Beginnings
- amitychin2
- Aug 1, 2023
- 3 min read
With a lovely introduction to Technology in Music Education, accompanied by a nice stroll into Sydney's botanical gardens under the warm sun and clear blue skies, we sat in a circle.
Now I know this may sound ironic with the course named 'Technology in Music Education' that we are introduced to 'touch grass' in the very first thirty minutes of the course. Beginning on the topic of social media, there was a few thoughts that I had gather after discussing with Dr James Humberstone and my classmates.
In this day and age, despite all the cons on social media on an individual's wellbeing, it is definitely hard to get by without being fully aware of what is going around you and the significance of developing social awareness in today's society.
"Instagram is one of the better ones out there, however it is the worst for a teenage girl," James said.
Social media is infamously known for its creepy personalization to ones' demographic and interests, and it is so easy to create this toxic environment for a teenager's life, without one realizing it.
However, a fellow classmate, Ethan had stated that it is actually super hard to promote any type of their work in music without getting on social media.
We were also asked if anyone meditated, and there was a few who regularly did and those who only did it when it was during a stressful periods. The ones who did it regularly admitted that because they did it everyday, when things got busy they discarded it when it was most needed. Lots of us use meditation apps which benefits by guiding us to be more aware of our emotions, helping us destress.
So, technology is great. A fantastic way to engage individuals if we do it correctly.
Personally, I find that the importance of finding time to debrief with working on the tension subconsciously built around my muscles, has helped me be more aware keeping track of not only physical wellbeing, but also mental wellbeing throughout the day. Being aware of this is so important as a teacher, where most of us are constantly running around and using our voices.
As we went back to the classroom, we opened Soundtrap, an audio workstation for creating music and podcasts. Soundtrap offers a enormous selection of pre-recorded soundtracks and backing tracks, and we are also able to create our own midi files with the electric keyboard that connected to the monitors. I had so much fun grasping with the basics of looping music, layering and just creating music.
Automations was also introduced to create interest in music.
The Volume automation allowed us to pull parts of the music in and out (louder/softer) whenever we wanted.
The Sweep automation feature allowed you to change the timbre of different parts, such as muffling the sounds for a super cool effect.
Finally the pan feature allows you to move parts around to the left or right side of the headphones or speakers, giving a really trippy-all-around you effect that you can experiment with.
By the end of the lesson, I had made a short little sound track, and named it 'vibey'. I had spent so much time exploring all the soundtracks the software had to offer, I had ran out a bit of time to create my own quick midi file from the piano. Nevertheless, I had still managed to put together a cool little clip.
Here is my tiny 'vibey' soundtrack:
PS: Please copy URL link into your browser for access to the soundtrack!
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