You’ve heard the Michigan State University fight song before, but probably not like this.
Recently, a group of Spartan students, faculty and alumni from the College of Music got together to perform a version of the beloved tune using classroom instruments we all remember from grade school — recorders, xylophones and slide whistles — and turned them into something unforgettable. No sheet music. No rehearsal. Just serious music skills and Spartans Will.
The lighthearted sound is just the surface. Take another listen and you’ll hear thoughtful musicianship and collaborative learning.
Creativity is instrumental
Associate Professor of Music Education Karen Salvador organized the group of MSU fight song performers. It includes three faculty members, three alums, two undergraduates who will be student teaching this fall, and one other current student. Salvador explains how the group pulled off the performance and why it works so well for music educators.
“We actually do assignments like this in two different classes because we want the students to get more experience creating music in the ways that they might with their students when they’re out teaching,” Salvador says. “It gives them more ideas for how they might let students be creative instead of just telling them what to do.”
Creativity, freedom of expression and integrating music that students of all ages are listening to is emphasized in MSU’s music education programming.
“Today, we used a process where nobody came with a prepared arrangement. We wanted to work together to decide how it was going to sound,” says Salvador. “That same exact group work process is really good pedagogy, in all kinds of music settings.”
These are skills music education students carry with them wherever they go.
“Obviously, this is a lot of fun for us to work together as collaborators,” explains Assistant Professor of Music Education Stuart Chapman Hill during the filming of the song in Hollander Hall. “But also, this draws on skills that we work on in classes, like being able to play things by ear, being able to use harmonic audiation to determine chord progressions, and to create arrangements on a custom set of instruments.”
Hill says these activities are typical of what MSU music education graduates like Mattie Pennington utilize with young students in schools around the country.
“The collaboration aspect of it is really the beauty of what music education is,” says Pennington, a 2025 graduate of the MSU music education program who will begin teaching middle school band in North Carolina this fall. “Whether you’re in a classroom or whether you’re in a college area learning about it, the community is what brings us together.”
Tiny instruments with a big lesson
“The performance will be great and fun and silly, but it's working together and figuring out new ways to make the music that is most valuable,” says Parks Payton, who can be seen performing cheerleading moves in the video. “The final product is not as important as the process.”
Payton earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in music education from MSU and teaches middle school choir in Grand Haven, Michigan.
His colleague in Grand Haven schools, Maria Schoon, graduated from MSU in 2022 with a degree in music education and teaches elementary general music. She sees this type of activity providing several benefits to young children.
"Students learn problem-solving skills. They learn to listen and to consider other ideas,” Schoon says. “Kids can then take those skills and apply them to whatever musical interests they have going forward, whether that’s listening or dancing or another way of engaging with music that I haven’t taught them. They get to choose, and they have the skills.”
The performers in the video, all from the Music Education area at MSU, include:
Faculty
Karen Salvador (contrabass bars, back left)
Stuart Chapman Hill (kazoo, xylophone, front left)
Ryan Shaw (cajon, recorder, kids' glockenspiel, middle)
Students
Fiona Breen (boomwhackers, lollipop drum, middle right)
Jacob Turner (metallophone, front right)
Jamie Kasper (desk bells, middle left)
Alumni
Parks Payton (kazoo, slide whistle, cheerleading, back right)
Mattie Pennington (glockenspiel, kids' djembe, back)
Maria Schoon (ukelele, middle)
