We spend so much of our time advising teachers about how to get
their students engaged that occasionally, just to remind ourselves what it’s
like out there on the front line, we commandeer a class for the day and have a
crack at teaching them. So, in the spirit of adventure, we spent the day with a
Year 6 class at Parish Church Primary School in Gainsborough. This time, to
prove we’re not a one-trick Mac-only pony, we had a go at teaching with PCs
with the help of Reason expert, Joe Moretti.
As well as keeping us on our toes, this day in the school gave the
pupils the perfect opportunity to let their imaginations run riot as they got
some hands-on experience with the creative software. To make sure things got off to a rocketing
start, we gave our day an outer space theme - what subject offers more
potential for outlandish storylines, special effects and crazy electro beats?
With this in mind, we set off on our storytelling, music-making extravaganza of
a day! First stop: generating some ideas.
Mind Mapping
To ease into the day, we started by thinking about stories we already
knew that are set in space (popular choices included Star Wars, Dr Who and
Power Rangers). In groups of three, the children were encouraged to create their
own space-based tales. They had total freedom over their ideas and the infinite
realm of space to play with, so the ideas they came up with were pretty
astonishing. They ranged from “Attack of the Ninja Robots!” to “Space has Got
Talent”, featuring Slime-man Cowell, the evil alien judge! After a few minutes,
each of the groups had to pick one idea and make a list of all the main points
in their story. Using this they could get to work on an essential part of any radio
play – their scripts!
Scripting
We got our intergalactic teams thinking about what turns a simple
script into a Hollywood blockbuster by considering all kinds of factors: ‘Is
this episode meant to be part of a series and if so where does the story pick
up from?’, ‘Who are our main characters going to be and what will they sound
like?’, ‘Will our story have a narrator?’, ‘How are we going to build up
suspense?’ and ‘What kind of sound effects do we need and where are they going
to go?’. We were aiming for about two minutes worth of vocal work (roughly two
pages of writing). The pupils worked away at their scripts for half an hour,
although one group was so keen that they took their script with them at
lunchtime and came back with an epic six minute saga!
We were amazed by the pupils’ talent for puns, which seemed to
surpass even our own wordplay-mistress, Jo Eden’s best (or worst, depending on your
point of view) work. You may remember her from such articles as “Net-Working
9-5” and “Living the iLife”…
So, with some dynamite scripts in the bag, it was time for the class
to make some of their very own Hollywood magic: music and sound effects.
Making Music
To make the audio pieces for their radio plays, our pupils used
Propellerhead’s Reason: an all-singing, all-dancing virtual rack of
music-making tools, including synthesizers, samplers, sequencers and mixers. With
a library of thousands of loops and a bank of effects they could apply to them,
the pupils had a huge amount of choice and were able to make sounds that fitted
uniquely into their radio plays. Guided by Joe, who was using a Promethean
whiteboard, the class went through the basics. One of the things he showed them
was “Dr Rex’, a sampler and basic editing tool that always plays loops in time,
regardless of the alterations made. They could warp, stretch, chop, speed up
and slow down the music they liked to fit it in with their scripts, and
everyone seemed to take it in their stride. At one point, Joe even said: “This
was the bit I was worried about getting them to understand - but look: they are
doing it without even being told to!”.
As well as the sound effects, each group had to come up with a short
piece of intro music and an outro – altogether about 30-60 seconds-worth of
audio ready to mix in with their voice recordings.
Recording
The groups had almost everything they needed to make their radio
plays: music, sound effects and killer scripts. All that was left to do was
record their vocals. Using some USB microphones and Audacity (a free audio recording
software programme), Joe set about explaining how to start and stop recording,
and play back captured sound. We’d set aside a room for recording so that
background noise was kept to a minimum, and we brought the teams in one-by-one
to make some astral magic.
Top Tip!
We found that, after a couple of rehearsals, all of the groups had a
bit more confidence when it came to performing their scripts. They made fewer
mistakes when they were recording themselves, so everything ran smoothly (and
quickly!).
They each acted out their scripts and got the chance to listen to the
recordings again, so that they could re-record anything they weren’t happy with.
After a little persuasion and a couple of demonstrations, we showed everyone that
they would be heard clearly and didn’t need to keep their faces right next to
the microphones to have their voices picked up.
When every group was sure they had captured their very best
performances, Joe showed them how to use the Effects library to add character
to the voices. The pupils experimented by highlighting sections of audio and
applying different effects, knowing they could follow the ‘undo’ steps if it
wasn’t quite what they were looking for.
By the end of the day the pupils were particularly adept at ‘seeing’
the audio they had recorded on the screen and picking out the sections that
represented speech – very handy when you’re applying effects to different
voices. The most popular effects of the day included the “Wahwah” and “Phaser”
filters, which gave characters a freakishly alien edge.
Mixing and Burning
Before we knew it, we
were nearing the end of the day and it was time for our final task: to mix the freshly
recorded vocal work with the music created in Reason. Once again, we used
Audacity and Joe showed the class how they could import their work, ready for
mixing. The students had to cut their music to the right size, move it around
to line it up with the recorded audio, and fade in and out at the beginning and
ends to make it sound more polished. Once this was done, everything could be
saved and burned to CD for taking home and showing off to parents!
For more information
on using Reason in the classroom and where to get Audacity, visit our website www.jigsaweducation.com.
Would you like to
host our next teaching day? Get in touch and we’ll send a designer and a
copywriter along to your school to help your students design the perfect
advert! Call us on 0870 730 6936 or email at learning@jigsaw24.com