As you can see on the dedicated page for my latest collaboration with Luka Lesson, Αγάπη (Agapi) and other kinds of love, we have a national and international tour in progress! In one of the first shows, at the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta, NSW, there are two matinée performances for school students – so I thought maybe some education resources for teaching the music creatively to those students before or after the shows might be important! You can find the most up-to-date information about the tour on Luka’s website. Click here to open the resources in a new tab.
As you can see in the image below, I’ve created three different parts for the kits, for three different age groups. As with most of my music learning resources, the kits include opportunities for listening, score study (in 2 of 3), and analysis, as well as repertoire performance, but the are based on and assessed through creative outputs – compositions/productions by students.
The terms that I’ve used in this version of the kit align somewhat with the NSW syllabus terms, in preparation for the upcoming matinées. But I’ll be making an updated version for the Australian Curriculum later on this year.
The first section – Rapping about history – is based on the title track, Agapi. Designed for mandatory music classes where prior knowledge might be limited, the resource breaks the track down into its component parts and explores the resulting texture.
After studying the title track, students get straight on with creating their own music, using that track as a model. I’ve created 8 loops in the style of Agapi that all go together, so students can experiment with making their own textures, and of course add their own material, too. Here are a few of the loops:
In an effort to make this achievable on any budget, I’ve provided instructions for using these loops in Audacity, Ableton Live, Bandlab, Garageband/Logic Pro, and Soundtrap. I also provide an example of one possible combination of the loops:
I’ve also included assessment items for teachers, so that they know how these activities meet syllabus outcomes (in NSW, at least). There are two more parts to the project, which allow students to further customise the song and make it their own. First, students choose a famous speech like the one by Martin Luther King that we use in Agapi, from the Internet Archive website. Again, I provide an example of my own, downloading Nixon’s announcement of the end of the Vietnam war, and mixing it in with the music:
Finally, I ask students to rap or sing their own line, too. Again, giving an example, I use an AI Song Lyrics generator to get myself started.
The next two activities are aimed at older students. The resources included here I’ve used in my own teaching in high schools here in Australia (while I was on long service leave last year I couldn’t resist doing a bit of voluntary teaching!), and also in a recent collaborative unit that I developed and taught with Luka and lecturers remotely at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.
In the first, I provide lots of information about the soundworlds that I aligned with Luka’s stories in Agapi. The Chaos & Cosmos soundworld which draws on the sci-fi world of Vangelis (lots of synths!), and asks students to create a “pad” to some NASA footage, either with synthesizers or with sustaining acoustic instruments. Here’s a video I make comparing the (paid) Arturia CS-80 emulator with the free TAL NoiseMaker:
In this same project, I show students how I approached the Ancient Greek soundworld, and share scores and parts of some of my writing. And finally I show how I approach the modern Athens soundworld, based around Low Bap Hip-Hop, as well as some of the other sound design approaches that join these worlds together.
In the third resource, Structuring Poetry, Structuring Music, I show how I orchestrate one of Luka’s poems in Agapi (and we’ve actually written an awful lot together, so there are other examples). I explain how the structure of the poem very much dictates the structure of the music, providing videos of both a live performance of one movement and of my original composition in the software Ableton Live, as well as Luka’s poem. Drawing on what students learned in the ”Soundworlds” resource, there is an opportunity to aurally analyse the track, and then to do it again with the full score, seeing whether students spotted all of the motifs and sound design. Here’s one of the other projects Luka and I created as a “standalone” orchestrated poem (content warning – mentioned violence against women).
Next, of course, it’s time for students to create their own music. I provide another poem by Luka, and an audio file, but of course they can also write their own poem, or record a poem by someone else. I provide ideas for working in notation or directly in a DAW.
As I write about these resources, some bits seem less finished to me than others, and I know I’ll keep revising them over the next few months as the show tours (and for when we take it to Athens later in the year!). In the meantime, especially if you teach with them, I’d love to know what you think!
