How the music production program at York started:

The music production program at York High School started in 2006.

My Connection with Music Production

It All Started with GarageBand

I was blown away when I watched Sheryl Crow demonstrate Apple’s GarageBand for the first time in 2004. I knew instantly that this software would revolutionize the way we teach music. I was captivated by the idea that, for the first time, we could teach music in reverse. Students could use this software to create music without any previous understanding of music theory, chords, or any facility on an instrument. Instead, students could simply drag and drop prerecorded loops of sound onto a track to make music. Once students had created a piece, they would be more invested in understanding the mechanics of what they composed and why it sounded good to them—music education in reverse.

Some Called it Button Pushing, Not Music Making

To some, this idea oversimplified the music-making process, and some of my peers scoffed at the notion that this had anything to do with real music creation. I didn’t see it that way. In my mind, the software elegantly demonstrated that students know far more about music than they realize. After just a few moments of creating a piece of music, they inevitably start using common music construction techniques without even realizing it: 4- to 8-bar phrase groupings appear, complementary groupings of instruments are used, similar styles emerge, and key relationships and color matching develop. Once students have created a piece, GarageBand enables us to show the notation of the digital sounds, allowing me to invite students to learn about key relationships and traditional notation—again illustrating their intuitive understanding of the music-making process.

Music Engagement Tool

Soon, students tired of just adding tracks to their compositions. They would ask me how they could create their own bass line. That’s when I’d run to pull the bass guitar off the wall or show them how to create a bass line on the piano keyboard that was connected to GarageBand.

Here’s How We Got Started

After teaching a guitar class at York High School for a couple of weeks, I knew the students would love working with GarageBand. I got permission to spend funds for a single Mac laptop from our arts director, but the tech director for our district said no. The district had undergone a platform change, replacing all the Mac computers with Windows machines.

Didn’t Take No for an Answer

I was insistent that this software was the best way to engage our kids with the music-making process, and the tech director reluctantly agreed to let me put a proposal together to make my case. He also did his own research, looking for alternatives to GarageBand that would work on Windows machines. Ultimately, I won the argument by illustrating how GarageBand was the only DAW that could show musical notation.

Gentle Dance Forward

The students in the guitar class loved the program, which led to our music department purchasing a few Mac desktop computers. The next step was introducing a summer music production class. The interest in that class led to the search for a part-time music production teacher, which eventually resulted in a full-time instructor.

Full Steam Ahead

After working with the district tech director’s son in a summer music production class, the director began fully funding the purchase and refresh of equipment – fully integrating the use of Mac computers into our district's tech plan.