Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching

What can students understand about music when they can see it, not just hear it?

In this episode of Imagine This, Dylan and Jen sit down with music and fine arts teacher Steven Band to unpack a GarageBand project that gives Grade 6 and 7 students a new way into music. Instead of beginning with years of instrumental practice or dense music theory, students use iPads to explore beats, chord progressions, song structure, recording, and music production.

Steven and Jen share how the project evolved over two years, from an ambitious experiment in recreating pop songs to a more carefully scaffolded experience that starts with the highly visual beat sequencer before moving into chords, recording, and mixing. Along the way, students discover that technology can make music more accessible, but it doesn’t eliminate the need to practice, problem-solve, listen carefully, and develop new skills.

The conversation also explores what happens when students move from simply consuming music to understanding how it is built. Students make mistakes, give each other feedback, remix familiar songs, and begin developing the language to explain why something sounds right, or why it doesn’t. For educators interested in creative technology projects, this episode is also a reminder that you don’t have to build the entire experience at once. Start with a beat, a chord progression, or a single section of a song, and see how far your students want to push it.

About Steven Band
Steven Band is an elementary school teacher at Star of the Sea in Surrey, BC, where he teaches music and fine arts. He holds a Bachelor of Music from UBC and has experience directing both adult and children’s choirs. In his classroom, Steven looks for ways to make music engaging and approachable while still giving students opportunities to develop meaningful technical skills and a deeper understanding of how music works. 

In this episode, you’ll hear:
  • [00:00:33] What can learners understand about music when they can see it?
  • [00:01:27] How a GarageBand music-production project came to life
  • [00:06:34] The original challenge: recreating a familiar song without instruments
  • [00:08:29] Using smart instruments to make chord progressions accessible
  • [00:11:51] Helping students hear the connection between chords, timing, and song structure
  • [00:15:17] What happened when students first got their hands on GarageBand
  • [00:17:41] Why playing virtual drums proved harder than students expected
  • [00:20:37] Do students need to play an instrument to make music?
  • [00:23:09] Music production, experimentation, and the limits of figuring it out yourself
  • [00:26:02] How the project changed the second time around
  • [00:27:47] Level one: using the beat sequencer to understand rhythm and tempo
  • [00:32:55] Why getting something wrong can be an essential part of learning
  • [00:34:00] Covers, arrangements, and making someone else’s song your own
  • [00:38:44] Setting realistic expectations for student-created music
  • [00:40:46] Building songs in layers with guitar, bass, drums, and piano
  • [00:42:38] The “levels” of learning music production in GarageBand
  • [00:45:04] Student collaboration, sharing, and the unique experience of giving audio feedback
  • [00:48:01] Reflection checkpoints and feedback throughout the project
  • [00:51:06] Using checklists and questions to help students work more independently
  • [00:53:44] Choosing songs students love—and figuring out which ones are actually achievable
  • [00:56:39] Why recording becomes the project’s biggest technical challenge
  • [00:59:12] Building technical skills as a foundation for creativity
  • [01:00:57] Advice for music teachers who are apprehensive about trying a project like this
  • [01:05:31] Why you don’t need to teach the entire project to make it worthwhile
  • [01:08:54] Creating an engaging “growth edge” where students want to keep learning
  • [01:11:09] How far could you push music production in your classroom?

Classroom Chronicles articles mentioned:
Resources discussed in this episode:
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Contact Classmate: 
Contact Steven Band: 
  • Email: stevirkel@gmail.com 

Creators and Guests

Host
Dylan Ismail
Dylan Ismail is the host of Imagine This and an Educational Technology Coach with Classmate, a Vancouver based team that helps people in schools succeed with technology through fun, collaborative learning experiences.
Guest
Jen Chen
Jen is an educational technology coach with Classmate who collaborates with teachers to design engaging, creative, and inquiry-driven learning experiences.
Guest
Steven Band
Steven Band is an elementary school teacher at Star of the Sea in Surrey, BC, where he teaches music and fine arts.

What is Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching?

Imagine This is a podcast about what’s possible in classrooms.

Each episode features conversations with teachers who are building meaningful, creative (and sometimes boldly real-world) projects — the kind that help students create work that matters beyond school. From documentary field trips and immersive role-playing games to student-made podcasts and more, we explore ideas that make learning feel alive.

Hosted by Dylan from Classmate — a team that partners with educators to co-create fun, collaborative learning experiences — the show blends reflection and storytelling. Some stories come from classrooms we collaborate in; others come from schools and educators we meet along the way. Each episode includes a teacher interview alongside reflection from the Classmate team on what worked, what surprised us, and what we’re still learning.

This show is for K–12 educators (and really anyone who cares about learning) who want school to feel more meaningful, more imaginative, and more real.

Stephen Band: [00:00:02] If I was in grade five or 6 or 7, I would really enjoy that, even if it didn't quite get to where I thought it was going to get because it's such a window into another world for students that either don't play instruments or don't, even if they do play instruments, they might not be taking theory or understand composing or sound engineering. So I just thought to myself, of all the experiences we could bring to the table, this one, it really interests me.

Dylan Ismail: [00:00:33] Welcome to Imagine This, a podcast about what's possible in classrooms. My name is Dylan Ismail and I'm an edtech coach at Classmate, a team in Vancouver, BC who helps people in schools succeed with technology. On the episode today, we are going to be answering a couple of different questions. One of those questions is what can learners understand about music when they can see it and not just hear it? I'm sitting here with my colleague Jen. Hello, Jen.

[00:01:00] Hello.

Dylan Ismail: [00:01:01] How are you?

Jen Chen: [00:01:02] I'm good.

Dylan Ismail: [00:01:02] Great. And I'm also sitting with Stephen Band. Hi, Stephen.

Jen Chen: [00:01:06] Hi.

Dylan Ismail: [00:01:07] Thanks for being on the podcast today.

Stephen Band: [00:01:08] Oh, thanks for having me.

Jen Chen: [00:01:09] That is his real last name.

Dylan Ismail: [00:01:10] It is now. Stephen is an elementary school teacher at Star of the Sea in Surrey, where he teaches music and fine arts. He has a bachelor's of music from UBC, and he has directed adult choirs as well as children choirs at his school. Thanks again for being on the podcast, Stephen.

Stephen Band: [00:01:26] Thanks again for having me. Glad to be here.

Dylan Ismail: [00:01:27] Okay, great. So we're going to jump into a project that both of you have worked on together. And this was sort of centered around this idea of creating music without instruments. We were using iPads instead. So I'm going to hand it over to you two. How did this project come into being and what did you do? Jen, why don't you kick us off?

Jen Chen: [00:01:49] Sure. Yeah. I've not had this idea, but I've done this before in the past myself or just in GarageBand making very simple covers of pop songs, using the smart instruments to demonstrate just how easy it is to, a, play music, even if you don't know how to play an instrument. And at one point I think it was Carlo on the team who was telling us an idea he had with another music teacher at another school of like having students in their music class create songs, not covers, just like original, just music and then having a library or like a bank of them so that the whole school can use them as background music for other projects. That's next, Stephen, that's what we're going to do. Yeah, that's where it was born. And I was just like, that sounds exactly like the cover stuff I've experimented with. Not that I'm an expert in using GarageBand anyways, but I just had this idea and I kept pitching it to different music teachers. I think one day I just came up to you, Stephen, and I told you this idea and I like I usually do, I just pitched it to a teacher and you bit. Yeah. I was trying to reel you in.

