Name: Teaching Popular Music Theory
Start: 2025-06-05T11:30:00-0500
End: 2025-06-05T12:30:00-0500

Welcome to the APME Memphis 2025 conference. Here, you’ll be able to register for the conference and update your Sched profile. The conference schedule will be available in late spring 2025. At that time, you can view the schedule and select the presentations you’d like to attend. If you have any questions, please visit our conference website or contact us at conference@popularmusiceducation.org We look forward to coming together as a community June 4–7, 2025.

Thursday June 5, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm CDT

Computer Lab - Legacy Building

New York University's Steinhardt School recently overhauled its core music theory and aural skills requirements. Rather than having a single Western tonal theory sequence required for all music majors, students can now choose between a popular music sequence, a non-Western music sequence, and the traditional tonal theory sequence. Teaching the pop theory and aural skills classes has required us to develop new teaching methods and examples, assignments, projects and tests, but it also requires us to ask larger questions: What is popular music theory? How is popular music theory different from traditional theory pedagogy? What topics should we cover? What approaches and examples should we use? What do we expect students to know when they complete the classes? How much emphasis should we put on notation versus other music literacies? This session will present materials that my NYU colleagues and I have developed for pop theory and aural skills, assignments and project prompts that I have used, and reflections on what has worked and what requires some rethinking. I also offer my perspective as a self-taught rock and pop musician entering the music theory classroom, and how it affects my relationships to students and to the material we are teaching.

Speakers

Ethan Hein

Adjunct, New York University

Ethan Hein holds a PhD in Music Education from New York University. He is an adjunct professor of music at NYU and the New School, where he teaches songwriting, music theory and production. As a founding member of the NYU Music Experience Design Lab, Ethan has taken a leadership role... Read More →

Thursday June 5, 2025 11:30am - 12:30pm CDT
Computer Lab - Legacy Building 3775 Central Avenue 129 Music Building Memphis, TN, 38111

APME Memphis 2025

Ethan Hein

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