What actually happens when a person learns to make electronic music? It's not a technical transfer of knowledge from one head to another. It's something much stranger – and much more interesting.
Last autumn I came across an academic article by Peter S. Bruun (Royal Danish Academy of Music) and Pamela Burnard (University of Cambridge), titled "Aesthetic Becoming as Becoming of Aesthetics" and published in a journal of aesthetics and pedagogy. It's heavy reading. Adorno, Klafki, Barad, Haraway, Braidotti. Posthumanism, critical theory, phenomenology.
I read it twice. The second time I sat there nodding. Not because we sit around quoting Adorno between lessons at Rumkraft – but because the manifesto Bruun and Burnard formulate describes precisely what we've been doing for 20 years. Just in a completely different way, in a completely different language, and without us ever putting words on it.
This article is my attempt to do that. To translate. To put words on our pedagogy – not as a rulebook, but as a stance on what music education is, and what it can be.
"If music is an art form, which music should we teach?"
That's the question music educators have wrestled with for 50 years. In the 1970s, music in Danish schools was untethered from hymn singing and national upbringing, and was defined as an aesthetic subject on par with art and literature. Freedom. But also a new problem:
When music is art, and we teach art – whose art are we teaching?
British researcher Stephanie Pitts asked the question already in 2001: "Whose aesthetics?" Classical? Folk? Pop? Hiphop? Techno? Ableton? Modular synth? Who decides what's worth learning?
The question has only gotten harder. Today Spotify has made every musical genre and every niche available in a split second. Bruun and Burnard put it sharply:
"It is almost as if each singular individual now inhabits their own distinct music culture, and to ground music education in any shared or common music culture seems increasingly futile."
And yet – as a music school – we have to take a stance. Every single lesson. Which music do we play as references? Which producers do we hold up as role models? Which aesthetics do we affirm, and which do we ignore?
Our answer is simple: we don't teach a particular aesthetic. We teach aesthetic becoming. Let me explain.
Aesthetic becoming – what is it?
The central concept in Bruun and Burnard's manifesto is "aesthetic becoming as becoming of aesthetics". It's a mouthful. But the idea behind it is beautifully simple.
The traditional way of thinking about arts education goes like this: There's an aesthetic object (a piece of music, a painting, a film). The student encounters the object. If the student has learned enough culture and theory, she can "experience" the object's aesthetic quality. It's a Bildung process – a movement from ignorance to cultivated receptivity.
That's the model the late Danish music pedagogue Frede V. Nielsen built his influential theory of "General Music Didactics" (1994) on. And it's the model that has dominated music conservatories and music gymnasiums across Scandinavia.
The problem? It assumes that aesthetics is finished. That it lies out there, in the object, as a truth the student must be captured by. If the student isn't captured – if she prefers gabber to Mozart – it's the student's fault. She isn't cultivated enough. She hasn't "developed her ears".
Bruun and Burnard – with backup from Adorno, Braidotti and the entire feminist new materialism tradition – say: no. Aesthetics is not finished. It comes into being. Every time. In the encounter between people, materials and practice.
"We understand aesthetic becoming as a creative praxis in which subjectivity unfolds through embodied engagement."
In other words: when a student sits with a Push controller and builds her first beat, then something aesthetic emerges – but it isn't an old truth being confirmed. It's a new aesthetic being born. The student, the machine, the sound, the room, the time, the teacher, the classmates – all of it shapes it.
It's world-making. And it's at the core of what we do at Rumkraft.
Why electronic music is the perfect place to do this
Here's where it gets interesting. Bruun and Burnard write from the conservatory's world. They wrestle with a tradition where "music" is still tied to the work, to the composer, to the authorized canon. When they talk about posthumanism, they're breaking with the idea that music is something a great man wrote down, which lesser men should perform.
In electronic music we never had that problem.
When you make a track in Ableton, there's no score. There's no "right" version. There's a session – a living document of clips, samples, automation, plugins. The machine isn't a means of realising a finished work; the machine is a co-creator. A sampler you put a vocal into, and which spits something back at you that you never imagined. A compressor that pumps in a way that changes what you think sounds good. An LFO that makes a boring sound choice interesting.
We are proposing a shift in emphasis toward the dynamic unfoldings of humans and nonhumans.
That's Donna Haraway. It's also anyone who has ever sat with a modular synthesizer and discovered that the machine had a better idea than they did. Electronic music is posthumanist from birth. We've always worked with the technology, not on it.
It also means that the student is never passive. You aren't sitting and listening to a teacher demonstrate the right way. You sit with your own Push, your own headset, your own choice of kick and snare. The teacher is a guide – someone who has walked the road many times – but not an authority who owns the truth.
Six principles for our teaching
Bruun and Burnard close their manifesto with six principles for the future of music education. We've written our own – inspired by theirs, but grounded in the daily reality on Læssøesgade. Here's how we think when we plan a course:
1. Aesthetics isn't finished – it comes into being
We don't teach "real" electronic music. We teach the tools you need so that your aesthetic can take shape. If you want to make hardstyle, we'll help you make hardstyle. If you want ambient, then ambient. Our job isn't to tell you what sounds good – it's to give you the toolkit so that you can figure that out yourself.
2. The machine isn't a tool – it's a co-player
We don't treat Ableton, Push, plugins and hardware as "tools you must learn to operate". They are equal co-players in the creative process. When a synth gives you a sound you hadn't planned, that's not a mistake – it's an invitation. We teach you to listen to what the machines suggest, not just to force them to do what you've already decided.