Stephen Band: [02:52] Asking teachers, hey, well, what kind of products are you doing and how would you like to expand in this subject or that subject and what's your interest? So I think we just came to talking with that kind of intro. And then I think just figuring out that you were both a tech person and a music person, that was a surprise to me, but that was exciting. And you also, I think talking about maybe tech and music, but just as it relates to maybe jazz or pop or not just classical music, but also classical music, because that was just part of your training. That was sort of a point of interest, and I just had an interest in doing things a little differently because I wasn't sure how to make music both interesting and engaging, as well as having some technical things that I could teach the students. And then I just had this project of the grade sixes and sevens because I used to be the band teacher. And then when the split into an elective, I was just sort of an open field for me. It was, what do you want to do? And I was like, oh, well, it's not going to be an instrumental performance, obviously, because that's what the other elective is. So what can I do that's engaging? And then I don't even remember how it came up. I think you just were like, I'm a percussionist and I'm a classical musician and I know how to use GarageBand. And, and I was like, oh, I love pop music and I love video game music. And I like to do something that's non-instrumental. And so I think we just sort of fell to talking about that and you're like, this. I have this idea.

Jen Chen: [04:19] It doesn't matter if you're playing an instrument. Everyone listens to music and enjoys listening to music, and this is like our way of catching that category of students who are probably really passionate about music, and it's just a totally different way. Yeah.

Dylan Ismail: [04:32] So can you set the scene for what this class looked like? So you have grade six and seven students. They're coming into the classroom. You put an iPad in front of them. What was the plan?

Stephen Band: [04:43] Yeah, I think that was one of the lessons we learned right away.

Dylan Ismail: [04:47] So the first time the plan was, let's see what happens. Okay, so let's set the scene. You came up with this idea. What was the idea that you were about to do in front of the classroom? What did you want to achieve with this class?

Jen Chen: [05:01] I think our goal was for the grade seven class to, by the end of this, create their own version of a cover of a song that they knew it could just be like, it doesn't even have to be the whole thing. It would just be maybe just the chorus of it in GarageBand. In GarageBand. That's right. Yeah. And understand the very basics of what a chord progression was and how to add a beat to it. And. Sounds simple enough, but that needs to be broken down.

Stephen Band: [05:28] Yeah. We thought, okay, well, let's take a song that you guys know and that you like and that you enjoy, and let's try to remake a part of it, at least in GarageBand. See how well we can do that. Can you understand how to build a few levels of it? Because obviously there's a lot of mixing in a song. There's a lot of different parts of the sound production, but can we just cut it down to like maybe 3 or 4 instruments in GarageBand and a song that you like, and can you make the course or can you make a verse?

Jen Chen: [05:58] Yeah. Can you understand the structure of what a song is?

Dylan Ismail: [06:01] So students are going to come into this. They were going to explore a song that they knew and then recreate it in GarageBand. For some of our listeners who might not know anything about GarageBand, what is the layout of GarageBand like? What were you using? Garageband is an app on the iPad has lots of different parts. So where did you go first? Did you go into instruments? Did you go into recording tracks? Were they like singing into their iPads? How did this work?

Jen Chen: [06:27] Yeah, I the first time they had the iPads in front of them, the activity we did was we played a song and I think we played like I'm Yours, which I really thought that everyone would know.

Dylan Ismail: [06:39] And by Jason Mraz.

Jen Chen: [06:41] Yeah, yeah, I'm Yours by Jason Mraz. Typically when you're learning an instrument like guitar or ukulele, like that's the song that they use because the chord progressions is super simple. And I actually think, Stephen, you used that song to teach the ukulele, which.

Stephen Band: [06:54] Is why we tried to use it because you played in grade five with ukulele. I'm like, we did this.

Jen Chen: [06:56] So it's funny because we were like, do you guys know this song? They're like, no, Stephen's like, yes, you do know that song.

Stephen Band: [07:02] They're like, that was two years ago. I don't remember that.

Jen Chen: [07:04] Yeah. And so we played a song, but then we had the chord sheet pulled up. So we had a chord chart, which tells you what chords happen when. I think maybe I demoed it first, which was okay, using just one of the smart instruments on GarageBand, which is a feature where like, personally, I don't play guitar, right? I don't play bass. I don't necessarily know what those chords look like, but on GarageBand, when you're using a smart instrument and I actually have it in front of me, it just tells you the chords. It's got strings, yes, but it just has chords in front.

Stephen Band: [07:35] Of you on the top.

Jen Chen: [07:36] So if I need to know, like I need to play a C chord, do you want me to strum it? Yeah. So like I have a C chord here. I'm not actually doing anything other than tapping.

Stephen Band: [07:47] Yeah, you're not holding the frets down in the appropriate place.

Jen Chen: [07:49] And then G and then A minor and then F, but I'm just tapping these like letters.

Stephen Band: [07:53] Yeah. We have the chord chart up there and say, okay, I've got the key written on it. This is in the key of C, and then right away everyone has to go up to their system settings wheel and say, okay, here are all the keys that we can choose from that this key, this song is in C, and that'll change all the the smart guitar settings so that you can play most of the chords that are in that, in that scale. And that way you've already made things so much easier for yourself because I think that's something that Jen sort of knew as, because she'd used GarageBand a bit before that I didn't know because I would have thought, oh, man, if you use just the actual guitar setting where you're playing a real guitar, it's.

Dylan Ismail: [08:30] Yeah, I mean, it's easier to play a real guitar than it is to make your fingers do a chord on the iPad screen.

Jen Chen: [08:36] And for this, I think we would like acknowledge that there were different keys that you could change in the settings, but we were like, hey, when you look at a chord sheet, it'll tell you the key signature it's in or like the it'll say up top, like this is in C major. And if it's set to that, then you don't have to worry about it. But acknowledge that this is how music works. There are lots of conversations behind the scenes, like Stephen and I were meeting every week in between all these sessions and reminding ourselves, oh, we don't actually have to teach this. If we were attempting to teach all this music theory, like we caught ourselves talking about it and then being like, we don't, we can't do this. We have 45 minutes.

Dylan Ismail: [09:12] Was chord progressions kind of like an example of that?

Jen Chen: [09:14] Yeah, yeah. That they needed to understand. Right, right. But they didn't necessarily need to know all of the background behind.

Dylan Ismail: [09:21] You know, how a chord is formed.

Jen Chen: [09:23] Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the different versions of a chord and even like why it changes based on is it a C major versus C minor? Is it in a different key? But yeah, that's how it started with lots of demoing. And then we handed out the iPads, put headphones on all of them. Yeah, I remember this now. We played the music on the speakers, but they had their headphones like one on, one off their ear, and they were playing along with just the smart instruments. Nothing was being recorded. It was just a play along to get them to understand the okay, the timing, like when am I switching from this C chord to like a G chord?

Stephen Band: [09:56] Trying to get them to hear that what's going on on the iPad is related to what's happening in the song. So if you hit the wrong chord, it should be pretty obvious that you're not doing what's on the lead sheet, but also it sounds really off. So I can't remember if it was. I think we did do a Harry Styles song. We did a Taylor Swift song.

Jen Chen: [10:17] Yeah, maybe. I think the first year we did like a Taylor Swift song next, just songs that they would recognize.

Stephen Band: [10:22] One of them.

Jen Chen: [10:22] It was Love Story. It was that one, Love Story.

Stephen Band: [10:24] And I think as it I don't know if it was as it was her. Yeah, I think it was as it was. Harry. There was another one. Because a few of them and yeah, some of the students were not entirely sure right away. They're like, I don't understand how this is related. And I'm stuck. They might just be playing along with the rest of the class, but their one chord behind or their one chord off and they don't know it. And so yeah, part of that was, I guess, the bridge between here's what it looks like, or here's what the structure is. But can you recognize that by hearing it? And can you feel the timing of it when you change your chord, even if you're not technically counting 4 or 8, because that was another part of it. Eventually we had to talk about basic interface, like, here's where this division of time is. You've got eight numbers at the top, which is a musician. You'd say those are eight measures or eight bars. And we say that, okay, these are eight measures or bars. But basically it's a lot of it is just a very technical like you have to drag the tracker to the left and you have to hit the record button and you wait for the four clicks of intro, and then you start and you have to match your timing so that the chord change is equal, so that you get equal time for each one. And so a lot of that, it can be a little confusing, but when you sort of bounce it off what you're hearing, it can, I think, help for some of the students.

