Manwaring Music Education Blog
Life in a Music Department
When it comes to music there are chords for every occasion. Understanding how chords are formed, and how they sound, is a crucial part of any music curriculum. Students can often tell major from minor, but how well do they know the other chords on offer. In this Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I will […]
In this Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I want to explore the new time signatures that are now available in Soundtrap. It has for a while been just 4/4 and 3/4, but now we have the addition of a number of new metres. It is true to say that it is about time this happened! […]
Recently my students have been remixing chords in Soundtrap. In this Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I want to share with you some simple tips to get your students creating their own track. Like all good projects, it is always good to start with something physical like keyboards or guitars. Then use listening to build […]
When we teach a musical concept it is easy to fall into the trap of “chalk & talk”. Now that is an old phrase, but I think you know what I mean – we talk too much and students don’t leave their seats. In this Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I want to look at […]
I love pizza, and I think it is a food group that features the most in my musical analogies. Without the base, you can’t have the toppings – you get the idea. I recently came across a wonderful website called Groove Pizza and I can’t stop playing with it. The great thing is that it […]
In this Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I will be looking at adding a bass-line to a drum rhythm in Soundtrap. This is an ideal task for a class who have been creating their own EDM beats and want to think about adding a baseline. There are so many examples in music where it is […]
One sure fire way to enjoy composing is to play with musical ideas. Melody in Reverse is where you take a melodic idea in Soundtrap and, well, put it in reverse. When was the last time you listened to one of your ideas backwards? This Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog will help you to create […]
In this Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I want to share with you how to Confidently Create Chords. In order to compose music we need to ensure that we can harmonise a melody and create chords within soundtrap. It is a relatively straightforward process and one that your students will enjoy. Before you start on […]
If you have ever created music using a DAW, then you will have used a piano roll. However it might be that using a piano roll is a new concept and one that slightly worries you. This Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog is going to focus on using a piano roll with the aim of […]
Soundtrap is a great tool for making music. Not only can we create beats, bass-lines, melodies and chords, but we can add effects to enhance our music. The value of Effects is that they can make music sound more authentic and exciting. Students will quickly see that their music is enhanced by the effects within […]
In my last Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I considered how we might turn a rhythm into a melody. This process allows students to take a rhythm and using the MIDI editor, turn it into a melody. This approach is a good starting point for creating a first melody. However we want to work towards […]
How can we go from Rhythm to Melody? If you are wanting your students to explore melody writing then starting with a rhythm and then building on this can be a really good approach. We want our students to be creative, exploring sounds and ideas. But we also need to help guide them in their […]
Sound advice for Soundtrap is a blog series designed to get you using Soundtrap. I am hoping that the ideas I share will help you to use the software. Looping with Loops is aimed at focussing on how we can use loops to teach as well as compose. Most DAWs come with a loop library […]
In my last Sound Advice for Soundtrap blog I looked at how to create your first beat. In this blog I will consider how we might build upon this, making our beats more interesting & developed. Building on your beats is a blog for those who want to move their basic beat forward! If you […]
In part 1 of this Sound advice for Soundtrap Series, I introduced you to Soundtrap. In this blog I consider a good place to start – Creating your first Beat Beat I must admit I don’t love the word “beat” because of how students often mis-use it to describe music. “This piece has a good […]
Soundtrap is a piece of software that I have come to use more and more over the last 18 months. It is a cloud based DAW that students love to use. So I thought I would provide a weekly blog of Sound Advice for Soundtrap. In this blog series I will consider quick tips, ideas […]