The students of Exploring Music 6 had a very exciting and productive week. We kicked off our final unit on music technology! I can't believe the term has gone by so quickly and the students were shocked when I told them we only had about 15 classes left together!
Throughout this unit, students will be working primary with the GarageBand app for the Ipad. After a few questions about what this program can actually do, we watched a short video which highlighted only some of the programs capabilities. Check out the video of the "Ipad Symphony" by clicking HERE. The students had a lot of fun on Monday morning trying to figure out how many different instruments were being used to create the song that they were hearing.
Early in the week we established some general classroom rules on how to keep our new "instruments" in the best condition possible. We had lots of fun exploring the different sounds and instrument options. We spent a lot of time talking about and exploring something called a "Smart Instrument". These options allow students to play an entire chord (more than one note at time creating harmony) with just the tap of their finger. There are also "Regular Instruments" which allow students to play individual notes instead of a chord. We also learned about loops. Loops are pre-recorded options included in Garageband by Apple that we can use in our projects. We had lots of fun discovering how many different options and sounds we have at our fingertips when it comes to loops!
We spent the rest of the week completed the "Garageband Challenge". In this project students worked individually, and they were challenged to familiarize themselves with the Garageband app. Students had to utilize both pre-recorded loops as well as music they had composed and recorded themselves to create a song that lasted one minute. For a complete look at the project requirements click HERE.
Friday we played all of our projects for the rest of the class. We discussed what we liked about the project, what we observed about the project, and what we wonder we could have done differently to improve upon the project. At the end of class we completed a project reflection. Check out some of our projects by watching the videos below!
Throughout this unit, students will be working primary with the GarageBand app for the Ipad. After a few questions about what this program can actually do, we watched a short video which highlighted only some of the programs capabilities. Check out the video of the "Ipad Symphony" by clicking HERE. The students had a lot of fun on Monday morning trying to figure out how many different instruments were being used to create the song that they were hearing.
Early in the week we established some general classroom rules on how to keep our new "instruments" in the best condition possible. We had lots of fun exploring the different sounds and instrument options. We spent a lot of time talking about and exploring something called a "Smart Instrument". These options allow students to play an entire chord (more than one note at time creating harmony) with just the tap of their finger. There are also "Regular Instruments" which allow students to play individual notes instead of a chord. We also learned about loops. Loops are pre-recorded options included in Garageband by Apple that we can use in our projects. We had lots of fun discovering how many different options and sounds we have at our fingertips when it comes to loops!
We spent the rest of the week completed the "Garageband Challenge". In this project students worked individually, and they were challenged to familiarize themselves with the Garageband app. Students had to utilize both pre-recorded loops as well as music they had composed and recorded themselves to create a song that lasted one minute. For a complete look at the project requirements click HERE.
Friday we played all of our projects for the rest of the class. We discussed what we liked about the project, what we observed about the project, and what we wonder we could have done differently to improve upon the project. At the end of class we completed a project reflection. Check out some of our projects by watching the videos below!
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