Jen Chen: [11:46] Yeah. The nice thing up here in GarageBand, when you start recording, it moves this playhead from 1 to 8. And that's how we use it, that's what we used to simply explain like different measures and bars and time signature. Right, right. Most songs that we chose purposely obviously were in four over four time, which just means in most pop songs, or the ones that we tried to choose was every two bars, a chord would change, right? And that was that. I think that's when it started clicking for them because I'm like, now we're just, it's just math, right? You're waiting, you're counting. You're counting to four, two times. And then you go from the C chord to the G chord. And then after two bars, G chord to the A minor. And then the more we explained it, I think it started clicking because they would hear, this is the whole question of seeing music, not just hearing music. And one of my big hopes was they go home and start listening to music on their phones or their iPads and start recognizing, oh, look like things are changing. And I kind of understand how that's working.

Dylan Ismail: [12:47] I want to take a step back here for a second. So when you first ran this, Stephen, in the class, what was going through your mind when you were watching this sort of this sort of process happening where kids were falling around or following along with the chord progression on an iPad, basically getting to this point where they're playing along way quicker than they would with maybe like a ukulele or like a piano or something like that. What were you thinking in that moment?

Stephen Band: [13:12] I find the tech part less approachable for me, just because I have less experience with GarageBand, so I was a little bit nervous. I didn't know how that was going to go, but I was glad to see that once there was a little bit more understanding of how the interface worked, it seemed to be very approachable for them, and I thought that had potential in terms of projects. And the fact that the music was enjoyable and they were interested in it, I thought was really positive. And I think there was definitely a certain amount of energy from them at the beginning that was just really, really excited.

Jen Chen: [13:48] Super excited.

Stephen Band: [13:49] To move on from what I was doing. Immediately, immediately they're like, this is cool and I enjoy this and can you stop talking to me about it so I can do it myself?

Dylan Ismail: [14:00] Got it.

Stephen Band: [14:00] Yeah.

Dylan Ismail: [14:00] Okay.

Jen Chen: [14:01] So they were itching. Like we could see like you could just try it. Can we just try it?

Dylan Ismail: [14:05] You showed them what was possible and then they were like, go away. Yeah, yeah. I now want to do this on my own. Okay. I mean, that's a good sign. Yeah. So what happened? What did you do? Did you let them loose? Did you say do ten more songs?

Stephen Band: [14:17] Definitely the first class. Yeah, there was I maybe even the second. We were like, okay, well, let's after we've spent a little bit of time trying to explain the technical aspects, let's give you some time to mess around because it was just they were kind of burning. They were itching to, to,to do something they didn't want to. To a certain extent, they're like, I can't even focus on what you're saying because I'm so excited to try this. And I think that also, this is the first year and the second year kind of informed how we wanted to try and shape the units because knowing where the interest lies, but then also what the pitfalls would be helped to make, try to shape how the unit would go so that it would be a little bit more smooth because that was besides this cord, the smart instrument feature, the thing that was really exciting was, was the percussion one, the beatmaker. And the live drum kit set was like a huge hit. They were like, oh my goodness, this live drum kit. We really want to try and experiment because obviously it's any kid that sees a live drum kit is gonna. I have several in the music room and everybody goes to it right away. It's so accessible. But after again, after a little period of initial experimentation, things kind of stalled because again, it's easier to play the real drums than it is to play drums on the iPad. If you know how to play.

Stephen Band: [15:36] The drums, you're like, oh, well, yes. Which is why we chose the smart instruments in order to say, well, if you were playing the piano on the iPad, that would be very, very difficult even if you were a pianist. So the smart instrument helps you and the beat sequencer on it was also something that was useful because it helped to visually show, okay, here's a time subdivision in 4 or 8 or whatever, and you can create a beat with different instruments and different kinds of kits, but it will still be able to sync up with a chord progression, which is the foundation of a song. But if you were to try and record using the live drum thing, it's so hard to make that sync up. And I think that was something that Jen right away was like, okay, so guys, do you want to try it?

Jen Chen: [16:22] That was a challenge. The funniest part of all this was as I'm going through and this may be at this point, it's probably the second lesson, like the second time I'm back and now we are starting to record, right. So after you record one instrument with some of the chord progressions, a couple of instruments, you want to add a beat, right? You may not start with one, you eventually need to add one in, but if you don't play the drums, it seems like it would be easy to add in a beat what you hear in your head, and then when you start playing it, you realize it's harder. And the beat sequencer is such a good tool for that because it's very visual. It just looks like a giant board of tiles and you're tapping on each tile. I mean, I'm going to open it up right here. And even if you just like, like I'm not doing, I'm just making art at this point and you can kind of hear there's a beat happening. There's a beat happening no matter what, because it's going in four over four time. And we're trying to explain this to the students, but all they wanted to try, all they cared about was not the beat sequencer, but the acoustic drum setting right in GarageBand.

Dylan Ismail: [17:21] Because it looks like a drum kit.

Jen Chen: [17:22] Yeah. And now they are all sitting behind a drum set, right? And they were like, can we add a beat? Can we add a beat like through there? Yeah. And they kept asking to use that instead of the beat sequencer. And so finally I was like, okay, I regathered all of them. And I said, who wants to add a beat to this song that we're creating with the kit and every hand shot up. So I chose one of the students. I put it in front of him and we played the song, the chord progression we were doing. And pretty quickly he realized, oh, I don't know how to play the drums, which is totally fair.

Stephen Band: [17:54] Yeah, but even trying to recreate a very simple version of a kit beat while the song is playing live, it's really hard to stay.

Dylan Ismail: [18:01] It's a hard place to go.

Stephen Band: [18:02] It's a hard place.

Dylan Ismail: [18:03] For the first time. There's an interesting mix of being able to play a real instrument and GarageBand, because GarageBand gives you access to so many different sounds and instruments and an easy way to produce music. But I think knowing music or knowing some sort of music theory or having experience with an instrument like Jen, in your case, being a drummer, coming back to GarageBand with that knowledge, you can then use some of those tools with a little bit more expertise. So I'm wondering, like from the students perspective, was there any, was there any sort of connection that they were making to be like, oh, maybe I should pick up this instrument so that I can now come back to GarageBand and use this a little bit more proficiently. Like, how are they thinking about the connection to real instruments when they were using GarageBand?

Stephen Band: [18:48] Yeah, I'm not sure that. Yeah, I think the connection was more about being familiar with a piece of music or a song that they liked or enjoyed or, or I'm gonna ask the next class. Can we do this song? Can we do this song? Which I think eventually we just made up a pole or whatever. Here's an assignment, a Google doc, where you can just add songs that you think that we should do. Because I think that's what was exciting for them, is I wonder how I can do this song or this song or that song. But in terms of relating to an acoustic instrument, there definitely were students that had a background in piano or I don't know if it was, it was theory, but maybe electric guitar. And you could tell that when they were either trying to pick a setting of what kind of instrument they wanted, or when they were trying to record, they had a better understanding of how to switch between chords or how to sync up with the metronome so it was a little bit more regular. But yeah, I don't know if they were necessarily like cross-pollinating with that experience, I think it was more just like expanding different songs and different pieces of music they enjoyed on that actual app itself.

Jen Chen: [19:59] Yeah, I think that was the whole point too, which was like, you don't even have to learn an instrument like a physical one to be able to make music. And then Stephen and I would explain to the class, like, there are lots of DJ's, there are lots of producers, lots of people in the music industry who don't necessarily play an actual instrument. They just really understand music production, music theory, and using digital tools. And I don't know, that could be you for fun at least. You don't actually have to be able to pick up an electric guitar and shred away on a solo, or play the drums to make a cool sounding beat, because you have the tools in front of you to do that.

