Lit Review Draft
AI-enhanced title
Sophia Cury
Prof. Vasquez
ENC 1102
Introduction
Ever since the Medieval times, music has been a big aspect of people’s daily lives.
Throughout centuries, styles of music and musical techniques has progressed and changed ac-
cording to the corresponding era. A way that this progression of information and change has been
captured is through genres. Genres have played and continue to play a major role in the music
community. Genres enable music theory to be passed down for future generations to use. There-
fore, music genres are important sources of information for music teachers as well as learners.
Genres provide valuable knowledge for people to learn from. Each genre is different and unique,
and therefore valuable in its own way. Researcher Amy Devitt states that each genre is created in
“a unique moment in a unique rhetorical situation” (45). Since each genre is different from the
others, it can be a huge asset to a music learner, providing one with unique information.
Music has played a big role throughout my life. As an eight year piano player, I have
used music genres such as sheet music and youtube videos to learn songs and music theory. Gen-
res are the basis of knowledge in the music community. Communities, as stated by Ken Hyland,
“can be seen as sites of engagement rather than of commitment, providing a shorthand for the
practices and discourses routinely used by a particular group” (33). Hyland describes genres as
“oil which keep disciplines running” (34). Therefore, genres play a very important role in keep- Cury 2
ing a community together and “producing agreement” (34). Furthermore, they provide a sense of
purpose and serve as a means of communication. Amy Devitt adds on to the importance of gen-
res by using swale’s definition that “genre grounds its rhetorical communication with shared
communicative purpose, purpose that is recognized and rationalized by community” (46). Genres
are what unite a community and allow them to have a shared purpose and goal.
An important trend throughout the years is that music genres have changed with the rise
of technology. When I first started playing piano, sheet music was the common method of learn-
ing how to play an instrument. With the advancement of smartphones and newer cloud based
technology, the methods of learning music through sheet music has become less popular. There
has been a shift to a more technological way of learning, where Youtube is now prevalent. Re-
searcher Peter R. Webster states how with the rise of technology, students and teachers have to
respond to this change by adapting and “broadening our conceptions of musical understanding.”
Webster acknowledges how these smartphones and tablets to create and learn music “are now a
common place.” Researchers Marina All and Nick Breeze further speak on this topic and con-
clude that with this technological rise, “technology can present a series of trade offs where assets
are offset by deficits, or, in other words, technological gain is often balanced against possible un-
Just as genres are related in a community, genres are also related to each other. There is a
great amount of research done on the transfer of music information from one genre to another.
Tardy describes recontextualization as “a process through which writers draw on and adapt exist-
ing genre knowledge each time that perform a genre” (300). This is important when analyzing
how a genre can be created from another genre. An example of this is taking sheet music and Cury 3
turning it into a youtube video where you can visually see what note is being played and at what
time. Researches Marina Gall and Nick Breeze discuss how “modes can ‘work together’ and that
there can be a process of ‘transduction or transcoding between modes.” They state how “multi-
modality consists of different “modes of meaning within multimodal texts,” the five being audio,
linguistic, visual, gestural, and spatial (M. Gall and N. Breeze). Researcher Meinard Muller de-
scribes the three main types of music representations that are popular nowadays. These types are
sheet music, symbolic score data, and audio recordings. He describes symbolic score data as be-
ing “typically used for triggering synthesizers to create music performances” (Muller). He ex-
pounds further the process of music synchronization which entails the transfer of information
from one source to another “thus coordinating the multiple information sources related to a mu-
sical work” (Muller). While the transfer of information from one genre to another is useful, there
is a trade off as a result of the process. Researcher Pao-Ta Yu analyzed the positive effects of
multimodal teaching and how these methods aid learners of music. Yu states that “according to
the cognitive theory of multimodal learning, the synchronized mechanisms of 155 multimodal
presenting approach plays an important role in helping learners build referential connections.”
The idea behind this is so that learners can “infer the music elements” instead of simply memo-
Research has also been done on different multimodal platforms that are used for learning
an instrument. These platforms are the Synthesia application and the P.I.A.N.O application. This
research is useful but there is a gap in research of genres such as learning through sheet music or
youtube videos. Researcher Julia J. studied how the application Synthesia worked when teaching
students how to play an instrument. Julia states how in a report that she looked into on analyzing Cury 4
different methods for learning how to play an instrument, “synthesia was more useful than the
other three learning methods at allowing scholars to quickly master beginning grade songs.” An-
other researcher, Matthias Weing, studies how the P.I.A.N.O system is effective when teaching
students how to play the piano. He states that the system “offers an alternative sheet representa-
tion to each the introduction to piano playing.” This system offers a detailed way to learn the pi-
ano than a synthesia video without having to learn complex sheet music.
While research has been done on analyzing different genres of music, there is rarely any
research done on a learner’s perspective of learning how to play an instrument through these var-
ious genres. In this paper, I will look at the genres used for learning how to play the piano from a
learner’s perspective. This includes theory that a student can learn from different genres and the
level of efficiency that these genres have on a beginner student. I will also analyze how piano
music theory is transferred between genres, such as which aspects of music theory are similar
Works Cited
Devitt, Amy J. “Genre Performances: John Swales’ Genre Analysis and Rhetorical-linguistic
Genre Studies.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 19 (2015), pp. 44-51.
Gall, Marina, and Nick Breeze. “Music Composition Lessons: The Multimodal Affordances of
Technology.” Educational Review, vol. 57, no. 4, Nov. 2005, pp. 415–433. EBSCOhost,
search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?
Hyland, Ken. “Genre, Discipline, and Identity.” Journal of English for Acadamic Purposes 19
J, Julia. “The Use of the Synthesia Application to Simplify Angklung Learning.” IOP
10.1088/1742-6596/1318/1/012040/meta
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, vol. 35, no. 2, June 2010, pp. 138–153. EBSCOhost,
doi:10.1179/030801810X12723585301110.
Framework.” Vol. 37(3) 287-321, 2020 SAGE Publications, pp. 300-301, DOI:
10.1177/0741088320916554. Cury 6
Webster, Peter R. “Creative Thinking in Music, Twenty-Five Years On.” Music Educators
Feb. 2021.
10.1145/2494091.2494113
Yu, Pao-Ta, et al. “Using a Multimodal Learning System to Support Music Instruction.”
Educational Technology & Society, vol. 13, no. 3, Jan. 2010, pp. 151–
