's Speaker Placement Method for professional and home studios. Filmed in Studio A at AIW.
Hip-Hop, The Mix Tape, & the 10 Minute Mix
YouTube tutorial was created for the companion online website for Audio Mixing Course
Basics of Mixing/Elastic Audio
Filmed in The CLEAR Lab at the Purdue School of Engineering and Technology.