Garageband Music App
The next week, older students began on Garageband, a music recording app that allows for live recording of voices/instruments as well as library of pre-recorded percussion/guitar/piano/bass riffs of 4, 8, 16 beats, etc. Students found it challenging to manouveur around this app. I used Garageband with my grade 4, 5, and 6s to record themselves singing in this first week. We created a chart of “how to’s” so students had a visual list to follow. “How to create a new project”, “How to save a project”, “How to return to my project”, “How to add measures to my song”, “How to get rid of the annoying metronome sound” were the charts we created as a class. I asked students for input for each chart after they had a chance to explore the app. Since students only had access to the ipads 2 or 3 times a week for about 40 minutes, we walked through the same steps of setting up a new song daily for two weeks until students were comfortable on their own.
To begin, we recorded several songs where the class sang and I played piano, all on one track, to get used to the recording buttons. Once students understood how to add measures to a song, take out the metronome tick, and add multiple tracks to their project, they began recording their own masterpieces.
Grade 5 and 6 students really got the hang of the process of laying down a drum track, then adding ukulele or recorder tracks on top of that. Students had to work on this in groups of 5 or 6 since “studios” (quiet places to record) were limited to my music office, practice room, music room, and fire escape. Once they all had the same track, they decided on a performance song to play and record at the same time. Only one of them could have the drum track playing at one time (the rest muted that track because the logistics of 6 students pressing record at the exact same time is almost nil : ). Once they recorded their piece, they unmuted their drum tracks and synced the two tracks together. Some groups even managed to add a third track of vocal to their ukulele songs (a favourite was “On Top of Spaghetti” on ukulele using chords I, IV, V).
Students in grade 6 also used Garageband to record themselves reading their Science Fiction stories from Science class. Once they finished reading their story, they added a different track to the project to record sound effects that enhanced their story. Students found some neat sound effects in Garageband in addition to using their own devices to record sounds like sirens, helipcopters, lazer guns, laughtracks, etc.
