July 2010

Recording Vocals

Shiloh House – Adams County

Week Thirteen, Lesson Twelve

July 27, 2010

We have begun letting one student perform on the keyboard in front of the class, and selection is based on behavior, so we have a nice incentive and this feature gives each individual the chance to shine.  It's actually pretty special to watch.  After a great Hendrix-esque performance, we settled in to watch the inspirational video of the day:

After the opening discussion where instrument signups took place, everyone returned to their computers to resume working on their tracks.  Cody set up a vocal recording station, and continued the precedent of taking his time and focusing on quality and learning to feel comfortable with the recording process.  The new students are doing really well, and almost everyone got to play either the keyboard or bass guitar.  These guys are a handful, since they're as young as seven years old, but clear boundaries simplify things for everyone, and it was a really good day.

Almost There With a Finished Product

Shiloh Home – Longmont Campus

Week Fourteen, Lesson Thirteen

July 26, 2010

It was an interesting challenge this week, because Nate is on a much deserved vacation in Portland, so Cody and I had to manage the students and get them ready to finish up their work for the program.  We opened the class by showing everyone the work that the other Shiloh students are doing out in Adams County.  The Adams campus is full of seven year olds, and we did a group vocal recording project a few weeks ago where everyone got on the microphone.  The song is really fun, and you can check it out a few posts back.  The quality demonstrated what the Longmont boys could look forward to, so we lined up the remaining students who have yet to record their vocals and Cody set out to get it done.  I gathered everyone's finished product as a pre-mastered file that we'll mix and finalize this week so that we can walk in prepared for next week's final lesson.  We also took photographs for their album covers, and we had the usual instrument stations set up for those who were ahead of the game.  Next week, we will record the last students, and the following week we should (hopefully) have songs posted and the class album finished.  Stay tuned...

Introduction to MC’ing

Devereux Cleo Wallace

Week Seven

July 26, 2010

Today I stepped into a classroom full of students.  We had some new entrants to the program, and there were some friends who dropped in to check out the music as well.  Since there is a lot of interest in creating Hip Hop, we are beginning to teach the basics of vocal recording, and we opened with this bit of inspiration:

The video was followed by a discussion about the content of Akala's lyrics, which brought us to the subject of conformity vs being yourself and the merits of freedom as a value to be cultivated in one's own life.  This naturally segued into our second video, which highlights one of the great weird warriors of our day - Dose One of Anticon:

After the video segment, I told them that we would plan on recording vocals next week, and I asked for two volunteers to record in front of the class on Monday.  I had no shortage of willing victims, so we focused on tightening up their production and burning it to a cd so they could practice this week.  There is a lot of excitement in the atmosphere, and everyone is really demonstrating the aptitude.  I sat down with a few of the students and told them that we would record their vocals, but that there is a big difference between where we are now and what the professional standard is.  I told them to get ready to put in work, and they were very much on board and ready to go.  This is what we like to see.

Full Class, Full of Class


Devereux Cleo Wallace

Week Six Continued

July 21, 2010

We are very excited to welcome some new students at Cleo. They had heard about what we are doing and taken the right steps to ensure that they could participate in our program. For the last few weeks the students have been demonstrating their skills to us while we have been setting up for class, and all have an impressive desire to take what they are doing to the next level. The result of these students participating in Youth On Record is a general heightened sense of excitement and desire. The music they made today, all the students, was most impressive. There were breakthroughs on all levels from everyone.

We continued to work on the dj skills- one at a time the students are learning the "feel" of spinning a record and picking out samples from vinyl.

Group Song

Shiloh House – Adams County

Week Twelve, Lesson Eleven

July 20, 2010

It works better for us to give these guys something hands-on to do, so we brought in and set up multiple instrument stations for them to play with.  We've done this before, instead this time Nate created a song with parts for each instrument, and they each took turns either playing as a group or watching as a group.  The group that sat and watched had a task to develop some constructive criticism of the group that was playing.  This kept them involved, and it helped them develop their listening skills.

Last week, we had the students take turns on the microphone, and Cody created a song using the vocal recordings we took.  Here it is:

Shiloh Adams County - 01

We burned each student a copy of the song along with the current song they are working on plus a donated boombox for them to listen to their music through.

Group Vocal Project CD

Group Vocal Project CD