Music, Play, Games and Education

A significant body of recent music scholarship has sought to emphasize the playfulness of music. Many of these discussions have occurred with reference to music in digital video games. This chapter investigates how an awareness of music and play, particularly informed by the findings from the context of video games, might inflect teaching. By considering the fundamental aspects of play – the components of rules, creativity and fun aesthetics, fusing ludus and paidia – we not only recognize elements that motivate and reward engaging with music generally, but we can turn some of these qualities to educational ends. The chapter considers three dimensions of music, video games and play: i) the role of interfaces in scaffolding musical creative processes, ii) interactivity and musical-dialogic teaching and iii) participatory culture as a type of informal learning that provides musical specialization and technical expertise. The chapter concludes with an outline of planned lessons for a term’s music teaching. This overview suggests just some of the ways that these ideas might be implemented in a school music curriculum.