The Cells Palette: A Technology-infused Project
“Like many music tech educators, we often design projects in order to teach ourselves a particular technique.”
(Kuhn and Hein, 2021, p. 56)
The idea was to create a creative and pedagogical project relevant to contemporary Australian society, since we are designing it for Australian students. Kuhn and Hein suggest choosing a technique to focus on and identifying its elements in terms of complexity for students, then presenting it in small, manageable steps for them to follow. They also recommend making the project open to customisation. This begins with finding an engaging subgenre and identifying its tropes. They encourage educators to adopt the “student's-eye view” throughout, since a successful project is one in which students feel successful (p. 56). In Electronic Music School, Kuhn and Hein often talk about “joy” and “pride”; this project aims to bring the two together.
I called my project “The Cells Palette.” What this means is that we create cells, place them on a board, screen, or DAW, and then use them skillfully to shape a musical work.
For a start, I should again mention that my background in music is in Kurmanji/Persian traditional music and Western classical music, specialising in classical guitar. I do not have much experience with other genres. I do not even listen to them much and do not know many of the big names or hit songs in popular or electronic music. The same is true of jazz. In Designing a Teacher Model for Popular Music, Peter Dunbar-Hall addresses this issue beautifully:
“Popular music, despite its existence on syllabuses in various forms, is still a problem area for many music teachers. This is due to a number of factors: both the study of popular music styles and methods for teaching them are missing from many tertiary courses; the mainly art music backgrounds of many music teachers act against an understanding of popular music; there is a shortage of critical material in this area to which music teachers can refer; an accepted model for teaching popular music has not yet developed.”
(Dunber-Hall, 2000, p. 16)
Therefore, the first step was to educate myself. I went online and spent days researching and listening to Australian popular musicians across a wide range of genres. The goal was to become familiar with these artists and then identify which of their works had attracted the largest audiences. I then categorised them by genre (again through online research and learning about different popular music genres) and compiled a list of artists and songs in each genre that I personally found more interesting. This was also a great opportunity for me to get to know the society in which I live better.
Here is my initial list:
Progressive/Indie/Alternative Rock:
Tame Impala: The Less I know the Better
Pop Rock:
Hip-hop/Rap:
Electropop:
Tones and I: Dance Monkey and Eyes don’t Lie
EDM:
Pop-punk/Rock-punk:
Tean Jesus and the Jean Teasers: Girl Sports
Amyl and The Sniffers: U Should Not Be Doing That
I found alternative/indie rock particularly interesting, so I narrowed down my options and focused on the first four songs:
I also found a short but very informative overview of the genre on the MasterClass website.
After listening to my selected songs many, many times, I compiled a list of common tropes:
· Guitar-dominant texture
· Poetic and personal lyrics
· Catchy guitar licks
· Electric bass lines that are not overly active
· Guitar chord progressions that are limited in scope but often bold, featuring interesting harmonic shifts
· Drumming that is generally straightforward, with occasional moments of increased complexity
· Melodic material sometimes drawn from the blues scale, modal scales, or fragments of them
· Nothing overly glamorous; music that can be created at home without the need for a professional studio
Project Steps
Step 1: Soundtrap: I found Soundtrap to be an inviting and fun platform. It is web-based, and once you open it, it immediately starts to make sense. This could certainly be done in other DAWs as well, but since most of us have access to a computer and the internet, getting started with Soundtrap is just a click away.
The TECHNIQUE here is to create a few short cells, spread them across the screen like a palette of musical ideas, and then play around with them to shape a song, or at least a section of one.
Step 2: Chord progression: This does not need to be anything super complex. I simply started with C, but then I thought, I want an unconventional shift. So I decided to move to E-flat (flat III) as a surprise!
From this point on, things become very straightforward. Anything you choose can be derived from your chord progression.
Step 3: A short bass line based on your harmony: You can make it rhythmically a little interesting, but not too jumpy or distracting. A few seconds will be enough to create a bass-line cell.
Step 4: A catchy guitar lick: Something either upbeat and rhythmic or built around interesting leaps, so it is easy to remember. (Since this genre is heavily dependent on guitars, I decided to add another guitar melody, but kept it very, very simple and plain. In fact, it is not even really a melody, just a few notes to fill the gaps.)
Step 5: Lyrics: Since the idea was to use poetic and personal lyrics, I chose one of my own poems. I translated an old poem of mine from Persian into English. I wrote it in 2013:
The sun casts itself on the thirsty mountain
A wavering cloud is over the plain
The music of the wind is making me wake
I watch the red bees drinking in the lake
The soldiers are talking in a strange accent
Is there a problem that we did not invent?
An old man with a scar is singing on TV
Reminding me of how I wanted things to be
We wash all the dust of the trip in the rain
Oh, this is the way we forget all the pain
This is by no means a faithful translation. As you can see, I gave it rhyme! Since this is not about how to write a complete song, but rather how to create materials for a song in Soundtrap, even a few lines will be enough.
Step 6: Recording vocals: What is the melody? We already have it! It is our beautiful guitar lick, the idea we spent the most time improvising and developing.
Step 7: Drums: You can either add a Smart Drummer or use the Pattern Beatmaker. As always, the idea is to keep it plain and short.
Step 8: As Dr Brad Fuller says, “Knock yourself out!” Now that you have all the cells lined up, you can start playing around with them: duplicating tracks, copying and pasting them here and there, and so on. A quick right-click on a track will reveal lots of options and ideas.
In terms of structure, since this is a cell-based composition, you can now listen and decide what comes first, what stays, what keeps repeating, and what gets a few bars of rest.
Reflection
Why I think this formula works for students:
· It is based on small cells rather than long sections.
· It is visually straightforward, just as painters can see what they have available on their palette.
· It is a very personal project, since students write a short personal reflection as lyrics.
· It is not intended to create a complete song, but rather materials for a song. That said, it can easily develop into a song, since by the end, students have already created a substantial amount of musical material.
Considerations: Differentiation:
If this is students’ first encounter with a DAW, certain stages may take longer for them. Therefore, teachers should have a realistic understanding of how long the project is likely to take and plan accordingly. While some students may need additional time to complete the basic task, others may be able to create a complete song or even develop a second version. Sharon Green observes this issue in detail in David Bray’s Creating a Musical School. She notes that composition scaffolds such as ours can be “too closed for the more able students”. In the classroom she describes, the teacher addresses this by introducing additional challenges for those students. In fact, the “higher-level questioning and thinking challenges” Green lists are highly relevant to our project:
“What if you changed the major chords to minor and vice versa -what would the effect be on the mood of your piece?
Try changing the type of accompaniment from block to broken chords-what is the effect of the exchange?
What would be the effect of changing the tempo?
Create a lullaby from the chord sequence that you have chosen…”
(Green, 2009, p. 116)
Lastly, this formula can be used for other musical genres as well and should not be limited to just one. Students can follow their own interests and explore different styles. Students from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds may choose to sing in another language or draw on musical traditions beyond Western popular music.
References:
Dunbar-Hall, P. (1993). Designing a teaching model for popular music. International Journal of Music Education, 21, 16–24.
Green, S. (2009). Improving motivation for music at Key Stage 3. In D. Bray (Ed.), Creating a musical school (pp. 95–119). Oxford University Press.
Indie rock music guide: A brief history of indie rock music. (n.d.). MasterClass. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/indie-rock-music-guide
Kuhn, W., & Hein, E. (2021). Electronic music school: A contemporary approach to teaching musical creativity. Oxford University Press.