A scientific approach to the music and musical education

Summary form only given. A modern approach to music and musical education devoted to children and boys (and also adults) should be, first based on real experimentations and/or computer simulations concerning the physics of sound, both acoustic and psychoacoustic. Due to the wide availability of personal computers and Internet technological advances, it is possible to draw children's attention to fundamental steps of the scientific method to approach the phenomenological world. A possible didactic itinerary is proposed in order to allow young middle-school students (aged 11-12) to analyse main features of the fundamental laws of the physics of sound. The paper considers the scheme of a didactic unit within a general project, carried out by RISMA. This project, based on the methodology of "learn and enjoy yourself", is directed at children and boys of elementary and middle school levels and devoted to deepening the acoustic peculiarities of sounds in order to build a scientific basis for more careful and conscious listening to music. The itinerary is essentially constituted by six steps. The first step consists of perception of an acoustic phenomenon in the classroom, generated by means of laboratory physical devices or musical instruments. In the second, pupils are invited to describe the phenomenon using spontaneous adjectives and their own language (brainstorming). Then, in the third step the teacher, by using suitable musical software and a personal computer, proposes experiments reproducing the phenomenon. The students are also invited, in the fourth step, to exploit Internet resources, in order to find new Web sites containing relevant information on the assigned topic. In the fifth step, reproduction of the phenomenon using their own creativity and computers is proposed to the pupils. Finally, in the last step, the teacher invites students to illustrate the overall experience by elaborating a short written presentation.