During the Apple Distinguished Educator Institute that I was lucky enough to attend last summer we attended a workshop that went into some great ideas for iMovie, Final Cut, Garageband and Logic. We saw how using these we could create, firstly great films, but also great soundtracks to accompany our slick visuals.
I am pretty poor when attempting to create music, always leaving it to musician friends in my personal life and music professionals inside the classroom. Although I do love music and see myself as a ‘musical snob’ this is always pre-recorded and on my favourite ‘hipster’ format of vinyl.
Having been inspired by what I saw in Amsterdam I decided at some point I would attempt to get my class to make some, as they put it, ‘sick beats’ (this may need a z!)
At the start of the term I introduced them to Garageband and showed them how to add instruments and layer sounds. We built this up to them adding any sounds they wanted to ‘just make noise’. The class loved this activity, although it sent both my teaching assistant and myself home with headaches that evening!
The following week, I showed the class how to access Apple Loops within Garageband, something I didn’t know existed until shown in Amsterdam. Apple Loops contains hundreds (if not thousands) of professionally recorded loops (short bars of music) on a variety of instruments. Layering these together was the activity, again with mixed results, the learning intention was to expose the children to the idea of Apple Loops and the process around using them.
Today, we took this a stage further asking the children to open Garageband and again, use Apple Loops, to create a piece of music that they were proud of, I reminded them that less was often more (and demonstrated this myself; I don’t think they liked what they heard!). After a little time, and silence in the class, the first few children came over to me, excitedly, iPad in hand, grin on face. I was concerned that they would have layered up as many sounds as possible, in no coherent fashion, BUT to my amazement the work they had created was great. I, obviously, you d the most appropriate way to send their work to SeeSaw straight away.
I realise that I should never be surprised by what the children in my setting can create, especially when using iPad as a tool.
Give it a go, you might inspire some future hip-hop superstar, or the next John Williams! Here are some of the pieces created:
