Project Context and Collaboration

This project is a collaborative design initiative by Dr Michelle Stead and Dr Petar Jovanov, developed as part of a postgraduate music education unit focused on integrating music technology, pedagogy, and cultural critique. Drawing on our complementary disciplinary strengths—Jovanov’s expertise as a composer and music technologist, and Stead’s research into listening, aesthetics, and music education—the project responds to the guiding question: What does inclusive and critically engaged music technology education look like in 2025?

Our work builds on Kuhn and Hein’s (2021) Project Formula, a model that combines a musical concept, a technological concept, and a compelling hook to create scaffolded yet flexible creative tasks. The formula provides a structure that encourages students to engage deeply with both musical material and technological processes, while also allowing room for individual agency and expression.

For this project, we selected the genre of girlie pop as our focus—both for its cultural resonance with younger audiences and its capacity to support affective, embodied, and critically aware modes of listening and making. Specifically, we chose Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” as our hook, due to its rhythmic clarity, harmonic simplicity, and performative aesthetic. We first recreated the track note-for-note in Logic Pro, allowing us to dissect and reconstruct each element—beat, bass, harmony, form, and vocal style—through professional production tools.

We then adapted this process for Soundtrap, a cloud-based DAW commonly used in school settings. This second version was designed to retain the integrity of the creative process while providing accessibility for students and educators working within more constrained technological environments. This translation from Logic to Soundtrap formed the basis for three instructional videos that scaffold key elements of the composition process and model the creative decision-making behind them.

The project also draws on informal learning theories, particularly Lucy Green’s (2002) work on peer-led collaboration, aural learning, and the inclusion of culturally familiar music in the classroom. Informed by a constructivist approach (Papert, 1980; Resnick, 2007), our design encourages students to take ownership of their musical ideas while engaging with structured supports and collaborative feedback.

Outcomes / Deliverables