Music Tech Lab, Rm. 155
This class is for high school students at Winnebago Lutheran Academy who want to learn how to make music on computers. We use Audacity and Garageband as our main tools, and we have fun almost every single day figuring out how to make music using audio and MIDI, but we also learn how to record vocals and instruments and even play guitar and drums if we need to. We keep personal blogs (look on the right column of this page and click on our names) to help us remember what we've been working on, keep track of the all the decisions that we've made on our projects, and to share with our family and friends the music that we've created.
Article posted November 20, 2009 at 11:25 AM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 7
This MIDI Drum Map gives you the names of the instruments that are available in Garageband when you call up a Rock Kit. Each key on your MIDI keyboard plays a different percussion instrument.
Article posted November 20, 2009 at 11:25 AM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 7
Article posted November 3, 2009 at 03:24 PM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 151
Last school year I decided to start teaching guitar to my music tech students because I wanted to help them hear chord progressions and changes. You see, we had been making songs in Garageband using the loops and layering bass and guitar and keyboard loops together, but if the loops had incompatible chord changes, the resulting song was a mishmash of harmony. I wanted to help my students understand how to put Garageband loops together and to listen for the chord changes in the loops by having hem actually play chords. Guitar was the perfect instrument
The first semester's goal was simple: learn three chords (G, C, and D). Since I was a beginning guitar player, I wasn't able to teach my students very much. Luckily, they were beginners too and we got along just fine on three chords for a semester.
In the second semester last year I was blessed to have a student who was a natural guitar player. He taught me some of the "tricks" of playing guitar and changing from one chord to another.
This year, I am blessed with four really good guitar players who took Music Tech just to play guitar! There are three other students who are beginning players, so I adopted an aerobics mentality to teaching the chords this year: low impact (simplified chords), middle impact (G, C & D), and high impact (added minor and 7th chords)
Here's just one of many sites that lists songs that can be played with just three chords on the guitar.
Article posted September 30, 2009 at 08:43 AM GMT-6 •
comment (1) • Reads 902
I've been kicking this idea around for a couple years: can the Music Tech class produce a WLA podcast? That's a "yes" or "no" question! I know the answer is "yes", but then there are all sorts of other questions.
First of all, what is a podcast? I asked my Music Tech class this question yesterday and was surprised that very few of them knew the answer or listened to podcasts regularly. I suppose the reason might be (a) not having iTunes or some other podcast source and (b) not having an iPod or some other listening device to take the podcast off the computer and listen at your own leisure. I suppose then you could think of a podcast like a radio show that you can time shift, kind of like having a DVR while watching a football game and rewinding the last couple of plays because you were out of the room when the big play happened. But a podcast can also be mobile. You don't have to be at your computer to listen to one if you have an mp3 player like an iPod.
We started brainstorming yesterday about the following questions: 1. What would the podcast be about? 2. What things happen regularly at WLA that could be reported on? 3. What kind of a podcast would the students want to listen to? 4. What kind of podcast would parents want to listen to? Some of the ideas of what could be podcast were chapel, WLA sports, and, the one I think could be absolutely hilarious, lunch! But it's hard to envision creating something new if you aren't sure what you are creating, so the first thing to do is listen to existing podcasts.
iTunes has thousands of podcasts: all for free! Some of the more popular ones are This American Life, NPR: Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!, and Stuff You Should Know, but there are podcasts of all shapes and sizes. Just go check out the podcasts section of iTunes and listen for free! Still not sure about how to use, listen to, or find podcasts on iTunes? Read Tips for Podcast Fans. Want to know the clinical definition? Read Wikipedia's Podcast article. What if you don't have iTunes on your computer? Either download it and have access to not only podcasts but the every growing library of songs, movies, and TV shows, or visit sites like podcast.com or Podcast Alley.
Article posted September 30, 2009 at 08:43 AM GMT-6 •
comment (1) • Reads 902
Article posted September 22, 2009 at 11:32 AM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 144
Give a short description (a paragraph) of this project. Write in such a way that somebody who does not know anything about this class understands what you had to do. A Paragraph is at least three sentences.
Then go to YouTube and grab the embed code for both the original video and your newly created soundtrack video. Paste both into the article box.
Article posted September 22, 2009 at 11:32 AM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 144
Article posted September 18, 2009 at 08:58 AM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 217
To complete Dance Project 3, you need to be able to synchronize an existing commercial with a mainly music soundtrack to your new soundtrack which you edited in Audacity. Here are the steps to completing The Commercial Soundtrack Project:
1. Find an existing commercial on Youtube which has very few, if any spoken tracks or other sound effects. The soundtrack should be an existing popular song or some other music.
2. Copy the URL of the commercial (either in the address bar or in the information section).
3. Go to www.keepvid.com and paste in the URL of the commercial you'd like to download from YouTube. Click Download and choose the video.mp4 option. The file will download to your downloads folder. Rename it to identify your commercial.
4. Work on your new soundtrack in Audacity. Note the length of your commercial and cut you music to that length. Make sure there is some logical, intelligent reason you chose your new music.
5. Double-clicking on your commercial will play it as a separate Quicktime movie. Until your music is fully cut and edited, play your commercial separately from Audacity, turning the sound down in the video and listening to your new soundtrack simultaneously in Audacity.
6. When you think your new soundtrack is cut and ready to be overlaid into the commercial you chose, then open iMovie and perform the following steps:
7. Import your commercial into iMovie (File>Import>Movies>Downloads) Click on "Create New Event" in the Import window and give your commercial project a unique name. Click "import". The commercial will show up in your iMovie event library.
8. Click the "+" button to add a new project. Name your commercial, choose the same aspect ratio as your original commercial was and select "none" for the theme. Click "Create" to make your commercial show up in your iMovie project library.
9. Click on the down triangle at the beginning of the clip and select "audio adjustments". Drag the slider bar for the audio volume all the way to the left until it reads 0%. Click "Done" to exit. Play your video. The existing soundtrack should be silent.
10.
Article posted September 18, 2009 at 08:58 AM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 217
Article posted September 15, 2009 at 02:33 PM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 117
Well, new school year, that is...:)
This semester I have one Music Tech class of seven really smart students who have been catching on very quickly to the first project: cutting audio. For Dance Project 1 I supplied them with a piece of music ("I Like That" by Houston) and lead them through a series of steps using the free, cross-platform (meaning it works on both Macs and PCs) sound editor Audacity to cut the music from it's original length of 3:57 to 0:39.
Dance Project 2 was a similar idea, but the students got to choose their own piece of music to cut instead of me supplying them with one of mine. The goal of Dance Project 2 was to listen more carefully to the beat of the music and to make cuts which still allowed for a steady beat. We learned to listen for eight-counts, admittedly an idea brought over form the WLA Spirit Dance Team, to help us count beats and know where to split the music and rejoin it to make for smooth transitions.
Dance Project 3 is the final step. The goal of this project is to take and existing commercial and to replace its soundtrack with new music, cut down from a longer song. Once again, students selected their own commercials and music and showed them to me for approval before working on their cuts. The new part of this project is picking music which fits the content of the commercial in some way. Students will use iMovie to put their music, which they cut in Audacity, into the commercial.
Article posted September 15, 2009 at 02:33 PM GMT-6 •
comment • Reads 117
Dale Witte is the choir director and music technology teacher at Winnebago Lutheran Academy, Fond du Lac, WI. He has been teaching since January 1990 and really enjoys teaching students how God's gift of music works. Dale is also a church organist, piano player, violinist, and church music composer.
