Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

Before I begin this post about how Apple’s GarageBand can be utilized in an elementary music classroom, I feel it necessary to discuss why you would use this application in your elementary music classroom. I tend to use GarageBand with grades 3 and up because there are more suitable ways for younger students (PreK-grade 2) to create music, like playing Orff instruments, recorders, classroom instruments, or using Sibelius’s Groovy Shapes. However, I have had wonderful success with grades 3 and up using GarageBand in the elementary music classroom to create music. Some might state that using a loop-based program to create music by just having the students click and drag loops to form a song, is not creating music. Well, at least not in the traditional sense where we (as music teachers) learned the basics of music to compose. However, I tend to use GarageBand as a tool to assist students in creating accompaniments to the songs that they compose. That way, I still have the students utilizing the basic music and composition skills that I have taught them, but they think that it is fun or “a blast!” as they wrote in their reflections.

Apple’s GaragBand 1 came out in 2004 for MAC. Apple is currently in its 4th version titled, “GarageBand ‘08.” Apple markets it as “your own personal recording studio — where it’s easy to make a song whether you’re a first-time musician or a seasoned pro.” There are many functions to GarageBand from creating a song, to scoring a movie, to creating a podcast that can be published to your website, to performing with a “Magic GarageBand.” The lesson I share is one I did successfully with my 3rd graders:

Lesson: My 3rd graders study the 50 states every winter, which culminates with a”50 State Fair” at the end of the winter term. During this fair, each student presents various facts about the state that he/she was assigned. To integrate music into this fair, without just singing the Ray Charles’s tune “Fifty Nifty,” we compose our own state songs. Each student composes an 8-measure song using the notes and rhythms that they can play on the recorder. This particular 3rd grade was able to play and read the notes G A B C and D on the recorder. After they composed their song using the freeware Finale Notepad, they then created an accompaniment to their song using GarageBand ‘08. We saved their compositions as MIDI files and clicked and dragged them into GarageBand ‘o8 (Finale Notepad 2008 allows you to save the music as midi files). Once their songs were in GarageBand, they arranged an accompaniment that consisted of bass loops, drum loops, guitar loops, and piano loops. I taught them about the various musical styles and how just throwing any loops on the screen would not always produce a favorable, musical product. After they completed their accompaniments, they played their recorders along with their GarageBand accompaniments. To see and listen to their works, please click here (this might take a minute to load). If you click on the 1st and 2nd grade pages, you will hear their podcasts on Peter and the Wolf and Beethoven, both were created in GarageBand.

When I had the 3rd graders reflect on this project, many of them commented on how fun it was to write a song. Some examples of my 3rd graders’ reflections (they were not edited):

” I think I rote a good song.” “I thought it was fun because I got to compose and I like to compose.” “I love music! I am so happy we get to use grage band in music. It was realy nice to learn how to make a song.” “I think that it was so cool that social studies was in music.”

GarageBand is for MAC only. What do I do if I work on a PC? Music teachers with a PC tell me about Sony Acid Music Studio, is comparable to GarageBand. In addition, James Frankel blogged about Mixcraft from Acoustica, which has an interface very similar to GarageBand. He also wrote an article about how to use mixcraft. Finally, Super Duper Music Looper has been another product that teachers have stated that has been similar to GarageBand and successful in their elementary music classrooms.

GarageBand can do so much more in the classroom. I just gave a snippet of some things that it can do. At NJMEA this past year, TI:ME member Christine DeSimone from Edgar Middle School in Metuchen, NJ, did an excellent session on “GarageBand in The World Music Classroom” where she demonstrated her middle schoolers’ works with World Music. At the TI:ME national conference in Michigan this past year (and the MENC national conference), Carol Broos presented about “Flash, GarageBand, and Movie Scoring” to a room of 100+ music educators. Over the years, James Frankel has presented several excellent sessions on how to utilize GarageBand in the classroom.

This brings my lesson plans/software series to an end (for now). My questions to you are:

1. Have you used any music software to enhance your curriculum?
2. If so, which applications have you used?

3. If not, do you think that you might try to use music software to enhance your music lessons in the future?

If you get a chance, please respond.