A Recording Studio for Every Student: Teaching Music Class in the Digital Era | Special Report - Education Week

"After Kevin Lane watched the Beatles play on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in February 1964, he knew he needed to get his hands on a record player" writes Sarah Schwartz, Staff Writer at Education Week.
 

Richard Maxwell, a music teacher and creator of the Creative Musical Arts & Sciences program at Arcadia, demonstrates how to use an Ableton push pad controller for freshmen Carson Stern and Kennady MacDonald.
Photo: Erin Irwin/Education Week

Lane, age 5 at the time, hounded his parents, who eventually gave in. He listened to the performance over and over, cataloging the different sounds in his memory: the guitar, the bass line, the voices harmonizing. He remembers asking an adult whether he might be able to make something like that, and being told no. “Only special people get to go to recording studios,” was the message that stuck with him, he said.

Now an elementary music teacher himself, Lane gives students at Woodstation Elementary School in Rock Spring, Ga., the opportunity he wished he could have had at their age: time to create and record in a “studio” of their own.

In Lane’s classes, students use iPad tablets to record themselves, mix arrangements, and play and replay their work.

“Without digital technology, we wouldn’t be able to do this,” said Lane.

Teachers say tech tools give young students more creative freedom in music classes, and offer older students who haven’t participated in band or choir an entry point into the subject. Integrating digital instruments and audio software has changed the landscape of music education, teachers say, broadening course offerings beyond ensemble performance and encouraging students to become authors of their own musical experiences...

With digital tools, students don’t need to know how to play scales on the piano or coax notes out of the clarinet before they can experiment and compose. “The good sound, the quality sound, comes out of the digital instrument from the start,” said Williams, from the University of South Florida. “What the teacher is allowed to do, then, is work with students as creative music-makers, not so much as a technician to make the instrument work.”

First, students in Lane’s classes record themselves playing a short set of chords on the ukulele, and upload it to the digital platform. A loop of this piece forms the foundation of their song. Once the recordings are in GarageBand, the students have the option to add in riffs with other digital instruments. Exploring the platform is “like walking into a recording studio,” said Lane, with virtual basses, drums, guitars, and pianos all at students’ fingertips.

Lane’s students don’t actually know how to play these other instruments, let alone play chords on them. Playing chords on a ukulele is different than playing them on the piano. 
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Source: Education Week