Music Production

Course Essential Questions

• How do musicians generate creative ideas and make creative decisions?
• How do musicians improve their work and decide it is ready to share?
• How does understanding the structure and context of music inform a response?
• How do the other arts, other disciplines, contexts, and daily life inform creating, performing, and responding to music?

Course Learning Objectives

• Analyze diverse music, observing musical qualities that inspire personal growth as a composer, performer, and listener.
• Use technology to assemble and organize sounds, expressing new creative ideas.
• Design music for specific contexts, demonstrating how the elements of music express their intent.
• Develop interpretations of diverse music, considering the elements of music and the context of style and genre.
• Engage in a personal creative process, using critique to refine the technical and expressive aspects of their music.

Unit 1: Foundations of Digital Sound (Weeks 1-4)

In this unit, students learn how musicians create digital music by representing and manipulating digital sound.

Essential Questions

• How do musicians manipulate digital sounds?
• How do timing, tone, and timbre result in different musical effects?

Week 1: Experiencing Digital Sound

• Apply the rules and policies of the course, and expectations of you as a contributing member of our learning community.
• Build community by sharing important information with your teacher and classmates about yourself and your school.
• Develop your skills for navigating the course environment and using the various course tools.
• Experience digital sounds and share with classmates.

Week 2: Designing Digital Sound

• Use BandLab to create and share a musical idea.
• Explain how digital audio workstations visually represent sounds.
• Use virtual instruments and MIDI to produce digital sounds.

Week 3: Beats and Rhythms

• Use rhythmic sounds to create diverse percussive patterns in a variety of styles.
• Explain how beats and meters organize rhythmic sounds.
• Use tracks and drum machines to create digital rhythms.

Week 4: Instruments and Sounds

• Create a musical idea using diverse instruments and sounds.
• Explain how frequency and timbre impact musical sounds.
• Use tracks and synths to create digital sounds.

Unit 2: Components of Digital Sound (Weeks 5-8)

In this unit, students learn how percussion, melodies, harmonies, bass lines, forms, and effects work together to create cohesive musical works.

Essential Questions

• How do bass lines, chords, and scales work together to create musical ideas?
• How can effects change musical sounds?

Week 5: Bass Lines

• Explain how low-frequency sounds add to musical texture.
• Use tracks, virtual instruments, and synth basses to create and manipulate basslines.
• Balance the role of Bass with Drums to develop cohesive rhythm section sounds.

Week 6: Chords

• Use synth pads to create a piece of music with a chord progression.
• Explain how chord progressions shape musical ideas.
• Use a MIDI editor to develop chords from a bass line.

Week 7: Scales

• Use scales to create a digital melody.
• Explain how scales and keys shape melodic ideas.
• Evaluate and refine bass lines and chord progressions by analyzing scales.

Week 8: Combining Sounds Together

• Use effects to manipulate musical ideas.
• Use musical forms to structure musical ideas.
• Use virtual instruments to create a simple structure from previous musical ideas.

Unit 3: Producing Musical Ideas (Weeks 9-11)

In this unit, students use digital production techniques to emulate a selected song and collaborate to refine their work.

Essential Questions

• How can musical works inspire our own digital interpretations?
• How can sound recordings be incorporated in digital music?
• How can the process of critique help us refine musical ideas?

Week 9: Designing and Drafting the Emulation Project

• Create a digital piece to emulate a selected recorded work.
• Analyze the musical components of a selected recorded work.
• Formulate a plan to recreate the selected work.

Week 10: Collaborating and Refining the Emulation Project

• Critique classmates' emulation projects by making observations about technical and expressive qualities.
• Refine our own emulation projects by responding to critique.
• Utilize resources, including samples, to create the sounds required to emulate a piece.

Week 11: Presenting the Emulation Project

• Present emulation projects to classmates.
• Respond to classmates' projects with thoughtful critiques.
• Reflect and evaluate the attainment of personal creative goals.

Unit 4: Creating Musical Ideas

In this unit, students synthesize their music production skills to create an original musical work.

Essential Questions

• How do musicians combine musical and technical elements to produce original works?
• How do musicians use a creative process and critique to develop original works?
• What choices do musicians make to determine how to share their works?

Week 12: Designing and Drafting the Composition Project

• Plan and draft an original composition.
• Use analog sound, samples, and virtual instruments to develop original ideas.

Week 13: Collaborating and Refining the Composition Project

• Critique classmates' composition projects by making observations about technical and expressive qualities.
• Refine our own composition projects by responding to critique.
• Analyze how effects can enhance original works.

Week 14: Presenting the Composition Project

• Present composition projects to classmates.
• Analyze the musical elements present in classmates' projects.
• Use post-production skills to refine original works.

Week 15: Becoming Reflective Musicians

• Reflect on the ways creative works reveal the knowledge and skills we have built throughout the course.
• Consider personal goals for our future musical endeavors.