This week, after planning our workshop in much more detail, we were asked to be the first group to present our idea to the rest of the class. This is important as we can ensure that the workshop actually works well and how effective it is in learning music, and have time to iron out any issues we might come across before the actual workshop in two weeks. We can make the plan even more refined by doing this, to make sure we have very minimal issues on the day.
Strengths
Before presenting to the class, we came up with a much more detailed plan compared to last week, testing all of our ideas ourselves on the iPads before writing them down chronologically. First, we planned the drums section, which I would lead. Then, Ellis would lead the melodic and chordal section, and Tom would lead the lyrics and singing part. This means everyone should come out with a successful piece, complete with drums, chords, bass, melody, lyrics and vocals. The lyric part took the most time to plan out as we had many different ideas as to how to go about this to make sure everyone is involved and understands the process of lyric writing. Here is a detailed plan of the workshop:
START
- introduce ourselves and workshop
- do warm-up game (rhythm game)
WORKSHOP
Drums
- give some genre drum beat examples first
- pick “drum machine”
- choose drum sounds
- make drum beat
- press record and record 4 bars (explain where to find four bars)
- go to arrangement view and loop drum beat
Keys
- choose smart keyboard
- pick a sound you like from the keyboards section
- do dice game:
- we put all the chords on the board, each chord having a number
- each student rolls a dice 4 times to determine chords
- students can change rhythm and chord structure but can only use each chord once (if they don’t have duplicates)
- record in chords
Bass
- choose smart bass
- pick a sound you like from the bass selection
- pick notes that relate to the chords (eg if used an em, use a note in the em section)
- find a general melody and rhythm
- record in bassline
Guitar
- choose smart guitar
- pick a sound from guitar selection
- pick notes that relate to chords
- figure out an interesting melody
- record in guitar
Lyrics
- give out lyrics from a popular song and ask to find:
- 3 fave phrases
- repetition
- rhyming
- alliteration
- tom explains how to write lyrics
- tom goes over writing lyrics (we give him and students a word to write about in 3 minutes, make it funny and relaxed)
- tom explains how he wrote the lyrics to that song
- go into writing lyrics, use title references:
- summer
- suspicious
- video
- lesson
- expensive
- forest
- party
- yellow
- background
- bee
- we go round helping students individually until they come up with 6-8 lines
- we help give lyrics a melody and rhythm
- record in on iPad
- if students don’t want to record they can add more melodies
END
- ask students if they want to share their work
- share the work from our group iPad
- do warm down game (drawing music)
THROUGHOUT
- make sure before recording they press triangle and line to bring the recorder back to the first beat
- make sure everything is quantized
- make sure everything is on c major key
- turn volume down on iPads when we are explaining the next steps
- walk around listening to students work whilst they are working on iPads
WHAT WE NEED
- percussion
- paper
- dice
- iPads
- pens
- headphones (in case)
After planning the workshop to its full extent, we then went to present our plan to the rest of the class. Overall, I think the presentation as a whole worked well, and the class came out with some very creative and interesting pieces. The class seemed to enjoy it and find it engaging which is great, and they asked a lot of questions which gave us a challenge. Also, some of our peers played as students with bad behaviour or who were refusing to join in with the lesson, so we had to overcome this to make sure they were involved in the class and weren’t disobedient. If one of the students were misbehaving, we would warn them and try to engage them with the class more like asking questions or making sure they are getting on with the task. A few students were uncomfortable recording their own vocals, so we came up with some solutions to this; another classmate could record them using your lyrics, or you could ask one of the teachers to do the same.
In terms of my own strengths in the workshop, I think I was able to control the class the most. For example, if I needed them to look at the front I would gain their attention by raising my voice a little just so they could hear me, and I would make sure everyone is silent before we moved on. If people were still talking, I would make sure they knew I was ready to speak and that they should finish their conversation. I felt like I was confident and assertive throughout, but kept things positive and fun. When the others were leading the group, I made sure I went around the students to ensure they were getting on with the task and to help them if they were stuck.
Improvements
One thing that was made apparent after the workshop was that the lyric section needs some more planning and time put into it to make it work fully. A lot of the students were confused with the task and didn’t quite understand what they were meant to be doing. To counter this, we simply need to work on this section next week, to make it more understandable. We didn’t have time in the session as we had a short timeframe, but we would have given everyone a lyric sheet to analyse first and played a short writing game with Tom, before sending them off to write their own lyrics; doing this in the final workshop will help the students understand the task more and will give them inspiration for their own work.
An improvement for my own section would be to make certain areas of the drums easier to understand. I could have run a short demo in which the students watched how I would go about making a drum beat. I didn’t give the students and drum beat examples. I could have had some ready in different styles such as dance, reggae, rock, drum and bass etc which would have given them ideas for their own beats. I should have also shown them how to change the sound of the drum pack and what the main elements of a drum beat are (snare, kick, hi-hats). Before this, I could have explained what the drum machine is and how we will use it, how to start and stop the recording, and how to indicate that they have recorded four bars of the beat before they end the recording.
Targets For Next Week
-Work on any issues that we came across during the presentation and fix these before the actual workshop.
-Explain the drum part more (different styles, sounds, how to stop recording).
-Use examples of work that you have made at the front, like making up a melody and showing the class before they go off to make their own.