Dylan Ismail: [20:35] I mean, I think pop music right now is maybe this has always been the case, but the music producer now seems like more of the musician these days because they're taking music from different places. They're taking samples, they're taking digital instruments and they're creating music that is fully their creation, but they didn't necessarily play all of the instruments. They're taking it kind of from all over the place. Right? So I wonder, do you feel like you were teaching music production more than you were teaching music theory or music playing?

Stephen Band: [21:10] I think that sometimes the enthusiasm or the excitement that got brought to the table right away from students and even from me and probably you too, Jen, is just this idea of putting together playing music and, and then producing a writing music. And it's very heady. It's like, wow, this is amazing. But I think that, and this will probably continue the more that we do it, that the process of making the music, it requires a little bit of a different perspective where I actually do, I feel like it is similar to, to video games in the sense that sometimes it can be really exciting to play a new video game, but when you understand that you have to practice it, or that you have to understand how the producer or the developer wanted it to be played and what the rules are. And then it actually becomes more similar to a real life skill development, because you just have to understand the thing for what it is and try to adapt yourself to that understanding and to practice or to develop your skill. And I think once that happens for the students, that's when we really, as educators have to refine and refine and refine our unit or our sequence, because there's all these challenges or these difficulties or gaps in understanding where they'll go, oh, but now how do I get to this? How do I get to this next stage? Because the experimenting will take me so far, but then I'll reach a limit. And how do I go past that limit if I don't have a lot of previous expertise or experience in playing a musical instrument?

Dylan Ismail: [22:43] So this is where that kind of question we asked at the beginning is, like, you had an experience where students were able to experiment, and that experimentation got them to a certain place, And now it's time. Okay, here's where we're going to teach a little bit of theory so that you can jump into the next level of GarageBand. Is that kind of what I'm hearing? Yeah, yeah, that's really interesting. I've never really thought about GarageBand as like a, I mean, I'm just going to say it as a video game because now you have this place where they can kind of experiment, play these different things. And then the leveling up is basically just like adding more music theory to their repertoire so that they can do something else. How did this play out the second time that you ran this class?

Jen Chen: [23:28] Yeah. That was this past school year. Yeah. We started talking like in September rather than I think it was April the last time. Yeah. And the first thing that we knew that we had to change was the. Before we even get to chord progressions, before we get to any of that, we had to show them the beat sequencer, right? All they wanted to do last year was to make a beat, to play the drums. And we were like, that's actually a great intro into like the little bit of music theory we were gonna have to teach anyways, which, which was talking about time signature and tempo and things like that and how different songs this year we would like play different songs of different tempos and be like, these are the same chord progressions. It's actually technically the same beat. They sound like completely different songs. Why? Because it's a different speed. One goes from like a pop song that you can dance to, to like a ballad. And so that was the first change we made. We, I think we did like multiple lessons on just drums and the beat and how that changes the category of music you're listening to, how that changes the genre. Yeah. And we listened to a lot more music, and we played along and recreated the beats to certain songs, because if you're on beat sequencer on GarageBand, if you just create a basic drum beat like a rock beat, but you just change the tempo, it sounds like a different song. And that's what we did. You change it all the way up like you move the metronome, you move the BPM to like 180.

Dylan Ismail: [24:56] You got some drum and bass.

Jen Chen: [24:58] And yeah, now you've got like, you're listening to this music at a party and you're jumping up and down.

Stephen Band: [25:03] Electro pop or it's.

Jen Chen: [25:04] Like. Exactly. Yeah. Then you slow it down, you bring it to like 75 beats per minute and it's like, oh, this is.

Stephen Band: [25:10] Like.

Jen Chen: [25:11] Soul. Exactly. Exactly.

Dylan Ismail: [25:13] And so level one became beat sequencing.

Jen Chen: [25:16] Yeah. Yeah. Rather than making them ask us for it, we were like, here it is straight up. Then you're almost tired of it. By the end of it, they're like, okay, now we can move on.

Stephen Band: [25:24] Yeah. Well, part of it is it's very exciting because it's, I guess percussion just, it's a very, it has a very sort of like primal energy or feelings. Everybody wants to jump into that.

Jen Chen: [25:33] Yeah, I'm biased, but like, I agree.

Stephen Band: [25:35] And it's and everybody loves it and they want to get into it. And so I think Jen and I thought, well, that's going to happen anyways. Yeah. So let's make a unit.

Jen Chen: [25:42] Lean into it.

Stephen Band: [25:42] Let's get into it. And then a lot of it is just trying to associate basic basic skills with technical terms, which is again, something I'm sure we're fine, but when you say tempo, they should know, okay, in my settings, here's the metronome and here's my drag and here's what it does. If I increase the tempo or if I decrease the tempo and how it changes the character so that they know. And even things like if you're a musician and you practice your instrument, everybody always practices slow and everybody always hates practicing slow. It's so boring. But practicing slower is harder than practicing fast. It's way harder because you have to think about what you're doing. You can't just run on autopilot because autopilot runs on the default metronome setting in your brain. So if you change the metronome setting, it totally changes how you experience the music and that it's a rewiring thing, which is why practice is so amazing. But if you're going to say, okay, let's create a beat here. If you want to line up your recording process, you have to. If you bring the tempo down, it makes it easier. And it also helps you to. And then when you scroll back up, then you can decide exactly where it sits that you like that is enjoyable. And then once and then again, because the next step, which is putting chords in, is also technically very mathematical, but if you have an understanding and the visual of the beat sequencer, which is. Yeah, exactly. It's a colored grid and it's in sections of eight or sections of four or sections of 16. You can change that.

Dylan Ismail: [27:03] And it's very pattern oriented. It is. You're putting in patterns, you're adding, you're trying to make the patterns repeat.

Stephen Band: [27:09] Yeah. And I think that was one of the things we said in trying to describe it. I don't know, actually, maybe I think, you know what, it was something that I wanted to do for next year. Say, when you our first job is we're going to create a beat that is eight measures long or 16 measures long. But I think maybe I didn't do it this year, but next year is, say every four has to be different because sometimes it's easy to create something that's two measures long and then just loop it right. And that's great if you can do that. But to add another level to it, because almost as a drummer, Jen would know, but even as a producer and engineer, you're always adding these little slight variations to increase interest or to keep it fresh as you move from one section of the song to the other. So having them understand how to put that in is also another. But anyways, it just gives you a mathematical basis, if you understand how that works, the beat sequencer does more work for you than even the smart cards does. And having an understanding of that, now you've got the drum heebie jeebies out of you, and you have a little bit of an understanding of tempo and of mathematical subdivision. So when you move on to chords, it should be a little bit less to bite off.

Jen Chen: [28:19] Yeah. And I think I did this this year, which maybe is just a fun part for me is.

Dylan Ismail: [28:24] As the resident percussionist.

Jen Chen: [28:26] I would pull up the drum kit option on here, like the acoustic drums, and I'll play a beat there. And I really enjoy using the acoustic kit on the iPad. I've actually used it in settings before in my music life if I don't have a kit in front of me. I'm trying to explain how I would play something and I just pull it up on my phone or my iPad and just have an idea. And so I would play that for them and they're like, that's so cool. I want to do it. Give out the iPads, opened up the kit and I'm like, great, now just play a beat very quickly. They're like, wait, how did you do that? How come I can't do that? And they don't know me as a musician. They know me as Jen, right? And the person who comes in and does like tech projects and iPad things. And I'm like, it's hard. I've been practicing longer than you've been alive, so I have an easier way for you to do this. And then we transition them into the beat sequencer. And then that makes way more sense because it's just very visual and it's very mathematical. You're like, these light blue blocks, that's your high hat, you know, this purple block, that's your snare. That's what you're starting to hear. As we start to demonstrate it, they hear it and then we let them experiment. So much of this project is just like a little bit of introduction and talking and explanation. And then as much time as we can give them, explore, make mistakes, make something that sounds wrong, and then ask how to make it sound right.

