Cross-posted to Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

I had compiled a short post yesterday describing Music teachers’ frustrations at not being able to access YouTube in school as it hosts countless audio-visual illustrations of musical concepts. As evidence, I embedded such a video, but I’ve since felt obliged to delete the post. Let me explain why.

The concept in this particular case was bitonalism (playing simultaneously in 2 keys) and it could be seen especially easily as the pianist’s right hand was playing in C, entirely on white notes, while the left hand visited only black notes (Db pentatonic). The performance of Alberto Ginastera’s Tres Danzas Argentinas by Alexandra Prodaniuc was so dynamic that no pupil would forget it in a hurry. After a test run of the embedded video, I noticed that associated videos were featured in thumbnails below. One of these was entirely unsuitable for our environment.

Had I simply recommended the original video by providing a link, and viewers had stumbled upon something else while on the Youtube site proper, that would be one thing. However, in this situation the video would have been playing on my school blog page, as it were, and I felt obliged to delete the post.

What I imagine needs to happen, if the educational side of this otherwise fantastic resource is to be useful, is a situation where staff in schools can access YouTube via a password.

Those interested in seeing this commendable performance in their own environment can find it here. There is also a very clear illustration of finger substitution (to ensure sustain) in the right hand at 01:40.

Categories: Digital Literacy, International, Music, Video