"Be part of the barometer shift from recreating to creating, from director to facilitator"
- SoundTree
- Feb 17
- 5 min read
Bob Habersat Commercial Music Educator, Curriculum Developer, & Consultant | Co-Founder of Shedthemusic | Co-Creator of Electronic Music Elements
I’m a high school choir, music production, and guitar teacher from Illinois. The last week of January marks the pilgrimage that Illinois music educators make to Peoria, Illinois. Twenty years ago marked the first time I went to IMEC, and I remember how overwhelmingly large it felt. How awe-inspiring it was to be in the company of all these master music educators, to learn from them and bring back their ideas to the classroom. I’m sure everyone has similar stories of the MEAs from their state; it’s almost a spiritual thing. The vastness of that experience is nothing in comparison to the Texas Music Educators Association conference! Think about your state conference, and multiply and magnify it by ten. The expo floor is many football fields long, the dozens of concurrent clinic sessions have hundreds of attendees, and the whole city of San Antonio becomes filled with badge-wielding conference-goers. Because of its size, TMEA attracts attendees from all over the country, making it a barometer of the current state of music education. This is the fourth time I’ve been to the conference, and it seems as if the barometric pressure is starting to read a little differently. Being a music production teacher, I’m drawn to the TI:ME pre-conference. The first time I went to TMEA, the pre-conference was fairly small, and the clinic rooms were not that well-attended. This year, however, was a bit of a different story. Instead of seating 20 or 30 people in a session, the pre-conference rooms had hundreds! There were rooms with DJs playing, people having fun in Modern Band reading sessions, beat-making of every shape and size, and even a jam session at the Hard Rock Cafe hosted by TxAPME.
This year was also a special one for me. I had the honor of receiving the 2026 Mike Kovins TI:ME Teacher of the Year award at the pre-conference. The award was presented at a reception by Walt Straiton of Korg/Soundtree in a room packed with forward-thinking educators who were connecting and collaborating on ways to bring music-making to all students. It was amazing to see this growth in action. Music education seems to progress at a snail's pace, but the positive change and awareness that is occurring at events like these is really inspiring. When I was in high school, I was in band, but I wasn’t a band kid. I was in choir, but I wasn’t a choir kid. I was a metalhead guitar player who spent weeknights and weekends writing songs in friends’ basements, jamming in garages, and gigging in sketchy clubs. Those memories were so formative for me as a musician and person. Being able to make the music that I wanted to make, how I wanted to make it, centered me and gave me purpose. No matter how hard a day I had, I could go home, get my guitar out, write some riffs and lyrics, and find myself.
The thing is, there are so many students like me in schools.
Ones who don’t fit into the traditional mold, who need something different. It’s been my mission over the past 15 years to provide a place for the non-traditional students at my school and share tools and courses with other teachers to help the other “me’s” in their institutions. This led me to found Shedthemusic and release courses like Production Through Performance, Electronic Music ELEMENTS, Fretboard Fundamentals, and a new suite of apps that allow students to make music by lowering the performance barrier to entry. It’s been great seeing the success of my students with these tools and methods. It’s also been great seeing how the resources on Shedthemusic have helped other teachers reach the “other 80%,” as I like to call them.
Creating a place for these students at my school has taught me so much about involving students in every part of the music-making process. They get to choose the music they want and the way they want to make it. My job has turned into more of a facilitator than a director, observing student groups writing songs, recording podcasts, jamming on guitar, and gigging. My favorite days are when I can watch them working together and see the same kind of transformative experience that I had in high school occur within the walls of the school.
This is the first year I’ve taught choir in 15 years.
I was so very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to foster the same kind of autonomy of process that I could in a guitar or beat-making class, but boy, was I wrong. We learn solfège and how to read rhythms so we can be great on-the-page singers, but we then take those skills and apply them to pop songs and create our own on-the-spot a cappella arrangements. Everyone in choir learns a little bit of drum set, bass, keys, and guitar. They can accompany themselves, be the backing band that plays with the choir, and work in small groups to write their own songs. These aren’t the "other 80%," but the transformation I’ve seen in them is almost as impactful as providing relevant music-making opportunities for non-traditional music students. They come in before school and write songs, they flood my resource period to work on singing harmonies by ear together, and when we work on their on-the-page music, they have the skills to work together in small groups to learn their own parts. So far this year, I’ve yet to play any of their parts on piano. Sometimes it’s just, “Here’s Do, and LET’S GO!” My choirs picked all of the music for our festival season this year. They listened to the reference recordings, chose a moment in the song they liked the best, and then planned out how they were going to learn that section. I gave them five minutes and their starting pitch. The first run-through sounded like it could have been at a concert. In that first session, the students had the kind of buy-in to the group that usually only comes from months of practice, because it was their song and it was their group.
If you have a band, choir, or orchestra, I encourage you to give students more autonomy in their learning of the music.
Arm them with musicianship skills in reading rhythms and notes on the page, but let them pick the songs that the group plays, not just for the pop concert, but for EVERY concert. Let them create a rehearsal schedule, run warm-ups, and record themselves to reflect on their growth.
Be part of the barometer shift from recreating to creating, from director to facilitator.
If you are interested in tools to help along the way, I got you. Shedthemusic’s new app Toolbox has rhythm reading games, solfège reading and writing drills, ear training games for rhythm, harmony, and melody, and low-lift beat-making and songwriting resources that will get anyone making music. The best part is that most of them are completely free! If you want to learn more about the courses available through Shedthemusic for guitar, music production, piano, and theory, you can find information on our homepage. I give free professional development on music production over the summer. If you want to try any of the curricula, we will set you up with a free pilot for the rest of the Spring 2026 semester. Just email kris@shedthemusic.com
Bob Habersat is a music-technology educator and curriculum developer dedicated to giving every student a path to create music they love. As co-founder of Shedthemusic, Bob has built guitar, theory, and production courses used by thousands of teachers worldwide. His latest program, Electronic Music Elements, brings hands-on music-production resources to learners from late elementary through high school. At Oak Lawn Community HS he runs a full, four-year sequence of guitar and music-tech/theory courses and sponsors the student-run entertainment label, Morning Show Media.
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