These 8th grade students are totally into rapping and making their own beats so I brought in my own microphone and let them use a storage area as a studio. The Music Tech classroom is the former wood/metal shop. That’s a compressor hose dangling in the foreground, and some kids from another age spray painted the heck out of the place. These guys immediately claimed it as their own, saying wouldn’t it be dope to get a fridge and a futon in here. I could hardly get them out of there at 4:00 yesterday afternoon.
Here’s a first look at Milwood Magnet School’s new after-school guitar club. Twenty five students signed up to learn to play or to improve their playing. We look forward to expanding upon the two-chord song we learned last week.
This week Music Tech students will compose and record their own melodies using the virtual keyboards that are part of GarageBand. In the first picture, notes are played by pointing and clicking with the mouse. Below that is an image that shows which notes are associated with the “home row”. Both of these methods of inputting musical notes will do the trick if a keyboard with Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is not available.
These keyboards can be used not only to compose a melody, but with the simple change of one setting, they can be used to create drum sounds. The objective for this week is for students to deepen their understanding of the ways to create original music on a computer. The lesson for Monday and Tuesday focuses on drum accompaniments. Using the mouse as a “drumstick” on certain keys in the above images will result in the recording of a drum loop that can be used instead of one of the pre-packaged loops that comes as part of a program such as GarageBand. Even though there are hundreds of drum sounds on the computer, sometimes only an original groove will do. The same can be said of a melody: The “delicate piano” loops are not delicate enough for you? Create your own with the virtual piano keyboard. Students will finish the week’s lessons by creating a melody in D Minor.
8th Grade Project: Original Beat Box
Here is the Wikipedia definition of “beat boxing”, also known as “human beat boxing”: Beat boxing is a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of producing drum beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using one’s mouth, lips, tongue, and voice. It may also involve singing, vocal imitation of turntablism (manipulating sounds using phonograph turntable), and the simulation of horns, strings, and other musical instruments. Beat boxing today is connected with hip-hop culture, although it is not limited to hip-hop music. The term “beatboxing” is sometimes used to refer to vocal percussion in general.
People have imitated percussion sounds vocally throughout history. Beat boxing has become an art form and requires real talent and hard work to become proficient. However, in this week’s project at Milwood Magnet, we will take the easy way out.
Instead of a “one take” beat box recording, students will record themselves chanting various beat box-style sounds using a microphone. Afterward, students will move the recorded regions around in GarageBand.