Shed Studio: Teaching Music Production in Cycles
Bob Habersat Commercial Music Educator, Oak Lawn Community High School, IN
Co-Founder of Shedthemusic
My favorite musical memories from junior high and high school were in basements and garages writing music with my friends. I'd pick up a guitar, feel the music in my fingers, play some power chords, and we'd make up songs together.. It gave me a connection to music that I still feel today and, more importantly, a way to express myself and connect with other people.
Now, I'd been playing guitar since I was five, and it was easy for me to take my musical ideas and turn them into something I could play. But that isn't the case for everyone. I've spent my entire teaching career trying to get students to that same place, finding faster and more efficient ways to build their musical chops so they can be creative with their instruments. While that approach has been incredibly successful for some students, it hasn't worked for everyone.
What if all students could develop the ability to feel music with their fingers and write intuitively without years of study? What if making music was how they developed those skills?
That's what I've been experimenting with in my classroom. In the past, I'd teach drums, bass, chords, and melody in separate units, where students put everything together into a full song at the end of the course. Now I'm taking a different approach.
In Shed Studio, students learn through cycles. Each cycle introduces a little bit about the building blocks of music, and students use that knowledge right away to write songs with others. In the next cycle, they return to those same concepts with more depth. Instead of spending weeks learning individual skills before creating something, students are making music from the beginning and developing their chops along the way.
In the beginning, students write to pre-existing tracks. They remix the lyrics of a familiar pop chorus, like Shake It Off, and write a verse over a type beat inspired by their favorite artist or style. From there, they create their own beats and eventually write and record original songs.
The cycle projects are structured so students can create while learning new skills in an authentic way. For example, when students begin learning to write chord progressions with intention, they explore how the character of individual chords (their qualities) and combinations of chords (chord pairs) can create different moods. Instead of learning these concepts through exercises, they score a short film and focus on the interplay between two chords. They then combine chord pairs into longer progressions that tell a musical story while scoring television commercials. Here’s an example
The other part of the puzzle is giving students instruments that let them turn the music in their heads into something they can actually play. I want them to experience what I felt when I was a kid playing guitar: the connection between hearing a musical idea, feeling it in your fingers, and making it happen in real time.
Shed Studio has its own digital audio workstation (DAW) with performance tools built right in. For example, instead of playing chords on a piano keyboard, students can start by using the number keys on a typing keyboard to trigger entire chords. These also work great with KORG's nanoPAD2, giving students a tactile way to feel the music without needing to know how to play piano.
Students can use the arrow keys to change chord qualities, adjust velocity with their Chromebook trackpad, and even link the chord triggers to bass notes so they can play chords and bass together. What they're left with is an expressive instrument that lets them experiment, improvise, and record their musical ideas with very little practice.
And these aren't meant to be permanent training wheels. As students develop their ears and musical skills, they can move to a full MIDI keyboard like the KORG Keystage, giving them more control over individual notes and how they're played. The goal isn't to replace learning an instrument. It's to give students the experience of making music now and let that experience motivate them to keep learning.
Not all students want to write the same kind of music, either. Most of the students in my current music production class want to make sample-based hip-hop.
When students bring sampled audio into Shed Studio, the app can automatically detect its tempo, key, and chords, then chop the sample and assign the slices to playable pads. Students can flip samples in real time using their typing keyboard or a MIDI pad controller like the KORG nanoPAD2, much like they would on an MPC.
The 808 bass instrument works in a similar way. Students trigger a note with a single key or pad and use the arrow keys to change octaves, jump to fifths, or move up and down by half steps. Without years of musical training, students can start playing and recording bass lines intuitively.
My music production class is very different since I started using Shed Studio and cycles. I see kids working together in practice rooms, using these playable instruments to feel the music in their fingers, just like I did when I was a kid. They're writing songs, expressing themselves, and connecting with the music and with each other.
The quality of their work has increased as well. After just three weeks, I was getting projects that rivaled the final projects students had turned in at the end of the semester in previous years.
I'm also getting students coming in before and after school to work on their film scores, collaborate with others on projects, and email me new ideas they have.
It hasn't just changed my job as a teacher. It's fundamentally changed the culture of my music program.
Try Shed Studio and its cycle-based curriculum: shedthemusic.net/shed-studio
I'll also be leading two sessions of free professional development on songwriting with Music Will, beginning November 17. Teachers will get to experience this methodology themselves and explore ways to bring it into their classrooms.
Bob Habersat is a music educator, curriculum developer, and co-founder of Shedthemusic.com. He is the recipient of the 2026 Mike Kovins TI:ME Teacher of the Year Award and was named a 2025 Yamaha "40 Under 40" music educator. Bob teaches guitar, music technology, and music theory at Oak Lawn Community High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois, where he also sponsors the school's student-run entertainment label- Morning Show Media. He is the author of Fretboard Fundamentals, Rewire Theory, and the Production Through Performance curriculum, and co-author of Electronic Music Elements. Bob presents nationally on songwriting, music technology, and popular music education. www.shedthemusic.net
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