3. Embodied knowledge counts as much as theoretical
You don't learn to make music by reading about music. You learn it by sitting with a controller in your hands, feeling a beat in your body, and making 100 bad tracks before the 101st starts to work. We prioritise hands-on time over lectures. Theory comes in small portions, exactly when you need it – not as a catalogue you have to memorise.
4. You learn in community – even when working alone
Electronic music is often a solitary practice. You sit alone in your room with your headphones. That's fine. But some of the most important learning happens in community – when you hear a classmate's track and think "how did she do that?", or when you yourself are stuck and another student has a perspective you wouldn't have arrived at on your own. We design our classes so there's always room to share, listen, and be surprised by each other.
5. The teacher isn't an authority – but someone who has walked the road
Our teachers are active musicians, DJs and producers. We play live. We release music. We make mistakes, we discover new plugins, we have genres we love and genres we don't understand. We don't teach from on high. We teach from inside the practice – and the goal is that you eventually go as far as us, and probably further.
6. Music education is ethical work
That sounds big. But it means something simple: what kind of musicians – and what kind of people – are we sending out into the world? We want to help educate people who have a voice, who have the tools to use it, and who don't feel inferior to other genres or other cultures. To learn to make music is to learn to take up space. We take that seriously.
What does this look like in practice?
Let me give some concrete examples. This isn't marketing fluff – it's what you'll actually experience if you join one of our courses.
In Ableton Level 1
We don't show you all of Ableton's features in chronological order. We start by asking: what's on your Spotify right now? What do you listen to when you're walking around with headphones on? What do you want to be able to make? Then we build the course from there. If you love D'n'B, you'll learn about breaks early. If you're into ambient, we start with textures and synthesis. It's still "Ableton Level 1" – but your Level 1 isn't the same as your classmate's.
In DJ Level 1
We don't teach "the right way to mix". We teach the techniques that exist – from harmonic mixing with the Camelot wheelto crate digging on Bandcamp – and then we help you find your own voice behind the decks. You can absolutely become a serious DJ without sounding like everyone else.
In private lessons
This is probably the clearest example. When you come for private lessons, we have no pre-set plan. We ask: what are you working on right now? Where are you stuck?And then we go there. Sometimes it's a mix technique. Sometimes it's a piece of music theory. Sometimes it's helping you figure out why a particular song you love has exactly that effect on you.
In Sound Design
Here it's completely clear. Sound design isn't about copying famous sounds – it's about listening to what oscillators, filters, envelopes and LFOs want to say, and then unfolding it into something that's yours. Our teacher shows you the tools, and then you sit there – three hours straight – and try things out. It's aesthetic becoming in its purest form.
What does it mean for you as a student?
If you've read this far – thank you. It's a long article about pedagogy, and not everyone is into that. But if you're considering starting with us, here's what this means very concretely:
- You don't need to sound a certain way to fit in. We've had students making everything from hardcore to folk-electronica. Everyone is welcome.
- You don't need to be at a certain level to start. If you can hear the difference between a beat and a melody, you've got enough to get going.
- You're going to make mistakes. Lots of them. That's the point. A "mistake" in music production is often the interesting part.
- You set your own pace. We set the framework, but you set the depth. Some students build 10 tracks in a course; others focus on one. Both are legitimate.
- You won't be measured on a scale that belongs to other people's music.We measure you on your own progression. Period.
Back to Bruun and Burnard
I started by saying that I sat there nodding when I read the manifesto. That's because Bruun and Burnard formulate something we've long lived without having words for. They write from the world of the conservatory – from a place still wrestling with the legacy of Adorno's idea of "the great music" and the student's humble receptivity.
We come from the other side. We come from warehouse parties, USB sticks, gear forums and Ableton templates. We've never had authorities to break with – we've just had machines and each other. Maybe that's why "aesthetic becoming" feels so natural to us: we've never known anything else.
But it's quite possible that the philosophy Bruun and Burnard formulate for the entire field of music education is in fact very close to what we do every day in a small electronic music school in Nørrebro. It's nice to have read.
"Music education must be reimagined as a space for cultural agency, ethical reflection and democratic participation." – Bruun & Burnard, 2025
We sign on to that.
Sources & inspiration
- Bruun, P. S. & Burnard, P. (2025). Aesthetic Becoming as Becoming of Aesthetics: An Emerging Manifesto for Calling the Tune in Music Education. Journal of Aesthetics and Pedagogy, Special Issue 21–38.
- Nielsen, F. V. (1994). Almen Musikdidaktik. Akademisk Forlag.
- Klafki, W. (1963). Studien zur Bildungstheorie und Didaktik. Beltz.
- Adorno, T. W. (1949/1975). Philosophie der neuen Musik. Suhrkamp.
- Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press.
- Braidotti, R. (2019). Posthuman Knowledge. Polity Press.
- Pitts, S. (2001). Whose aesthetics? Public, professional and pupil perceptions of music education. Research Studies in Music Education.
Want to experience it yourself?
The best way to understand our approach is to try it. Come by for a free trial lesson, or join our next open house – then we can talk pedagogy over a cup of coffee. Or just show you the studio.
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Om forfatteren
Ras 'Kata' Kjærbo
Ras Kjærbo is an Ableton Certified Trainer and one of the driving forces behind Rumkraft. He teaches Ableton Live and music production, and is passionate about sharing his knowledge on everything from sound design to live performance techniques.