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Garageband's Influence In The Music Classroom

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GarageBand has been a huge success for Apple over the last few years for a number of reasons. It is very simple for complete beginners to utilize as a live music recorder/arranger, music composition aide, or podcast creation tool. It visually looks great on the computer screen and has enough depth and resources to keep students, enthusiasts, and even music professionals satisfied as an all in one audio studio.
Student creativity is an important goal for students to who want to get the most out of their musical experience. Not only does GarageBand fill this creative need in the music classroom, but it can also expand into other areas of a child’s education such as creative writing, reading fluency, and presentations.
GarageBand aligns seamlessly …show more content…

In this project, after some minor modifications, I asked middle school orchestra students to investigate the music and time period of JS Bach. Students then make a timeline of their findings. GarageBand is a perfect fit for this type of presentation. After completing the timeline students import pictures of JS Bach plus visuals that represent life in Germany during the 1600’s. Students then open up several real instrument tracks of recordings of Bach’s music to accompany the project. Next students create a script they will use to read and record their voice commentary, then mix it down and save to iTunes. Finally, they will open it in QuickTime resulting in a stand-alone movie that can be uploaded to YouTube or any other movie sharing site. After completing this project my student’s knowledge and ease of use of GarageBand increased by leaps and …show more content…

By all indications GarageBand use by students and teachers alike are just scratching the surface and quickly evolving. In the last twenty years, digital technologies have fundamentally changed music making, music composition and arranging, classroom projects and presentations, sharing, teaching and learning.
While GarageBand for the Mac has been enormously successful, the music app that has recently emerged as a game-changer is GarageBand for the iPad. Why is this significant? Because school districts like Olathe are just now rolling out an iPad initiative to make sure each student has access to on by the 2015-16 school year. The iPad version of GarageBand has all of the capabilities of the desktop based version, but broadens its music possibilities by incorporating touch based instruments and “smart instruments.” These new capabilities allow the user to have a virtual orchestra as his or her fingertips. The GarageBand app is an incredible tool because a user with only minimal music skills can easily create songs, podcasts and other projects. They can then mix, publish, and readily distribute them in a variety of formats. With the continued development and refining of this app, and similar apps that are sure to follow, the potential that lies before us in networked digital media will continue to advance and push the digital limits for years to

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