Songwriting & Music Production

This last session of our genius club we continued to work on creating music using a DAW (digital audio workstation). We first watched a masterclass with legendary producer Pharrell Williams. Then we watch another tutorial on soundtrap and learned some more fundamentals of creating music. The students are working on individual projects that we will turn into original songs. We can't wait to share our music with you.

In our first genius club meeting, we discussed what all activities are considered "music production" since this is such a broad term. We considered this in three basic stages, the creation of a song, the development of a song, and the presentation of a song. Within each of those categories, there are countless skills and activities associated and we are going to tackle as many as we can.   After discussing this for much of the class, we spent a little time in Logic Pro X, a digital audio workstation (DAW), and observed the basics of navigation and how to make a beat. That and recording vocals will be our main focus for the next few sessions of this club. We are looking forwards to creating original music and are open to collaborating with other clubs to create positive art for these cantankerous times.   Don't stress out, reach out.    

Today in Genius we used a songwriting method that we made up on the spot. We picked a song we all liked, Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes, and we wrote new lyrics. Students popcorned out lyrics line by line. See below for the original song and the revised lyrics below. We're using this as step one to "everyone is musical". Next we are going to write an original piece to three basic chords (C, D, F) at the root of a lot of popular music.  We're learning together to speak music!!  Our ultimate goal is to produce an original track with all the bells and whistles of a pop song. We may team up with Mr. Vaziri's Genius Club for some electronics. 

The Best Way to Rock and Roll Have a great day, Matthew Hernandez Assistant Principal T-STEM Academy @ East High School 3225 Walnut Grove Road Memphis, TN 38111 P: (631) 245 - 4605 hernandezmm@scsk12.org " YOU CAN'T WRITE A SCRIPT IN YOUR MIND AND THEN FORCE YOURSELF TO FOLLOW IT. YOU HAVE TO LET YOURSELF BE." ~CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

and rolling