May 2010

Shiloh House - Longmont Campus

Lesson Five, Week Six

May 24, 2010

Today we expanded the loop library and demonstrated the recording process.  Once the students were finished with their songs, we allowed them to burn a copy to a CD so they could listen to it in their dorms.  This is important to do, because it allows them to listen to their music in different contexts to get a broader perspective on it before its finished.

Here are some examples of the music that the students are creating:

Student Song 01

Student Song 02

Student Song 03

Shiloh House - Longmont Campus

Lesson Four, Week Five

May 17th, 2010

The focus of today's lesson was mixing samples in order to bring balance among all the sounds.  Cody led the class through the process of monitoring the levels of the master track output.  He emphasized lowering the volume of each track, which creates more space to selectively accentuate the principle sounds of the song.  The students were really responsive, since we noticed a significant reduction of clipping in each student's song.  Whereas before, they tried to intensify the impact of their songs by upping the volume, now they began to figure out smarter means to achieve the same goal, even more effectively, by being selective in the samples they chose, and the results were outstanding.

Today we continued to emphasize the ongoing process of developing an understanding of song structure.  Nate created a checklist of song elements, things like 'introductions', 'choruses', and 'verses', and we met with each student individually to give them specific feedback based on where they were in their understanding.  We will continue to use the checklist to speed up the learning curve, because we could tell by their excitement during the end of class showcase that the structure helped them discover a more professional and mature approach to producing music.  There was a lot of cooperation, positive group support, and healthy pride in the room today.

Shiloh House - Longmont Campus

May 10, 2010 Lesson Three, Week Four

For this week we had promised the students that we would bring turntables and teach them how to scratch records. We brought DJ Pete Lott, aka DJ Hippo, with us, so that we could run two different stations: one being dedicated to learning to move the record back and forth with the hand (the action, that, for a dj, all others are predicated upon), and the other being dedicated to actually scratching the record over a beat. We introduced the turntables by way of video, a DJ Qubert production, that gave a quick overview of the mixer and the basic scratch moves. The kids were immediately enthused by both the skills demonstrated on the video and by the spectacle of the equipment that we had brought and now had set up at the front of the classroom. After the video, we held up each of the mixers and very simply demonstrated their function.

Our intention for this class was to both introduce the turntables and to have the students begin to construct the song that would, in time, turn into their final project. We gave the students instructions to pick out at a maximum five samples that they really liked and then explained that they would be working with them over the next six weeks- so it was imperative that they be discerning in the selection of these samples. We had gotten a number of requests, by the students, for a larger sample bank, which we attempted to acquire by converting our personal sample bank into files compatible for use on the student's computers. Unfortunately, when we loaded the sample bank onto the student's computers, a portion of them were distorted rendering the whole bank insufficient for the time being.

The students enjoyed the turntables and mixers and were focused on their projects. We noticed that the students were experiencing frustrations with different aspects of the program. It helped that we have had the numbers to cope with these frustrations, but it seems in order to maintain enthusiasm for the project, that we may have to address these issues in a more personalized manner, dedicating a bit more time to individualized project development. How exciting- this is the teaching part of the program!

We got a lot of questions and requests by the students to demonstrate to us what they were doing. The students helped each other and listened to each others music during their free time.

At the end off the class the students came voluntarily came to the front of the class to demonstrate what they were doing individually; all the students shared their music. Yeah!