Justin Francis Music Teacher, Los Nietos School District, Whittier, CA
It has been an incredible adventure to champion the design of a new instrumental program in a district that hasn’t had music offered to their schools. My name is Justin Francis and I am implementing the Korg GEC5 Keyboard Lab as a big part of our District Music Program.
One of the features that really intrigued me was the possibility of using it with technology to bring about greater integration with real world tools like Digital Audio Workstations and Sound Production. Because of the connectivity of the SoundKey Keyboards, we’re able to use the students Chromebooks to interface with them. The keyboards then act as a MIDI Controller for their computer.
While building the design, our team investigated several software companies that pair music education with technology. After some piloting of these programs and experimenting with their features, we landed with Music First Elementary and Music First Classroom. Their web based DAW is perfect for younger students to grasp the tools and explore MIDI sequencing, looping, sound editing, sampling, creating beats, mixing, and sound design. We have offered both a keyboard class during the day as well as a Music Production class after school at all the schools. These classes fill up fast and have had a waitlists due to popularity.
The Keyboard and Music Production Lab offers fourth grade through middle school students a unique opportunity to develop essential music skills while exploring cutting-edge technology. By learning to play keyboards and create music digitally, students enhance their creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration skills, which are valuable in both music and beyond. The program nurtures confidence as students turn their musical ideas into finished works and provides a strong foundation for future endeavors in music, technology, and creative arts.
Soundtree and Korg helped us setup the equipment list and sent us all the gear we needed to get these going and the students are on their way to gain hands-on experience with industry-standard tools to compose, record, edit, and mix original music. Not only did we get a robust keyboard lab with professional sounding instruments and equipment, but we built 3 Recording stations at each school. With these recording interfaces, speakers, mics, and equipment, students can work together on group productions, learning teamwork and creative communication. Currently our Music Production classes are working on their own podcasts that they are scripting, recording, editing, mixing, underscoring, and exporting to post for their schools!
The program is designed to support all skill levels, from beginners to advanced musicians, with lots of room to grow and experiment. As a teacher I enjoy getting to share some of the ideas and tools with my own kids. Soundtree was so kind to send us a gift of a small Drum Machine (Korg KR-11) that can be programmed in many different ways. I brought it home to learn its features and showed my 8-year-old son, Ezekiel, who has always enjoyed playing EVERY sound on our keyboard and exploring combinations of sounds and beats. He was so excited to try it out and loved exploring every feature and every type of beat. He found a way to use it as a tone keyboard and starting figuring out how to play the song from Willy Wonka called “Pure Imagination” (one he has been practicing lately). As he sat there so proud of his discovery and practicing more, I was in awe of the power of these tools and how they can excite and inspire the next generation of musicians toward creativity and excellence. This was a day that made me grateful for what I get to do, bringing a great music technology program to a district that’s never seen it before. Not only are these students getting to experience the joy of music making first hand, but they get to see how music production relates to careers in the music industry, technology and media. Some of these students are already finding they have an untapped passion for music because of these unique tools!
Thank you Ken Greene, Walt Straiton, SoundTree and Korg for your partnership and support as we forge forward with these great tools for music education.
Justin Francis teaches music at Ada S. Nelson Elementary School, Aeolian Elementary School, and Rancho Santa Gertrudes Elementary School in the Los Nietos School District, Whittier, CA. justin_francis@lnsd.net
Kommentare