Stephen Band: [29:42] And then circle back around and say, well, we talked about this last week, our intro, but now you've tried it. And so what is it that you find challenging? Or what is it that you feel that you need to understand more? And having tried it, they'll go, oh, okay, you explained that, but I didn't really get that.

Jen Chen: [30:00] But now you re-explain it. Yeah. And, and there's some context now because they've tried it and it's in front of them and then it starts to click. Stephen and I are just like circulating, like walking around. We had an EA this year in that class particularly, who also has a bit of a music background. He plays guitar and he's played with groups before. So it was super helpful having him in there as well. And so yeah.

Dylan Ismail: [30:21] So getting something wrong and feeling why it's wrong was really important.

Jen Chen: [30:25] Way. Yeah. Way more important than us telling them why it might go wrong.

Stephen Band: [30:28] Right? Yeah. And also just the concept of these building blocks are it's so easy to listen to a finished piece, something that's obviously gone through countless hours of production and post-production and just be like, oh, yeah, I could do that. But any, but any isolated part of it. Most people probably could do it if you gave them a little bit of an intro, but it's.

Dylan Ismail: [30:51] I mean, that's the magic of a lot of art, right? It seems so obvious and simple when it's finished. Yeah. But the process is always the part that we have to struggle with.

Stephen Band: [31:01] But also the person who's created it has designed it so that the listener will have that experience. Exactly. They're like, oh, I want you to sit and listen to this and feel this or think about this. And I have to do so much background stuff before you come to the table and put your headphones on. And that's never I mean, it is like Foley art in that sense, where you see Foley art as you go, oh my goodness. But when you watch a movie, you never think about it at all.

Dylan Ismail: [31:26] This is reminding me of something. I'm going to pitch an idea to you right now. Yeah. For this project, maybe in the future. My daughter is really interested in Moana. She's two.

Jen Chen: [31:36] As we all are.

Dylan Ismail: [31:37] ABut Moana just came out with a live action version of Moana. So we've been listening to the new soundtrack, which is the same songs as the first Moana, but rerecorded by new people, new voices, new singers. The arrangements are almost the same, but they are different. So I wonder how that would sort of apply in the class of listening to the same song, but arranged separately, arranged by different people. And have students sort of experience what it sounds like when the same song is recorded in a different way.

Stephen Band: [32:10] Yeah. Because some songs. Yeah. Like, I don't know, there's Cohen's Hallelujah or something like that where it's just a great example of.

Jen Chen: [32:16] Endless.

Dylan Ismail: [32:17] Even covers. Yeah.

Jen Chen: [32:18] Yeah. And, but like, I think when we, when we start to do this project, this is what we explain what a cover even is. And most students know what a cover is. Some who don't really don't realize they've listened to covers is like a cover is just another artist's take on the original, right? And it, for the most part, will sound like the original, but with their own flair, their own color. And they'll change the instruments. They'll change the arrangement. They'll maybe change the tempo like the speed of it, all of that. And that's what we're trying to get them to be able to do, which is like, choose a song that you like, that you are very familiar with and make it your own.

Stephen Band: [32:54] Yeah. And sometimes that's challenging because when you do it's a bit of an exposure for you. Like you're exposing yourself. If you say, first of all, I like this piece of music, but then if you're saying, I'm going to try and recreate a part of it, but it's impossible to recreate it exactly the way there was a few songs that I actually took off the list because we had we made a bank this lessons learned. Okay, here's 30 or 35 songs that have a very basic beat sequence or metric subdivision and very basic chord progressions compared to some more complex pop songs. We'll use this as a template. If you don't want to make your own song, just try a little bit of one of these. But some of them we had to take off. I think Michael Jackson's song was really big this year, so a lot of them asked for them, and one of them was, I think it was Billie Jean. I think it was Billie Jean. Yeah. Billie Jean, which has a very basic, basic sort of chord, but it's built off of actually 2 or 3. Well, the bass pattern, the.

Jen Chen: [33:47] Discernible bass pattern which gives it that song.

Stephen Band: [33:49] Kit beat.

Jen Chen: [33:50] Like beat. Yeah.

Stephen Band: [33:51] But also the synthesizer is 2 or 3 layers. And it's, it's a chord progression. It just moves up and it moves down, but it doesn't work if you're using smart instruments because the smart instrument can't tell you're changing the chord, but it's not that exact inversion of the chord. So a bunch of them jumped on it. We're gonna do this. And it didn't work at all.

Dylan Ismail: [34:10] So is this that like, is this that tension of, you know, the song is created in a simple manner, but the production of that song is just so complex that.

Stephen Band: [34:20] But also like, you have to look, they have to be able to say, okay, well, I'm going to create my own version of this. It will not sound the way. And then that puts sort of the pressure or the spotlight on you. This is what I think sounds good. And I think that sometimes they want to make it sound exactly the way that it sounds, just so that you can say, oh, I accomplished or I did something that somebody's already done that's successful. Check. But doing something where, okay, here's the chord progression, but I'm going to change the percussion or I'm going to change the beat and I'm going to. And it's not going to sound the same. And I mean, it wouldn't be fair to have three hours of a student's work sound exactly the same as, I don't know, 80 to 100 hours of sound. But that's sometimes can be a little bit off putting. They're like, oh, so it's not going to sound as good. I'm like, yeah, well, it's not, but it's not supposed to.

Jen Chen: [35:07] Yeah. And that's the lesson in itself, which I like. We had that conversation with the class this year. The whole point of this is not to make something that sounds exactly like it, right? This is art that we're creating. Yeah, there's a lot of structure to it and we're teaching you a lot of the theory and like exactly how to do it, but we're only teaching you this so that you can do it in your own way, and you're allowed to make it sound different, and you're allowed to make the mistakes that could turn into what does Bob Ross say? Happy accidents, right? Like if you make a mistake and you're like, but I actually like that. Keep it in there.

Dylan Ismail: [35:38] Yeah, that's really interesting. I've been thinking a lot about inspiration and Jen, in one of the projects that you did with the aquarium, you had Ian Kerr come into the class and he talked about like, consume great art and you will create great art. And so this feels like it's kind of reminiscent of that where they're consuming these songs and they're trying to create something close to it, but it's a process and it's not something that's going to happen in a couple of hours. How do you set them up for disappointment? Do you talk about it a lot in the classroom?

Stephen Band: [36:10] I think that that's been part of the experience of teaching and reformulating the unit, is that we are not expecting it to be disappointing at all because we are enjoying it ourselves. But in order for them to have that experience, they have to be properly set up and led into the experience so that they know what the parameters are. And I think that's something that we're still trying to find ways to explain or to give out, because, I mean, that was part of the, here's creating a beat on the GarageBand actual drum kit as opposed to the beat sequencer. If you try the actual kit, it's fun, but it might not be as fulfilling in the long term. It might not be as much of a learning experience, even though it's really like consuming, so to speak, when you first jump on it. But doing it with the sequencer, even though it seems a bit less cool or less freeing, or you can actually produce something at the end that is evidence of learning. And that is an accomplishment. And I think that's what Jen was saying. That's something we try to talk about when it comes to making a cover and really just a section of it, because actually.

Jen Chen: [37:20] We're not even doing the whole song.

Stephen Band: [37:21] You would think to yourself, which is to be fair, that's even what I. I don't know what you thought, Jen at the beginning. I'm like, oh yeah, three minute song. No problem. We can do that in two classes. It's ridiculous. And now it's like, no, if you can, if you can do.

