Michael Meroniuk wants to keep music programs alive in public school and empowering students to create for themselves.
The Salmon Arm Secondary (SAS) graduate and music teacher at Nootka Elementary School in Vancouver has developed a program to do just that. With The New Sound, his mission is to make sure kids have access to a music education, “providing educators with tools and strategies needed to inspire, engage and empower their students.”
“The New Sound focuses on making music education accessible to all students, emphasizing the ease of learning recording technology for both new and experienced music educators,” reads a description of the program. “We aim to empower educators with tools for guiding students in music production, including recording, beat-making and using Digital Audio Workstations. The program offers a hands-on learning experience that simplifies complex concepts for easy understanding and engagement, fostering creativity and confidence in students as they create original music.”
Meroniuk said he’s working with school districts with the goal of introducing The New Sound in B.C. classrooms.
“What I’m really hoping to do is help build the narrative for keeping music in schools,” said Meroniuk. “That’s the number one important thing for me. Being a music educator, someone who had that when I was younger, I feel very grateful. So I’m trying to give that back.”
A trained session guitarist and mandolinist, Meroniuk credits his former SAS music teacher Brian Pratt-Johnson as the person who inspired him and his career, and that desire to give back.
“He was just so accepting and welcoming and he made it a point to give us the space and the trust to be able to just sit and create in school,” said Meroniuk. “The room was always open… he always gave up his lunch time. He created an environment where we could create and provided us guidance when we needed it. Obviously he is an amazing musician too so he’s very inspiring in that he can really practice what he preaches.
“Just in general he’s very giving, very talented, also very kind and funny. He made school fun, made it worth going to. I think that means a lot when you’re a kid… I’m very much about trying to create the same environment.”
Meroniuk explained The New Sound came about from incorporating technology in his classroom.
“This led me into this cycle of designing more work for my own class and as I was doing that I started realizing there’s actually a huge shortage of music teachers around the province and actually the country…,” said Meroniuk. “I thought maybe there’s a way I could make it so other teachers could facilitate a similar class, even if they don’t have a music background. Two years ago I started building this music tech program that could be facilitated in any school by any type of person with basic computer literacy. My whole goal with this was to allow music to still be taught in schools without a music specialist.”
Meroniuk said computer and media literacy are educational facets of The New Sound. As an example, he noted how through social media people are being continuously exposed to a lot of high-quality content that may appear to be “raw” or filmed organically.
“That’s usually not the case – a lot of the time there is post production that goes into those and then they’re released,” said Meroniuk. “So by learning how audio works and the processes by which it can be edited or manipulated to get a desired effect, they realize… there is a lot of work that goes into it. Often that allows them to not feel like, oh my God, I’m not amazing right away. There’s so much technology in editing.”
Meroniuk said The New Sound isn’t intended to replace existing school music programs, but complement them where they exist and provide an option for where they do not. He suggested the program would work best for Grades 6 to 12.
For more information, visit thenewsound.org.
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