Welcome!

Thanks for coming to the GarageBand session. Below you will find some information about what I did in the session, some notes and links to resources that were mentioned.
– Katie

Midnight Music Community

The Midnight Music Community is a professional development community for teachers who want to learn more about using technology with their students.  There are 12 full online courses, lesson plans, help and advice all available to you as soon as you sign up.

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What we did during the session

The projects we looked at during the session were:

  1. The Funky Blues – students create a 12 bar blues in an unusual style (any style of their choosing). Record the bassline, a drum part (use loops, or The Drummer track, or record a drum part from scratch)
  2. Rap My Name – I mentioned a rap project which could be a cross-curricular activity. The GarageBand skills involved are the same as the first project. There is a complete lesson plan for this project here and it can be done using whichever software program you use or on an iPad.
  3. The Remix Project A – students import a MIDI file into GarageBand and change the playback (instrument) sounds, alter the tempo, key, time signature and other musical parameters.  They can “chop” up the regions and rearrange the piece.  Adding a drum patter in a different style makes a big difference to the original! MIDI files can be found for free – search for the name of the song/piece and “midi file” ie. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik midi file”.
  4. The Remix Project B – students import audio stems (individual recorded tracks of a song) into Garageband and use the tracks – or parts of the tracks – to build up an original arrangement of the piece.  The Gotye stems can be found here.
  5. Storytelling – you can ask students to write a story, record their narration and then add sound effects to go with the story.  It’s a great preliminary activity for film scoring.
  6. Video game music – students can compose a “layered loop” of music that builds in intensity. The first layer would match exploring-type game play, the second (a little more intense) hints that something’s about to happen in the game and the third most intense loop is for combat/attack game play. Beepbox is the online Mario-style composition tool I mentioned would be a good starter project (for a copy of the Keynote file I showed during the session, click on the Film Scoring notes link)
  7. Film scoring – click here to download the Big Buck Bunny video and the Car/Dog video, plus a copy of the Keynote file I showed in the session.

Useful links on Pinterest

Click on the Pinterest image below to view my profile.

Explore the links on Pinterest to find film scoring links (look for the Wallace And Grommit videos!), video game music links, iPad links and LOTS more and more.

 


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