Jen Chen: [37:33] Just the chorus.

Stephen Band: [37:33] Just a chorus or a verse and a chorus and you can do it in layers, like with smart guitar, smart bass, smart piano, and the beat sequencer, that's pretty good. That's pretty good because it involves a few transitions and it involves what I think is, one of the fundamental cool parts of GarageBand is when you, you, you zoom out and you can see the layers that you've created and you're like, well, that's, it kind of looks like a, like a symphony score. That's what a symphony score looks like. It's this huge long list of, I mean, a symphony would have 15 or 20 or 30 or 40 different instruments. We only have a few. But that is the essence of the composer's view.

Jen Chen: [38:12] But they've created that, right? Like at a minimum, they'll have guitar, bass and drums, and often they will add piano as well. And there are lots of instruments on here that you can choose from, but the very basis they'll have like 3 or 4 and, and it's in different layers, different colors, they all look different. They come in sometimes at different times. But by the end, they had this like at least an eight bar section of a song either that they created, we did give them the option of like, you don't have to make a cover, right? We actually, it would be really cool if you came up with your own chord progression that you like the sound of, and you just then made your own song. That's how it works. Eventually we go in and we show them. This is more of like the music production side of it, of like, now you can adjust the volume of certain things, turning up the drums and bass, or even just turning up the drums for the song versus turning it down versus turning up the piano versus turning up the guitar will change the way your song sounds. And you can do that. Yeah, that stuff is really cool. You can change the reverb and like up the echo and the amount of stuff, like all these things that they got to play around with. They're sliding things up and down, all just a class of music producers, sound engineers.

Dylan Ismail: [39:25] So our level one was beat sequencing. Yeah. Our level two was being able to compose chord progressions. And then level three is taking those chord progressions and maybe applying them to a couple of different instruments.

Jen Chen: [39:37] Yeah, yeah. And that's when they start recording.

Dylan Ismail: [39:39] Got it.

Jen Chen: [39:39] Yeah.

Dylan Ismail: [39:40] And then it sounds like level four is now adding effects or mixing a little bit, changing volume. I'm using the level.

Stephen Band: [39:47] Analogy.

Dylan Ismail: [39:48] Analogy.

Stephen Band: [39:48] Yeah, no, totally.

Dylan Ismail: [39:49] I liked it because I feel like in GarageBand, it's basically you're interacting with a screen. So it kind of feels like maybe there's a little bit of a video game element there. So we've got four levels of the project there. That's really cool. And you got to all four of these levels in the second version of the.

Stephen Band: [40:04] I'm not sure if we got to the mixing one. I think that's one that we wanted to. But not yet. Maybe.

Jen Chen: [40:10] Yeah, maybe. I actually think I did it in the first year.

Stephen Band: [40:13] It was introduced both years. I'm just saying introduced in terms of everyone executing that, yeah, maybe not everyone executed their own mix, their sound mix levels, but that's definitely something that we are including as part of the instruction and the experience. And I mean, even this year, I think there were a couple of students that were experimenting with the voice section or recording, which I didn't even really. I don't even have a sound booth yet, or like a place where they could if they wanted to sing. But I mean, usually for the most part, not everyone is super comfortable singing a recording, but the fact that some of them tried it, I think was really good because that means that they wanted to add more layers to their composition.

Jen Chen: [40:53] Yeah. Because our covers, by the way, they're usually we weren't teaching them how to add the melody line because again, that would involve you needing to know how to play the instrument. And it's funny because the covers I create on GarageBand sounds so different from the ones that Stephen created, because Stephen is a piano player and was able to just like play the bassline that we were talking about through using the piano and changing it to maybe like a bass sound, something that I it would take me a lot longer. And so I just never did. And so the students are hearing, okay, I can hear the song. I can hear the backing tracks. Like I can hear chords but I don't hear the melody. And so how do I add that in? Let me sing it.

Stephen Band: [41:29] I think that's something that's, that's part of the intro that I think we explain it.

Jen Chen: [41:33] Yeah.

Stephen Band: [41:34] That will continue to expand on is like, it's really a pop backing track in the sense that, yeah, you're not, you're missing either the vocals or the saxophone. But if you understand how that is created, that's a big part of the composition process.

Dylan Ismail: [41:51] Was there much collaboration between the students? Like if one person knew how to play piano, were they inviting them over and maybe getting a little piano?

Stephen Band: [41:59] Sometimes they would ask each other for help, I think. But we didn't do anything that was like.

Jen Chen: [42:04] We should encourage that, though, if there are any. So they weren't necessarily handing over their iPad to play on someone else's. But there was a lot of listen to mine, listen to mine. They'd chase us down and be like, listen to my beat or listen to my song. What do you think so far? Do you have any, do you like it or would you make any changes? Which is like seeing them interact.

Stephen Band: [42:21] Oh, see what I did? Look what I did. Look at this.

Jen Chen: [42:23] Seeing them interact in that way was awesome. Because I'd say in the classroom when I'm doing other types of projects, there's less of that.

Dylan Ismail: [42:30] I think like in the podcasting projects that we've done, because it's an audio medium and you're like dealing with time, there's this like need to grab somebody and sit them down and put the headphones on them and be like, I need you to experience this from beginning to end and then give me your feedback. When it comes to visual things, because we kind of take it all in at once that the pressure of feedback just doesn't seem the same as the audio mediums, right? Like, I need your attention and I need you to sit down and I need you to put the headphones on. I need you to listen to it. We're gonna sit in silence while you do that. And then you're going to give me feedback after. Yeah, I really like that. I wonder how we can, like, turn that, how we can change that for other things.

Stephen Band: [43:13] Read a little bit of an unusual feeling, right? Not only.

Dylan Ismail: [43:18] To watch you while you listen to my stuff.

Stephen Band: [43:20] It's a bit unusual of an experience though in the classroom because it's like whatever it is, 30 or 35 students furiously listening.

Dylan Ismail: [43:30] Furious listening.

Stephen Band: [43:31] Right with their headphones on. Right. And then someone like, come over here. Right. And, and they'll just, and they'll just kind of like, they'll stand there and it's just, it's not.

Dylan Ismail: [43:40] It's so good though.

Stephen Band: [43:40] It is good, but it's just, it's so different from what usually goes on in terms.

Jen Chen: [43:45] Of sight like projects.

Stephen Band: [43:46] And it would be a good idea maybe to think of how more collaboration could happen. But that part of it is already definitely really good to see.

Dylan Ismail: [43:56] So thinking about collaboration and this idea of feedback that kind of makes me wonder about like, what were the reflection checkpoints during this project?

Jen Chen: [44:05] You had some, right, Stephen, or you were getting them to add things into Seesaw as a way of checking in with you to check in with them on their progress.

Stephen Band: [44:13] So they were supposed to essentially give a sample of three of their beats. And then at the end, I think I said the 60 seconds of one of the covers. So either just the chorus or just the verse, something like that. But I think actually the reflection process for most of them was just they were submitting stuff all the time, and I was having to look at it on my end and then just go to them in class and say, okay, so this is what you've done so far. And this worked out really well, and you've forgotten to add your bass guitar or like your smart piano was in the wrong key, or I think you forgot to drag your header and start recording at the same time for your beat sequencer and your guitar so they're slightly off or oh, did this song I think has a little bit of a gap between this four measures and this four measures. There's a little bit of a guitar solo or something. And you have to keep including that to measure just a very little bits of feedback or refinement because yeah, I have an assignment to write up that I put on Seesaw and I say, this is what you need to do. And we did go over it many times, but sometimes the points just don't, a lot of it's terminology and, and understanding interface. And so they'll say, yes, okay, this is I'm done. And I'll say, okay, yeah, mostly or like, this is great and this is great and this is great, but we have to add this one point, but getting all of the points I've written down that we went over in the first class or two to sink in, it takes a lot of like recycle, recycle, recycle.

