I thought I should start with something simple, so I dug up an incomplete project from a year ago. I was trying to make my own version of World of Chances by Demi Lovato but didn’t have the skill to finish it. Since I’ve saved so much time during lockdown, it was the perfect timing to complete and even include it in this project!
Set-up
my basic set-up
Layers
Guitar
It was just my Sigma acoustic guitar plugged into my interface, typical 4-chord progression
Midi and samples
There’re 15 layers in total and the only real instrument is acoustic guitar by yours truly. Midi instruments are all from Logic Pro X, and Cymatics sample packs are free (I used Roses, Oracle and Cobra). They were all tranposed to G.
Vocals
I had a tenancy at a recording studio at Haymarket at the early stages of lockdown but unfortunately had to discontinue. However, I did manage to record some good vocal takes for this project! The dead room there was amazing š
How I made the song-I’ve come up with a brief summary
-Find keys, chords, BPM online
-Start with just guitar and vocals
-Then put in midi layers
-Reference original track (this process was repeated 100 times)
-Fix reverb, EQ, volume etc
-Show people, one musician and one normie, and ask for opinions.
-and… continue
It’ll take a while for me to learn how to mix
Things I learnt from this project
I tried flexing my vocals for the first time and I was absolutely fascinated by Flex Pitch. I also got my very first plug-in-Balancer by Sonible and Focusrite to get a “bigger”-sounding vocal.
I had a bit of a hiccup with vocals sounding off and asked for help from my bf, we found out that the EQ of the main vocal was too high. We increased the depth of it and voila-
I messed with EQ to create the radio effect which is one of my favourite since Day 1 (gotta stick to my pop-punk roots you know, and you can still hear it in my songs nowadays haha).
Since I didn’t have experience with vocal processing, I looked through YouTube and found this video. It was quite good for beginners š
Finished product
Pedagogical Possibilities
It’s actually inspired by my brother’s music teacher in Year 9, so I sort of got the information first hand. It’s cool that they did manage to finish the whole project with little help from their teacher. They’d be in Stage 5 in NSW, so I’d say it is doable, given that they have basic training in music.
Since the projects they did were under the Alberta Curriculum, I did some further research on YouTube to see if it can be adopted to the NSW syllabus. I noticed that their level is actually quite similar to the things we’ve learnt in music tech!
I had a look at Ethan Hein’s programme at NYU, and I reckon it’s useful for building a solid foundation for students who’d like to learn to produce. From song structure analyses, looping, drums, synth to midi, it all starts from the basics. It was how I was trained in my undergrad years (my school didn’t have music as an elective, so songwriting was mostly self-taught from listening to highly formulated Disney channel music like Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato in the late 2000s). It is a step-by-step process to scaffold, and I would say the self-taught element is essential in music education because there’re tons of resources on the internet. On top of that, we should encourage kids to get together with other musicians and learn from them.
Traditional music education mostly relies on activities in real life, but online music teaching is so much easier if kids are used to working online. I guess that’s the takeway from more than 2 months of lockdown š
In the unit of study outline for music curriculum 1 (focusing on popular music), I have adopted structure analysis, looping, and it’d be awesome to teach them how to DIY sound effect with random material. (Document attached seperately)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/14Hk-Wc8ifKaDvWQzXKmbp0WLdelU36Kc/view?usp=sharing
Kidz! Music! 