Intro

Yesterday, my wife and I went to the theater to see Paul Thomas Anderson's adaptation of Upton Sinclair's "There Will Be Blood" (original title: "Oil"). It was a great movie, but one of the real drivers for me was the terrific soundtrack. At the end of the movie, when the credits ran, to my amazement I found that the soundtrack had been done by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood.

Greenwood is an amazing talent on his own, and one that seems to fit into this week's area of exploration. I have put some of videos related to Greenwood below (take a moment to look at them). In the first video, Greenwood makes the statement, "...it's funny, when you use commercial music software, you feel yourself being led by a certain path of making music, and just end up sounding like every one else. Which doesn't make sense, you should have no limits."

So Week Three is all about expanding our limits. It's a time to explore what we can do to go beyond the traditional boundaries of the classroom and language learning. It's an opportunity to take a peek at the technology behind new sound and new music and how it can be used to create in our classrooms.

Week Three is the beginning of looking at some of the technology and tools we can use as well as the start of application of what we know this far. It's also a time to start thinking about how you plan to use some of this information, about what kinds of projects you wish to engage in your classroom.

I can't make music!

Looking backwards the technology crept in from many places. It came by way of popular music when folk became electric and was ushered by pioneers like Les Paul, creator of the first solid body guitar, and overdubbing, delay effects such as "sound on sound" and tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording; Le'on Theremin, inventor of the theremin, one of the first electronic musical instruments; or people like Elisha Gray, one of the inventors of the telephone and a pioneer in synthesizing sound.

Synthezisers, in many ways, stood the musical world on it's (listening) ears. People like Robert Moog, Micky Dolenz, and Wendy Carlos helped to make electronic music more palatable. Perhaps my personal favorite is Ray Kurzweil, who through his work with electronic music, computers and handicapped students brought electronic music more than ever to the classroom.

It goes without saying, that many people were involved in the metamorphosis and recreation of instruments that had their roots in traditional music but had vines embracing a new, fast, digital technology. It would take us far too much time to introduce them all.

In fact, I am not so sure that the history of the invention of the technology is near so important to us, as the use of such instruments is. New and faster computers allow us to bring electronic instrumentation, creation and engineering into the classroom with a minimum of effort.

So what it comes down to, is convincing the student, and perhaps the instructor, that music can easily be brought to the classroom by the non-musically trained novice. Perhaps part of our task is to find ways to supplement the content of classes with music, to make learning easier and more fun.

So the first person to convince that this can be done, is the instructors themselves. Already, I hear some of you saying, "I can't make music". So let's try a little experiment. Let's visit this page, and see what kind of sounds you can create. Let the page load, and then follow the instructions on the left side. Take moment and do it now.

Now, honestly, can you play music?

This seems like a good place to think about how we can preserve what we create. I think Lee and I agree, that one of the most powerful, creative and free applications that can be used is Audacity.

Lets consider how Audacity functions for moment.

Audacity

Audacity is a free, opensource software for recording and editing s ounds. You can use it to record multitrack compositions. You can just use your voice and hand-clapping or other types of sounds or get as complicated as using multiple voices and instruments. You can use this application to export music as an MP3 file and upload it to the internet to share with others. Or you can burn your creation to a CD or DVD with Audacity.

There are numerous other commercial programs available, but for most people and at least in terms of this class, the free Audacity application will suffice. You will need to download Audacity to your PC or Lap-top and while at it, you will also need to find and download something called the Lame MP3 encoder. This allows you to export your work in MP3 format.

• Download Audacity - You can select either version (Stable 1.2.6 or Beta 1.3.4 - The Beta has been slightly less tested but works quite well. Be sure that you select the version that matches your OS (Windows, MAC, or Linux)
  
• See this free tutorial that will step-by-step, show you how to set up Audacity and get it ready to use. Be sure you follow the pages. There are numerous video tutorials here that will answer just about any question that you may have.
  
• Here is another quick tutorial that Lee wrote that can be found via Lee's MusicBridges Drupal and Webcast Academy.

Now let's look at another tool that you might want to download and start to play with.

Anvil Studio

Anvil Studio is an exclusively Windows tool for creation and recording Midi music.

• An Anvil Studio Tutorial
• Another simple Anvil Tutorial
• You can download another Anvil Tutorial HERE.

• Some thoughts on how to improve the sound of your Anvil produced Midi.

And if you are looking for a tool that is expressly for MAC users"

Apple GarageBand

Apple GarageBand is made exclusively for use on MACs.

• GarageBand Tutorial
• More Music Tutorials for MACs

What Comes Next

• The Thummer

Now we have some tools to work with. Hopefully, we have gone a long way toward convincing you that you can create music to be used in the fashion you see fit in your classroom. If we are really lucky, we have also given you an opportunity to pass on this information to your students. It is the future student that will reap the greatest benefit from learning how to create music from technology.

I'd like to take just a moment now, to look into their future. What kinds of tools will they be using to create with.

One fellow, Jim Plamandon (who we hope to have in a live interactive interview) is creating a new hand-held synthesizer, the Thummer.

Lets look here, and use our keyboards to do a little tune creating.

Can you imagine a whole classroom of these, divided into various functions? Can you imagine the simplified learning curve in learning to play one?

• Hyperscore

The music chart here: "Creepy Raindrops", was conceived by 10 year old, Chelsea OHara, using a software called "Hyperscore".

Click here for a larger version.

Here is the what the piece sounds like as a Midi file:

CreepyRaindrops.mid

and here is the transposed orchestral version:

CreepyRaindropsbyorchestra.mp3

"Hyperscore" comes from the "Hyperscore Project" at MIT MediaLab, a real innovator in combining technology and music. Again, imagine, a whole class creating an opera with such technology.

More tunes from graduates of the Hyperscore Project can be heard at H-Lounge, a commercial outlet for student work.

• Reactable Media

Reactable Media is an open-source based collaborative electronic music instrument with a tabletop tangible multi-touch interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving and rotating physical objects on a luminous round table surface. By moving and relating these objects, representing components of a classic modular synthesizer, users can create complex and dynamic sonic topologies, with generators, filters and modulators, in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.