Digital Composition

Our job as music educators is to foster and grow creative minds, and while students crave structure, they need to learn risk-taking as well. I have found that implementing DAW projects throughout my curricular scope and sequence has produced highly capable, free thinking students with musical skills beyond average. Technology not only creates a new venue for creativity, but it provides a stable framework from which they can let creativity fly. This doesn’t happen overnight, but by following a gradual release plan based on teacher-to-class-to-group-to-individual, students will gain the confidence and skills necessary to create high quality music for the real world. The following chapters outline a sequence of lessons that, when implemented over the course of a music program, will  engage your students as well as push them into higher level thinking with real results to share with the world. This book is focused on Garageband software, but most DAWs can operate in similar ways with similar results.  Have fun, and don’t be afraid to learn alongside the students!