
Per Musi | Belo Horizonte | v.26 | General Topics | e252617 | 2025
Shcholokova, Olha; Skopych, Alla; Zhurska, Nataliia; Khomenko, Leonid; Rastruba, Tetiana. “Music education and digital culture:
interaction of integrative thinking and creative technologies
1. Introduction
In the twenty-first century, digital technologies are a determining factor in socio-cultural development,
changing communication, learning, work, and creativity. Digitalization has affected almost all spheres of
human life, including music education (Karanfiloğlu and Akın Bulut 2025). On the one hand, the digital
environment opens up new opportunities for the integration of knowledge, the realization of the creative
potential of the individual, and the development of creative thinking (Sinaga 2025). On the other hand, it
gives rise to numerous risks associated with the transformation of human essence, the replacement of
creativity with imitation, and the development of digital thinking, which is not always humanistically oriented
(Vargas-Murillo et al. 2025). In this regard, there is a need to understand the interaction of music education
and digital culture as a complex, multidimensional, and dynamic process.
As a form of spiritual and aesthetic activity, music is a unique phenomenon that accumulates emotional and
value meanings, interprets cultural heritage, and projects the ideals of the future (Zicari and Biasutti 2025).
Therefore, in the context of digitalization, music education seeks to preserve and transmit the emotional,
sensual, and spiritual components of culture. In this sense, music education facilitates integrating traditional
and innovative, rational and sensual, individual and collective elements. Modern music education is
undergoing a period of profound transformation driven by the rapid development of digital technologies and
the formation of a new digital culture. These changes open up opportunities for creative self-realization,
personalized learning, visualization of complex musical concepts, development of remote interaction,
creation of interactive content, implementation of project-oriented forms of work, and modelling of
professional environments. Novel digital platforms and online services (for example, Google Classroom,
Microsoft Teams, Soundtrap, MuseScore, Flat.io, Moodle, etc.) provide organizational and methodological
support for music teachers.
Thus, the effective integration of technological tools into the traditional music education system requires an
interdisciplinary approach that combines pedagogy, creativity psychology, and digital technologies
(Richardson and Milovidov 2019). They help visualize music and develop students’ cognitive and
communication skills. These digital platforms diversify teaching methods, increase student motivation, and
make education more accessible. Despite the obvious advantages of digital transformation, the integration
of information technologies into music education is associated with a number of challenges. One of the key
problems is the gradual desensitization of creativity, including the loss of the sense of real sound, live
communication, and emotional empathy. Moreover, the introduction of artificial intelligence into the
educational and artistic process that can imitate human creative activity, for example, composing music,
creating arrangements, and even performing works. In this context, a number of questions arise: what is a
true creative act? Can an algorithm replace an artist? Where is the line between inspiration and simulation?
In this context, studying the phenomenon of integrative thinking as a key cognitive ability that ensures the
synthesis of heterogeneous experience, a combination of emotional and rational, figurative and abstract,
individual and collective in the process of creativity is particularly relevant. As a cognitive strategy, this type
of thinking is a basis for flexibility, adaptability, ability to express and interpret ideas in a changing digital
context (Burke et al. 2025). Consequently, there is an increasing academic focus on the multifaceted and
reciprocal relationship between music education and digital culture. Its comprehension requires an
interdisciplinary approach, a combination of pedagogy, cultural studies, philosophy, art history, and
technology. This article discusses the opportunities, challenges, and prospects of integrative thinking and