Dr. Jennifer Beavers is a music theorist at the University of Texas at San Antonio specializing in early-twentieth-century analysis and music theory pedagogy.
Melissa Hoag is the Doris and Paul Travis Professor of Music Theory and music department chair at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where she has coordinated the music theory curriculum since 2007.
To kick things off, tell us more about the courses you’re teaching and student populations you commonly work with.
Jenny: I am the theory area head at the University of Texas at San Antonio and teach all the core music theory curriculum through graduate classes. My university is a public, Hispanic-thriving institution that has a lot of first-gen students and many from military families. Students enter with a wide range of theory proficiency. Our largest degree is music education (BM), and performance is a close second. We also offer a BA in composition and music marketing, and we just started a BA in commercial and digital music.
Melissa: I coordinate the music theory curriculum for music majors at Oakland University and teach a range of courses, from core music theory and aural skills courses to upper-level and graduate courses. We have a Bachelor of Music degree with music education, performance, and music technology majors, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in music that encompasses broader interests.
Like many music instructors, you’ve both traditionally made your own class materials. Why make the move to The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis (MGTA)? Why use an interactive ebook?
Jenny: At UT San Antonio, my department adopted MGTA about seven years ago. My classes have primarily used open educational resources, largely to keep down the price, but it turns out Norton has great ebook options that make it doable for my students, so I plan to incorporate it in my classes in the future. I appreciate this book for its incredibly wide range of musical examples as well as its pedagogical approach that connects theoretical concepts to performing, contextual listening, and making connections across various parameters—not just chord spelling/labeling.
Melissa: I have not used The Musician’s Guide (nor any other textbook) for the past seven years because I wrote my own text for my students due to cost concerns; however, what I’ve created for my own materials certainly shaped what I contributed to MGTA’s ebook interactives. I have always been impressed with The Musician’s Guide’s attention to diverse repertoire and popular music while also maintaining rigorous attention to fundamentals of western music and trends in the field of music theory, like its incorporation of sonata theory concepts. Many of our Bachelor of Arts students are interested in non-western music, so those chapters are especially important for our population. The digital anthology is very attractive for my students, most of whom now have tablets that they use for all of their coursework. Finally, while I can write music theory questions all day long, I don’t have the technical prowess to be able to program my own Check Your Understanding questions and interactive modules, and these features are very attractive to me. For all of these reasons and more, we will be adopting The Musician’s Guide’s text, workbook, and anthology in the future.
You came on board The Musician’s Guide author team with the Fifth Edition, primarily as authors of the Check Your Understanding (CYU) questions and interactive Try It exercises in the new Norton Illumine Ebook. Can you tell us a little more about those tools and what solutions each can provide for music theory instructors and students?
Jenny: The Check Your Understanding questions, which are concept-check questions with answer-specific feedback, are featured throughout each chapter of the ebook to keep students engaged in the reading and ensure they’ve understood the material. Interactive versions of the Try It exercises provide practice for important skills and help students build their confidence. Melissa and I worked hard to create relevant exercises that are sensitive to a variety of genres. We wanted to reinforce the material in the textbook through interactive questions that allowed the students to feel comfortable with the content they learned but also flexed their analytical understanding of different types of music. The interactive component of these CYUs helps build confidence in theoretical understanding and attempts to elevate paper-and-pencil drills typical of classroom learning, especially in the interactives.
Melissa: I have always assigned practice exercises between classes that we will go over in the next class period so that students can receive feedback without a grade before attempting a graded assignment. Unfortunately, over the past few years, it’s become rather rare for students to complete these practice assignments, despite various attempts to incentivize doing this work. If there is no grade, students see assignments like this as optional. The Check Your Understanding question modules will provide invaluable immediate feedback to students—it’s built-in review!
Explore a demo chapter of this interactive ebook here.
What was your authoring approach to writing questions and activities for this interactive ebook?
Jenny: Above all, I sought to extend the concepts presented in the textbook to a wide range of musical examples. For instance, when the book introduced a concept through a classical work, I often applied it to a pop song, and vice versa, to broaden the context. In the CYUs, I intentionally varied the level of difficulty: drawing on principles similar to those in Bloom’s Taxonomy, some questions focused on basic tasks such as remembering or understanding, while others asked students to apply concepts or analyze musical passages. I approached the interactive materials much as I approach my own teaching—beginning with focused listening to a piece of music and then exploring the concepts most relevant to that selection. Because the activities are delivered online, the multiple-choice options were carefully designed to help ensure that students meaningfully engage with and understand the content.
