Digital Media and Electronic Music in the Classroom—The Loop Ensemble

The production, performance, storing, processing, dissemination and reproduction of music are and always have been technologically determined. The continuing digitalization benefits and accelerates this development. At present, children and adolescents grow up in this cultural environment, their perception and handling of music is pervaded by digital technology. But despite their cultural relevance and several impulses from the academical discourse, these aspects of music culture are still marginalized in the educational practice in German classrooms. Younger research focuses the adequacy of music software for educational purposes, formulating the need of educationally suited software. Research shows, that main obstacles with integrating digital music media into education are the high cost and the deterrent complexity of music software. In the context of the interdisciplinary research project 3DMIN, we developed the loop ensemble. It consists of three virtual instruments created in the open source software Pure Data and is designed for the practical dissemination of electronic music culture and its technical basics in a pedagogical context. As an Open Educational Resource it is designed as didactic material for an action-oriented music education in combination with autonomous learning. We evaluated the instruments’ usability in three ways. The results show a distinct practical suitability of the ensemble, yet further empirical research is needed for a profound evaluation.