For the first week of this new class, we learnt about looping and DAW technology, and how we can use it in our teaching. I have to admit, I was very sceptical at first of looping. DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) technology I understand, it is incredibly useful to be able to record audio and edit it in schools. Take for example, the HSC. Students compose music as part of their music course, and even a simple DAW would allow the students to record their own compositions and edit them, adding simple effects like reverb to help bring their compositions to life. The same would go for recording a piece they are performing. DAW’s would be so useful in schools! If we taught students how to use them then they could do this all themselves, setting them up to be able to understand and work with all aspects of music. This is clearly a good thing.
However, loops I was more sceptical of. I am a composer and so, to me at least, looping technology feels like it takes the ‘composition’ out of composition, stripping it of it’s very essence and creativity and then getting students to work with it. The more I learn in the lecture, and the more I read after class, the more I realised I was wrong. In his overview video on canvas, James says looping allows students to “actively choose the genre they want to work in, [helps them] consider the compatibility of the loops, the texture they want to build, the timbres, the structure of their piece and much more”, and the more I read and experimented with loops the more I saw this to be true.
John Heyworth says in his 2018 study, ‘A study on the impact of a music looping technology intervention upon pre-service generalist teachers’ self-efficacy to teach music in primary schools‘ (page 37), that GarageBand and other looping software helps students “Develop aural skills by exploring, imitating and recognising elements of music including dynamics, pitch and rhythm patterns”. Whilst looping may not be full-blown original composing, it does help them build the aural skills and foundations that then lead to original composition in later years. I imagine this technology being very useful in years 7 and 8, maybe even in late primary education, as they are building those fundamental skills. I know my school didn’t offer composition in their music programs until year 9, and as such this loop based technology would be a great preface.
There’s nothing saying students can’t get more original with their loops too! When I was experimenting with a very simple 16 bar loop in SoundTrap, I realised that I could incorporate self-made loops with the premade ones, a tool that would be a very useful bridge into original composing.
The 3rd instrument (80’s electric ballad) was just some basic chords that I played into a synthesiser, played over the top of a drumkit and a walking bass loop. This was very easy to do and students could learn the fundamentals of composition, as well as basic chordal music theory, from just messing around with this feature! Bars 13-17 were all transposed to different keys (1-12 were in C, 13-14 were in F, 15 was in Dm, 16 was in G to bring it back to C for bar 17), creating a chord progression within in the loops. Again, this could be used to teach basic chordal music theory and expose students to forms like the 12 bar blues.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I love looping technology, or that I would love to use it for advanced level music composition and theory, but I have definitely been convinced of it’s use in earlier grades of music! It can be used to teach so much and lay so many foundations!
That’s the end of my first blog. It was longer than I intended but I got a lot out of this topic!
Hamish Reeves Music 