In the first week of the music technology course, the tutorial began with an overview of the course's objectives and what students can expect to learn. The session also introduced the concept of mindfulness and meditation, emphasising their relevance to music technology. To put theory into practice, we did a 10 minute meditation in the tutorial room. I thought this was lovely and helped us all take a step back and relax. It encouraged a mindful approach to learning and creativity in the context of music technology and in any educator role, or anyone really !!

 We talked about how teaching can be a stressful job and that it's important to put our mental health first. 

I go through waves of mindfulness and health habits. This was a reminder to pick them back up and make it more of a routine. Even after the 10 minutes alone, I felt very relaxed and it made me feel more grounded and ready to learn.

We discussed the dark sides of social media. This was super interesting to hear, as just like everyone else in the world, I have an addiction to social media and my phone. Over the past year I have tried to limit my social media usage and try to use it only for work, but I do cave in (and notice I do this more when I’m having a bad day and need a boost of dopamine).

Something we learned in the tut was that people are drawn to things that evoke sadness, anger, fear. This means that our phone and algorithms are purposefully showing us upsetting things because it knows our brain will come back for more… so you go on your phone to feel better when feeling anxious/sad/bored…it shows you material that is designed to make you feel ever more anxious, sad and angry. And the cycle continues. I read somewhere once that our brains get dopamine from bad things, which is actually what hooks us in. Hearing this material in the tutorial tied in perfectly with this, and now I truly understand how negatively it can impact our mental health.

We also touched on the obvious positives of technology in education. There have become endless opportunities for music creation ,distribution and knowledge due to technology. We looked at Sound trap as an example. Our task was to create a small composition using only Loops on Sound cloud. This showed us how easy it is to get kids, or anyone, to create music without even thinking. It is very encouraging for kids and it is a great tool to use in lessons.  

I’d say the positives of technology outweigh the negatives for sure! 

In the second half of the tutorial, we were exploring ‘Sound Trap’ which I was already pretty familiar with. I really like it because it provides a vast array of pre-recorded soundtracks and backing tracks. We also could craft our own MIDI files using the electric keyboard connected to the monitors. I thoroughly enjoyed diving into the fundamentals of looping music, layering sounds, and simply crafting music, it was a lot more in depth than my prior experience. I was introduced to the volume automation button, the sweep automation and the panning features. 

By the end of the lesson, I had made a short little soundtrack. Our only instruction was to use the loops in sound traps to demonstrate the simplicity of the DAW for school students. I spent most of the lesson exploring all the loops and came up with a pretty cool track ! 

 

Here it is!