Dylan Ismail: [45:49] I'm thinking about this process that you just lined out, and I wonder if paper and pen is almost like the best thing next to the iPad, because your iPad is the thing that you're creating on, and I wonder if just having like a place to write down notes or write down questions that, that are coming to mind so that they can kind of like keep themselves on track.

Jen Chen: [46:08] They have like, so next to their iPads and their headphones are their chord sheets. And those get reused though. So I don't think we were encouraging them to write on them, but maybe they should, right? Maybe we give them another piece of paper where notes get written down, questions get written down.

Stephen Band: [46:22] A checklist, I think.

Jen Chen: [46:23] Yeah, yeah.

Stephen Band: [46:24] It does end up being a lot of similar questions.

Jen Chen: [46:28] Again, what am I adding now?

Stephen Band: [46:29] Flowchart.

Jen Chen: [46:30] Yeah.

Dylan Ismail: [46:30] So there's yeah, there's two things that are kind of coming to mind. One is obviously like a checklist, like, here's what I've done and here's what needs to happen. Next to that, I wonder if there's just like a spot for like, here's the questions that came up today that I need answered. And I need to just write them down so that next time I'm in class, I know that that's where I was stuck last time. And it's in their words maybe. Yeah.

Jen Chen: [46:52] Or, and they write it down so that they're not putting their hand up and waiting for one of us to come over without progressing.

Dylan Ismail: [46:56] Totally. Yeah.

Jen Chen: [46:57] Yeah. As you can tell, this project is still in its early iteration phase. I don't think it'll ever stop, but every time we do this, Stephen and I have more and more of a plan that we write up, but things are constantly changing. Right. We made this plan before spring break and we were like, okay, we're launching it on this day. And like that first lesson, we rearranged almost like everything again.

Dylan Ismail: [47:20] Sounds like our process of recording.

Jen Chen: [47:21] Our shared doc was constantly just like things added and comments being added in there from both of us. We got to make sure we bring this up because they probably can't progress if they don't know this concept or this skill. Yeah.

Dylan Ismail: [47:37] This is coming back to that kind of idea of like, when do we introduce certain pieces of theory to get them to level up into the next spot? Yeah. Yeah. It's wonderful that this project is continuing to evolve because it does seem like something that it's not going to lose its sparkle. Like you're, you're, you're going to have students being creative, creating music kind of constantly. And they're always going to come up with something kind of amazing.

Jen Chen: [47:57] This was us. Stephen, you sent out a Google form this year to collect what are your favorite songs? What's an all time favorite song that you like? What's your favorite song right now? Because we really want to make sure we're not just being like, make these songs that Stephen and Jen like, because clearly it has aged us because they don't know what we're talking about.

Stephen Band: [48:16] There's like a mid 20 tens block of pop songs and there's like a 80s block. There's just like certain niches and sometimes they're just like, what are any of these?

Jen Chen: [48:24] And I assumed they all knew it. And I'm like, oh no.

Dylan Ismail: [48:27] It's a bit of music history that needs to happen, right?

Jen Chen: [48:30] Yeah, yeah. But then we have to vet those songs because oftentimes they'll, they'll submit. They're like, this is my favorite song right now. And we were like, that's great. But this song is hard to replicate. it's like Billie Jean. Right? Or the key signature is something that changes.

Stephen Band: [48:44] Or sometimes they'll. Okay, this is my favorite video game track or this is a soundtrack from my favorite movie or a lot of K-pop. There's a lot of K-pop. And so there's all kinds of music that was submitted. But yeah, if it's going to be used as a template, it has to fall under certain criteria so that it can be we.

Jen Chen: [49:01] Have parameters to work with.

Stephen Band: [49:03] And that's sometimes hard to explain because it's like he didn't pick my song and I'm like, I liked your song. I liked all the songs.

Jen Chen: [49:09] You're like, I listened to that song too. Yeah. But I don't think, you know.

Stephen Band: [49:12] It would be challenging to try and recreate.

Dylan Ismail: [49:15] Show it to them at the end and be like, okay, now that you know all this, now you can attempt the song that you like.

Jen Chen: [49:21] Yeah. Stephen and I were going back and forth of, do we ask them for their opinions at all of what songs they like to listen to, or do we not? And we still do. But then. Oh man. I don't think I think we have to sit down and discuss for next year how we're going to do this, because I think that was one of the things that we adjusted. We were like, great, you gave us a huge list of songs. We can maybe use two of them, because two of them actually follow something that they will be able to understand in the beginning.

Stephen Band: [49:45] Yeah. Which is like the mandatory beat sequencer sort of intro. I think we're probably also leaning towards a mandatory X or Y song state measure.

Jen Chen: [49:54] Yeah.

Stephen Band: [49:54] Chorus or verse. Everyone does the same one. And then following that, maybe that can open up to, I'd like to use my own chord progression to make my own song, or I'd like to cover this particular song from the bank that is achievable.

Dylan Ismail: [50:09] Yeah, the thing that I love about how this project has kind of rolled out is that it does really obviously make this connection to like skill development and scaffolding and being able to get students to a point where they can be creative, right? The creativity is something that is within this project, but there is a base that needs to be created first before the flourishing creativity can kind of happen on the outside. And I see how this kind of relates to a lot of the other projects that we run in classrooms where we're trying to get students to a place where they can be creative. So like with Canva, there's so many of these skills when it comes to layering objects or managing a library of graphics, like those are all the things that enable creativity. And that's one of the things that I love about what we do is that the technology that we're putting in front of people is allowing them to express themselves, but they're also learning these like, it doesn't do it for you. It doesn't do it for you. Yeah. It doesn't offload some of those skills to the iPad, right? You still have to learn music theory. It can show you how simple it is to lock things into a certain tempo. Or it could do that for you.

Jen Chen: [51:26] It can make it easier.

Dylan Ismail: [51:27] It's easier, but you still need to have this understanding that it sounds like you've developed with your students. So yeah, it's great. I love listening to how you described this, all because it was inspiring me to bring it to some teachers. Speaking about bringing it to some teachers, Stephen, what would you say to another music teacher who might be apprehensive of running something like this in their class?

Stephen Band: [51:54] Well, I understand that, I'm still apprehensive about it.

Dylan Ismail: [51:56] You're still apprehensive. Great.

Jen Chen: [51:58] Yeah. Every year I'm like, Stephen, are we doing this again?

Dylan Ismail: [52:02] Well, I guess my question about this, what got you over that hump that other music teachers could learn from?

Stephen Band: [52:11] Well, it was an opportunity that I thought to myself, man, if I was in grade five or 6 or 7, I would really I would really enjoy that, even if it didn't quite get to where I thought it was going to get because it's such a window into another world, you know, for students that either don't play instruments or don't even if they do play instruments, they might not be taking theory or understand composing or sound engineering. So I just thought to myself, of all the experiences we could bring to the table, this one, it really interests me. And even if it takes a while to develop, what would be a really excellent introduction? I think even a moderately successful version of it is still a good use of time. And it's still a great experience because it's not something that's in a curriculum or hasn't been done a lot of the time in a lot of different places. You might have to do a bit of extra work to develop something that works for you or that works in general, but because you're doing it yourself, you can really make it fit for what you have. And so I think with the technology that we have at our school, or being at least involved with the music education of these students before they come to me, like that gives me a certain perspective on what I can do with them.

