Dr. Gordon Cobb

BFA (SFU), M.Mus. (LCM), PhD (SFU)

Dr. Gordon Cobb is the Chair of the music department and the recipient of a 2022 KPU Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion award. He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and his Masters of Music in Composition for New Media from the London College of Music in the UK. He also completed a PhD in Arts Education at Simon Fraser University where his research explored multimodal composing practices, new musical literacies, and transformative music engagement in music video production with urban youth. His work as a music composer and sound designer has been showcased in numerous public venues, including two Olympic Games commissions (Torino 2006 and Vancouver 2010), the VanDusen Botanical Gardens Festival of Lights, the New York City Ballet, and the Cedar Lake Ensemble, New York; and on television with The Knowledge Network, and the National Film Board of Canada where he was the recipient of a 2013 Leo Award nomination. Dr. Cobb has also worked as an Educational Consultant in Teaching with Technology at the KPU Teaching and Learning Commons, and currently works as a digital content producer for the President’s Office. More information about Gordon’s work can be found at www.GordonCobbPhD.com.

Courses taught

Areas of Interest

My aim and passion as an educator are to develop and implement fine arts programs that are engaging, empowering, relevant, and transformational for today’s music learners. The impact of new media technologies has resulted in a generation of music learners who are creating musical texts that are becoming more multimodal than previous generations. Today’s youth are actively engaged in multimodal composing practices, extending the reach of music as a mode of representation and meaning making. Simply put, musical ideas can be expressed and composed through sounds, words, images, gesture, or movement, and new media technologies provide compositional resources that enable music learners to create multimodally across a spectrum of traditional and newly emerging genres such as music videos, mini-documentaries, remixes, and mashups. In teaching these ‘new musical literacies’, my youth-led and learner-centered approach to music education aims to give youth a voice through creative musical initiatives that incorporate new media technologies and multimodal composing practices with traditional forms of music and fine arts education.

Also central to my teaching is the importance of fostering dialogue, inquiry, and collaboration within musical pedagogies. Music education can be transformational for today’s music learners when they are able to reflect critically on their values and beliefs in relation to the musical activities that they are involved with. These personal expressions of self-awareness, often captured in lyrics, melodies, and moving images can provide the musical artist with a cultural grounding and context for the world within which he or she lives. Today’s music artists now have the means to write the stories of their lives, becoming producers of their own artistic development and even the creators of their own careers as musicians. As music learners begin to sense ownership of their ideas and their creative output, they also become inspired and empowered, developing a sense of independence, autonomy, and agency that is unprecedented in the history of music education. I believe today’s music learners are capable of becoming active agents in the direction of their own artistic and musical development, working within participatory cultures and engaging in critical discourse and reflection as they develop and discover a sense of self along the way.

Finally, my passion in teaching is to create and facilitate learning environments that are democratic, practical, and resourceful, where students can take risks, learn from their peers, and make contributions to their community that they believe matter. My ultimate aim in all my teaching is to prepare today’s music learners for musical careers that are meaningful, impactful, and prolific.

Research:

My research mission and passion is to explore the learning processes, multimodal composing practices, and transformative engagement of young music artists as they work towards the development of their musical selves. The affordances of digital media provide opportunities for today’s young people to live agentive music lives through creative and collaborative forms of music making (O’Neill, in press). Influenced by new methods of meaning making and innovative forms of working in the world, youth have access to information and modes of communication that are unprecedented in human history (Cercone, 2012). Based on this premise, my research brings together two contemporary ideas in classroom music pedagogy: the use of multimodal composing practices (Miller & McVee, 2012), and the creation of a learner-centered and youth-led environment for fostering transformative music engagement (O’Neill, 2014).

My research aims to: 1) identify the practices and learning opportunities that emerge through contemporary music programs, 2) examine the affordances of multimodal composing practices for music artists, and 3) explore the potential of transformative music engagement as an approach to music pedagogy that is capable of fostering a sense of agency, autonomy, and empowerment among music learners.  My PhD research examined this subject further in relation to the following two main research questions:

1.     What are the specific semiotic affordances provided by new media technologies, and how might they best enable music learners to achieve music-oriented multimodal literacy through the production of collaborative music videos?

2.     How might music video production pedagogy provide expansive learning opportunities associated with aspects of transformative music engagement?

Along with these two key areas of research, I have specific areas of interest that I believe will fit well within post-secondary music programs. Many music artists today are using digital media and social media platforms to communicate and represent meaningful ideas and expressions of self through multiple modes such as text, sound, and image. There is a need for research that examines to what extent music video production technologies inspire and empower music learners to become agentive and autonomous musical artists. From the singer-songwriter to the classical musician, working multimodally to create a representation of one’s musical self affords opportunities to develop, produce, and promote the various products of one’s musical identity. From TikTok, to FaceBook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter pages, there is no shortage of platforms from which today’s music learners can reach outwards in order to share their vision and craft with audiences, both on and off-line. Researching music video production pedagogies provides insight into how young music artists produce music multimodally and distribute their work digitally. There is a gap in research documenting the learning processes involved in youth-led music video production, particularly in relation to music pedagogy. My research attempts to address these issues through the observation and analysis of the multimodal composing practices occurring within a particular context and pedagogical approach to music and video production with youth. The concepts explored and findings contained within my research thus far may apply to other forms of music learning and multimodal music pedagogies, thereby advancing the field by complementing existing research in this area.

Another major interest I have is in the areas of interdisciplinary collaboration, multimodality, and social-semiotic theory. Interdisciplinary collaboration provides music learners with opportunities to discover the world together, within a social context, collectively making observations that lead to simultaneously-generated creative trajectories, which materialize as the products of inspiration and imagination (Kress, 2010). If the teachers of today want to address the technology of tomorrow, as it relates to the needs of today’s music learners, then we must address the technologies that students are using today to create collaborative works of art.

Finally, I am eager to continue and expand my work in music education, exploring new and innovative approaches to music learning for elementary, high school, and post-secondary music learners. Exploring how multimodality and new media technologies can be implemented into existing curricula to create engaging and relevant music learning is an area of great interest and passion for me as an educator.

Dr. Gordon Cobb

Courses taught

Areas of Interest

Scholarly Work