Music Technology

 After today's class I have a new found respect for DJ's and anyone in that field. I can honestly admit I used to think they would just sit back and press a button much like cruise control, but how wrong I was. James walked us through how to mash up various songs on Ableton and cool techniques we can use along the way. What I love about Ableton is the readily available educational resources they have online for learning the intricate software. Link below: https://learningmusic.ableton.com/make-beats/play-with-beats.html With the interactive software I was able to make my own beat as if I was on the software. Here is the beat I made and me getting experimental with some syncopation. Whats cool about this is that it was on a web browser and not software! Due to tech difficulties I worked with a partner in today's lesson as Ableton was not working on my laptop. My partner Julia imported and incorporated this beat I made in to a little class made remix. (Video in link below) :

This week's class was so much fun as we got to build our own synths with the many Korg synth kits. This was a very creative process as we were learning how to be the masters of creativity within the educational paramenters of the synth kits. Below is a picture of what the kits looked like. These kits included oscillators, split, filter, envelope and synth speaker. (The big bluetooth speaker was not in the kit, my partner and I wanted to be extra louder and thought we would use a speaker upgrade).  With these little bits kits we were able to link an oscillator to a mini keyboard to an envelope and sequencer to create cool and wacky sounds. We learned that an oscillator is how a synth generates it sound. It is a single cycle waveform that is looped to match a specific pitch. An oscillator converts a DC current to an AC current. We also learnt that an envelope is a form of automation within a synthesier to alter the parameters of things such as volume and frequency cut off. My partner

 This class was by far the most challenging class I have experienced in this subject. The world of coding has always been this foreign and scary world to me. We had to lovely tech wizards come in to class today and volunteer their time to shine light on the world of micro bit and coding. This for me was a challenge but a very rewarding one as I can now say I have done coding!! WOO! We learnt how to set up a conductor and a receiver code between two different micor:bits which in its basic form can create a patterned game of repetition/imitation. Games like this is in the classroom are really important as it's another way to learn and can be a way to teach basic forms of music without actually having in-depth musical equipment/instruments. I see the value in using teaching methods like this for the non musical kids doing music at school as it is another way to convey musical concepts with out using the obvious forms of instruments and traditional practices of teaching. With pro's

It is truly amazing how far technology has come in the classroom when comparing it to the technology I used in the classroom during my time as a school music student. Today we learnt how to use Adobe's Premier Rush using film/audio footage from a couple of weeks back. Premier Rush is essentially a way more developed and nature version of the classic iMovie and Windows Movie Maker. This resource was difficult to intially learn and crash course but was definitely worth it. The value in this software sits not in the hands of the students but in the hands of the teacher as you can create fantastic resources for your students with it. You can create interactive audio/film for the student by dubbing alternate pictures, audio and videos over other forms of media. An example of these interactive resources would be transcriptions videos and any task based video.  For my final assignment for this class I am thinking that I will use this great software to create an interactive video of a tran