Building Something New from Somthing Old

 

Guiding Questions:  

• What musics use loops or ostinati?

• How do musicians use loops to explore texture, form, expressivity, and style?

 

Potential Process:

1. Students will explore sample/loop-based songs from their own music. Consider taking a look here for an extensive example of loop-based music.
    

2. Based on their explorations, students will develop a set of strategies for using looping based on how they are used to create texture, form, experssivity, and style. Students will work in small groups to create their own list of strategies and then share them out with the whole class. The teacher can facilliate the students recognizing similar and different strategies on their lists and help the class create a main list of strategies. One such strategy might be: "Loops that fit together well are often in the same key or meter."
    

3. If needed, the teacher will introduce the application, devices, and/or choices that students can engage with for this example. The teacher may want to direct students to loop resources or show students how make their own loops by sampling a song (however, ask students if they have any sampled music as there may be an excellent model in the classroom already). It might also be useful for the teacher to hunt down the stem (or individual instrumental parts) of popular songs. These are often available by the artists by contacting them directly or via stem-based releases. Click here for a list of albums released in stem format.  
    

4. Students will create their own works using loops. The teacher can add specific constraints on the end product, if needed, including: indicating the amount of loops that can be used (or even having all the students use a common set of loops), indicating a specific form or set of forms, or indicating a style that student works should conform to. Be sensitive to the students in your room and only apply such constraints as needed to scaffold learning. Too many constraints can make the experience more like a math problem than a creative endeavor. 
    

5. The teacher may suggest that students use pre-created lyrics or poems to go over the student works, thus allowing students to fit their work to the form of the text. Students might also create their own lyrics to go over the music. 
    

6. Students will upload their work to their portfolios and/or Soundcloud and exchange their works with other students.