One interactive that stands out to me is in Chapter 20 and deals with secondary chords. First, I absolutely love the music of Clara Schumann, so it was fun digging through so many of her examples. But when I finally zeroed in on an example that I thought was interesting but not too complex, I experienced all kinds of issues in incorporating it into a web-based interactive, not unlike the issues we struggle with in the classroom: How do we analyze that fleeting secondary chord in complex music, often in the middle of a passage, at a fast tempo? For me, it has to be broken down into steps, which is to first look at the broad context and then zoom in to more and more detail. In this way, I think an interactive is a good tool for this level of detail, and something I wish I had access to as an undergraduate music major.
Melissa: I started by deciding what would be most helpful to students—what core concepts would they need to understand to move on to the next core concept? Then I tried to find a compelling way into the concept, either by posing an engaging set of questions or by presenting them with a musical example and asking questions about it. I tried to choose popular examples and/or music by non-canonic composers to supplement and enhance the text’s existing emphasis on music by diverse composers and popular music.
One of my favorite interactives is in Chapter 4, which introduces compound meter. I used the guitar introduction of Stephen Sanchez’s “Until I Found You” to ask questions about the meter, the rhythm of the guitar lick, and appropriate notation of compound meter. The rhythm is interesting and just a little bit challenging—just challenging enough to be engaging but not discouraging. It’s also catchy and memorable; when I first heard the song, it got stuck in my head for a couple of days. In my experience, it’s useful for students to apply music theory concepts to music they’ve heard before but have probably not thought about in a music theory sense.
How do you plan to incorporate these new tools into your classes when you adopt the Fifth Edition?
Jenny: I intend to use these activities as a way to check comprehension, serving as an extension of both in-class learning and take-home reading. I am also very interested in students’ experiences completing the activities, so a useful starting point for some class sessions may be a discussion of their reactions to the CYUs and interactive materials. These conversations could function as a kind of barometer for student understanding, allowing the instructor to gauge areas of difficulty and adjust instruction accordingly.
Melissa: These interactives will ensure that they have done the reading and reviewed some of the concepts on their own before coming to class. Having a way to ensure that students have actually prepared for class is pretty much every instructor’s dream! I plan to assign them as part of the homework grade to hold students accountable for preparing for class. They won’t be worth a huge amount—I think it’s important for them to be low-stakes—but they will be worth some portion of the homework grade.
What was the most rewarding aspect of being involved with the Fifth Edition?
Jenny: One aspect of this work that I find especially rewarding is the opportunity to think carefully about how students encounter new ideas and new music. Developing educational materials challenged me to dig deep into the repertoire I love and also try to capture what might unfold spontaneously in class into a more regulated and adaptable online resource. The process of writing these questions often conjured memories of classroom conversations in which I would summon a particular student’s confusion and design a question just for them. I love reflecting on how concepts unfold for all types of learners—what sparks curiosity, where confusion might arise, and how musical examples can illuminate a point in a meaningful way. That process is both creative and intellectually stimulating. It reminds me that teaching is not only about sharing knowledge but also about continually refining the ways in which communicate it.
Melissa: I love any opportunity to find interesting music to present to students. Spending hours plumbing the depths of online score databases and listening to tons of new music is my idea of a good time! I invariably learn so much while doing this work. Being a college professor means being a lifelong student, and writing educational materials is just one more way to keep that part of my intellectual universe alive. It’s a win-win, especially in this case, because while I am learning, I am also helping to improve and augment the educational experience of thousands of students across the United States.
Ready to explore The Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis for yourself? Click here to explore the interactive ebook and other resources.
MEET THE AUTHORS
Dr. Jennifer Beavers is a music theorist at the University of Texas at San Antonio specializing in early-twentieth-century analysis and music theory pedagogy. Her research integrates formal and harmonic analysis with timbre, orchestration, neurology, and disability studies. Her pedagogical work employs empirical and qualitative methods to enhance student engagement and curricular design. She is deeply committed to undergraduate teaching and fostering inclusive, research-driven learning environments. Dr. Beavers serves as president of the Texas Society for Music Theory, an AP Music Theory Table Leader, cochair of the UTSA Institute for Music Research, and Music Theory Area Head. She holds degrees from the University of Texas at Austin and Georgia State University.
Melissa Hoag is the Doris and Paul Travis Professor of Music Theory and music department chair at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, where she has coordinated the music theory curriculum since 2007. Her research spans theory pedagogy, nineteenth- and twentieth-centuryq art song analysis, voice-leading analysis, and serial strategies in the music of Elisabeth Lutyens. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in journals and collections such as The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy (ed. VanHandel), BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute, Music Theory Online, Gamut, Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, Music Theory and Analysis, Dutch Journal of Music Theory, and College Music Symposium. Her 2022 edited volume Expanding the Canon: Black Composers in the Music Theory Classroom (Routledge) seeks to make headway toward redressing the historic underrepresentation of Black composers in music theory curricula by offering accessible analyses, lesson plans, and pedagogical strategies.