Stephen Band: [53:35] And it might be different for different teachers, but I think it just for me, it harkened back to my interest in music that is always more than just the technical aspect of it. I really enjoyed listening to music. And when I did theory or history in like an RCM setting, it's a lot of focus and work to sort of go through a unit. But your enjoyment of the music that you learned about is so much greater afterwards. So now when I hear any of the pieces that I studied in music theory or history as a kid, now it means so much to me because I put so much work into trying to understand it, which was work. But I think that this process is, so to speak, an opportunity to do that as well. You have to put in a little bit of work or effort as a student, and then also as an educator to try to make what the music is relatable and understandable. But it's very enriching in the long term. And I think because the kind of music that we're dealing with is ubiquitous, it's everywhere anyways, I think it can kind of like be really fruitful or can really enrich your experience of it even moving forward, because that understanding of structure and your time experimenting with it is just, it's such a gift that you can keep on drawing from once you're done.

Dylan Ismail: [55:01] Yeah. Yeah. That's great. I love that you kind of brought out this idea that it helps you appreciate music in a different way. So their ability to listen to music is now impacted, not just being able to create it. They can listen to music and bring out a deeper appreciation, which resonated with me. It reminded me of being in grade five and playing All Star by Smash Mouth. Yeah, on the xylophone, I think that is what we played. But I will say that after that moment, like I had that I mean, that song has never left my brain since then, but the way in which it was broken down in that class, like it still like I held on to that and it gave me that impression of how music was made going forward. And I feel like doing it with the iPad and using GarageBand gives you an even deeper experience than maybe just hitting some high lows.

Jen Chen: [55:56] That just gives you a different perspective of it. Because when you're like playing a song, playing a cover of a song on a xylophone, in a music room, probably an orff instrument is what you're describing. Everyone has a little xylophone in front of them. Yeah. It gives you that perspective of like, oh, this is like an acoustic version of this song. And I recognize the tune, the iPad gives you the production, sorry, the perspective of the production side of it and what that looks like when you're listening to it on your devices. I have a few words for teachers.

Jen Chen: [56:29] This project can be super spread out, but like, you don't have to do this whole thing. There would be so much value if Stephen and I just did the beat sequencer part of it. Like if we just did like two different, like two classes or two weeks worth of making a beat, understanding different beats in a song and how that changes the feel of the song and the genre, or forget the beats, and you just talk about chord progressions and you just like you take any section of this and run it in your in your music class and take over like a couple weeks worth of material in your older grades, right? Your grade, like five, six and seven. And so much of this is part of the core competencies that we're trying to like in every subject in school, get them to achieve, which is the iteration cycle and the problem solving and the collaboration of it all, which is like, so it's happening nonstop in a project like this because they're constantly frustrated and they're constantly overcoming that frustration and asking the right questions or figuring out the questions they need to ask. Oftentimes we go in front of them with their hands up and they're like, I don't know how to ask this. I don't even know what I need to ask, but let me just show you what's not working right. And then you try to help them verbalize the things that they're not understanding. You don't have to do the whole project, do the whole project if you want, but just take a section of it and try to run it in your classroom. That's what we did. The first year was smaller, this year was bigger. Next year might be bigger, might get more precise, doesn't matter. But yeah, that's what I would say.

Stephen Band: [57:56] I think, yeah, what you initially said, oh, Carlos said, hey, wouldn't it be cool if a bank of songs? And I still think that's a great idea and I still think that will happen. But I just think that it's.

Jen Chen: [58:06] That's like the stretch goal, right? Like that's the end goal maybe. Yeah.

Stephen Band: [58:09] It's good to have both ends of it. But the way that it develops as a project is reflects what is working and for students and yeah, it's very the lack of language, right? Like, I don't know what, why does this do that? Sometimes it's literally like.

Jen Chen: [58:25] Why does it sound-

Stephen Band: [58:26] Why does this do that? Or why does it sound like it's just such a like there's it doesn't sound correct. And I want to fix the problem where I want to read it, but I don't even know what to call it. Yeah.

Jen Chen: [58:35] And that's what we want them to learn is like this frustration of learning this new skill and figuring out how to, how to problem solve it.

Dylan Ismail: [58:44] This is this before, but it's like the growth edge, right? It's like, what you know, what you don't know. And that sort of barrier between them is where they're trying, they're constantly jumping over that barrier and okay, I know this part, but I don't know that I need to get some more language so that that growth can kind of expand.

Jen Chen: [59:02] When we talk about the growth edge in an education setting, my mind always goes to music. And I don't know about you as well, Stephen, but like, it's like when you are sure. I've been playing my instrument for decades now, but we're constantly there is a growth edge for you, and then you just need to figure out how to get over that edge. Maybe it's a new piece, maybe it's a new genre you're learning, but you just have to sit down and practice it.

Dylan Ismail: [59:23] I think there's like a huge opportunity with this project to get students to understand that and maybe even apply it outside of their music production, because it is such a visceral experience when you're making music. And I don't know that it is that obvious when they're struggling with writing or a math equation or creating anything else.

Jen Chen: [59:45] Like you're taking that perspective and being like, this kind of feels like this feeling in my gut.

Dylan Ismail: [59:50] It's a great reflection, right?

Stephen Band: [59:51] I think that's what appealed to these ideas so much when Jen first spoke to me, is that's how I felt about the idea of it. I was like, oh, yes, oh, yes. And I wanted that, I thought, oh, well, it's just sometimes hard to find content. What always frustrates me as any kind of teacher or educator in any, on any spectrum or with any subject is how can the content be somewhat inviting or engaging and not just a formula, right? Because that is what's going to drive learning to a certain extent. And I think that's what this is. It's music that's accessible and appealing, and it really grabs you, but not necessarily in a sense where it's just like a cotton candy puff and it just evaporates, like there is still content underneath in there. That's very good, that's even a really high level if you really wanted to push it, but how much do you want to push it? And that's just sort of the question that I think we would want to present to them. How much would you like to push this? How much time do you want to put in? How, what level of understanding do you want to reach? And then we would like to constantly develop the way we present it so that we can really have a tier where we're like, everybody's coming in through here and everybody's going to get to level two or level three, no problem. But if you'd like, there's a lot more depending on how excited you are or how much you want to put work into understanding. And that allows for so many different outcomes. And so yeah, I think having a bank of songs or whatever is an outcome is a great outcome. Or doing covers is. But just overall that scope is exciting and engaging. And that's why I was super excited to jump on that.

Dylan Ismail: [01:01:37] This has been amazing. I want to take the question that you just posed, which was, how far do you want to push this, and invite our listeners to answer that question, because I think this is something that we can bring to you if you have iPads in your school, I think you are capable of doing this. It's just a matter of how far you want to push it. Well, I want to thank both of you again for bringing me through this project, and I'm excited to see where this goes next year.

Jen Chen: [01:02:04] Us too.

Stephen Band: [01:02:04] Yeah, us too.

Dylan Ismail: [01:02:06] Okay. Bye, guys.

Stephen Band: [01:02:08] Thanks for having us, Dylan.

Dylan Ismail: [01:02:09] Thank you. You can find Imagine This on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite Podcatcher. And don't forget to follow the show so you'll get new episodes delivered directly to you every other Tuesday. If you like the show, let us know by leaving a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can even leave us a comment on YouTube as well. You'll also find links to the resources that we mentioned in this episode, as well as links to some of the samples from Stephen's class. He was kind enough to provide us with some examples of how he structures songs in GarageBand. Be sure to also subscribe to our newsletter, The Classroom Chronicles. This episode actually started as volume 93 The Sound of Learning. You'll want to subscribe now because we'll be posting a bunch of new project stories as school starts back up in September. You won't want to miss it. We post new stories every other Thursday during the school year. And finally, you can reach out to us on Instagram @classmates.team. Are you a music teacher who wants access to iPads in your classroom? You should let us know. Our team can actually make that happen in your school. You can either reach out, like I said on Instagram @classmate.team, or send us an email hello@classmate.team. Thanks for listening to the show and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye.