Souffler - a breath of fresh air

Mixcraft - the Windows Alternative to Garageband

I love Apple Macs and I love using Garageband but as so many of the programs I use in schools are Windows based and having installed a Windows partition on my Macbook, I needed a Windows Equivalent for Garageband. I have been using this Mixcraft software and so far am very impressed.

First, it is very good value for money at around £48. It has a very wide range of features, enough to produce professional recordings, and comes with a huge bank of free loops and backing beats that you are entitled to keep even if you decide not to purchase the product. You can check out all of the features here on their site. Go to the Products Page on the Mixcraft Site to check out all of the features. I will try and do a few posts to show how I think it might be useful for language teachers wanting to integrate more music into their lessons.

For the moment, here is a sample of a reggae backing track that it took me about 20 minutes to create from the free loops supplied with the package.

 

 

 

Backing Tracks to introduce or practise language

In the last few weeks I seem to have been on creative overdrive. I have been running a Singing and MFL project in a Derbyshire Primary school, working with all yr 3/4/5/6 groups over a 4 week period. With their class teacher, TAs and their French teacher present in the lessons we have been looking at how the use of rhythm and song can become far more integrated into lessons and support learning.

In addition to that, I have just started a new PPA position in a Derby school where I definitely feel I have stepped into a foreign culture as 95% of the pupils are from non-English speaking backgrounds. I have been trying out some of these singing and rhythmic ideas here as well.

The whole experience has honestly been some of the best teaching, with the most fun and greatest positive response I have had in my career. It reinforces my opinion that if language teachers could become more confident leading singing in their lessons, understanding how to do it, what music to use, how to make use of backing tracks to support pupils' learning of new vocabulary and structures, it would be a significant boost in colleagues' own levels of enjoyment whilst also boosting pupil performance and motivation.

I am going to share a couple of tracks that I use to illustrate my point. My overiding reason for doing this work is that a child's first exposure to learning a language should be about fun, about picking up the 'sound' of the language above and, in my opinion, beyond a mere acquistion of vocab. Good pronunciation, a willingness and confidence to 'have go', the creation of a safe environment to do so, are all critical in this first phase of language acquisition. All of this is easily achieved by using music to support learning a language.

There a lot of things I have learnt as I have worked with the national Sing Up campaign in this process.

I have learnt that singing lesson starters are a great way to focus the children, to get them following your lead, to get them cooperating and acting with one voice in response to your lead.

I have learnt how to teach a song properly, breaking it down into manageable chunks. I have learnt what kind of material appeals to children and have been inspired to make use of some material others have produced as well as writing quite a bit of my own.

I have learnt how to source backing tracks from websites that I can, with a bit of work, add lyrics to in order to teach a topic. All of this requires some time and application to learn and apply but the rewards in terms of pupil response are so much fun and rewarding that I heartily recommend it to all language teaching colleagues.

I have learnt how, by using simple audio editing software, Audacity or my own favourite, NCH's Wavepad software, you can clip extracts of favourite tunes, change their pitch, slow them down, speed them up, gradually building your own library of music that you know pupils will feel inspired and lifted by. Muisc and rhythm turn what can be a difficult, boring, repetitive, intellectually challenging process, into one that sparkles and engages.

With colleagues in the Secondary school sector in particular, increasingly pressurised to produce results and justify their place on the curriculum, there is a danger that MFL lessons become a bit too serious. Inject music and rhythm into the diet and the whole atmosphere of what you are doing lifts. I believe what the pupils learn is also achieved more quickly and with greater good will in their part.

At the primary level, I know that the same techniques can be applied to any curriculum area, not simply in language lessons. Most primary teachers are aware of the power of a good song in helping to deliver content, they are perhaps less confident in applying this in another language. Learning to do so will not only help their pupils, it will also allow them the time and space to practise good pronunciation along with their classes as they master the songs.

Here are a couple of websites I use with a couple of tracks that I know work. I can't offer them for download as I would be breaking copyright but you can buy them very cheaply yourselves.

1) I use a site called Audionetwork. They are a production music library whose composers sell their tracks to film and TV companies. You will recognise some of their tunes from programs particularly on Channel 4. The musical content is therefore of a very high order. Thecost of the licence you purchase with each track is proprtionate to the use you will make of it. The Educational licence per track is £.85p. Choose tracks with a strong rhythmic element.

This rap track is called Mischief and pupils love practising dialogues to this tune. It has a slight Eminem feel to it. If you are not very good at singing and want a track to 'speak' to rhythmically, I recommend it.

This track is some boogie woogie piano I picked up from somewhere whose origins escape me. However you can easily pick up something similar on ITunes or from Amazon mp3. Tracks you download can be adjusted using the audio editing software mentioned above until you have something at a speed you feel comfortable using. I use this as a warm up track to practise parts of the body or do Call and Response work with vocab we have been covering (eg: Quel age as-tu? J'ai 8 ans etc) It is difficult for anyone who might feel miserable at the beginning of your lesson (including you!) to feel miserable after a couple of minutes of a track like this!

2) Another site that I collect backing tracks from is karaoke-version.com. This site gives you performance and backing tracks for a vast array of golden oldies to current hit songs. If you click on the country flag at the bottom you can also find a selection of current French, German, Spanish songs.

I have clipped well known tunes from this site and added my own lyrics. Here is an example where I took a section of a track by the Killers called "All these things I have done". This is the original section

I downloaded the Karaoke version, clipped the section I wanted to use in Wavepad, and imported the mp3 into Mac Garageband to add the new lyrics.

For many this last step may be further than you feel able to go. If so, simply use the backing track and hand the rest of the process over to the pupils, get them to write suitable lyrics and see if you can't link up with the Music Department to get the reworked song recorded.

I hope this has given you a taster of what is possible. I am not a professional musician or singer and could never be either. But anyone can develop these skills sufficiently to enable you to add this to your repertoire of elements that will help create language lessons that engage and inspire.

On another post I will share some of the other work covered in the primary project where we have been putting simple vocab to well known tunes, using a song I wrote to teach the 'ch' phoneme to children with 1 year of French, using 4 different styles of tunes from Audionetwork as a basis for singing 4 different versions of the same lyrics on the the topic of 'House' and the same 4 tunes to teach 4 different versions of the same lyrics for the topic of "Town'.

Both 'house' and 'town' are topics that usually leave me feeling somewhat uninspired. These 4 tunes have proved to be a great way of repeating core vocab whilst also adding a bit more colloquial colour to the lyrics.

A+ !!

Practising language to clips of tunes

This is an example of how you can use part of a music track you like to practise any topic you are covering in lessons.

This example is from "La Camisa Negra" by Juanes. I chose it simply because I liked the strong rhythmic intro. Choosing a track that has a strong rhythmic element is the most important factor as it is easier for you to fit lyrics.

I was covering the topic of family, use of 'mon/ma' and naming family members using 's'appelle'.

We revised the language using this Smartboard file

The first page was to introduce the lyrics. The second page was for the pupils to invent their own family names to sing to the backing track.

I clipped the intro to Camisa Negra using NCH Wavepad but you can do the same with Audacity. 

I then dragged the clip into a Garageband file and recorded the lyrics on a second vocal track on Garageband as the music played. I exported the file to Itunes which mixed the two tracks together. Once in Itunes I converted the default import from an AAC format to an mp3 file to use with Smartboard.

Again, you can do this using Audacity. If you are not sure how to add a lyric track, simply use the backing track and sing along to it. 

Here is the backing track clipped from 'La camisa Negra'

 and here is the same track with the lyrics from the Smartboard file overdubbed

You can download the Smartboard Notebook file and the two clips from here.

Garageband, songs, music, languages: A cross-curricular mix

I was struggling for a title on this one! 

I wanted to show how with limited singing and musical skills, you could use some simple audio-editing software (in this case Apple's Garageband software) to a) build parts to embellish a song b) use the software to help teach a song. 

If you haven't got Garageband on a Mac a friend of mine has apparently recorded the whole of his first album using Audacity. I don't know this software well so I will have to let others comment as to how easy it might be to record different tracks using this. One other option on Windows is to use NCH's Mixpad. It would however set you or your school back about £46. I would think that a lot of music departments would already have access to the software and hardware you need.

So, if you think this is really not what you might spend your energies, money and time on as a language teacher, think then how you might see this working as a cross-curricular project with the music department and encourage your pupils to take a basic song you use in your lessons, embellish it, remix it, add harmony parts and then re-present it to the class. You might end up with 20 different excuses to sing the same lyrics! Rote learning sorted!

First, this is the original track that I found on a wonderful Canadian site called "Languages Online". Have a look at it for lots of other resources, but the song I used was this simple greetings song. The point here is that you need to select a song with a fairly simple chord structure.

I do not know who originally recorded this but my thanks for such a simple catchy tune.

Here is a Garageband remix to give you a sense of what is possible

So, I've added: 

i) a drum backing chosen from a bank of pre-recorded options that come with Garageband (these 'snippets' of instruments are called 'loops' and there is a whole industry devoted to supplying an ever-widening range of them)

ii) a vocal harmony 

iii) a bass line created by choosing a 'horn' instrument in Garageband played low down the keyboard. You enter the notes by playing an onscreen keyboard, one fingered! (see image)

iv) a simple piano overlay - again, one fingered!

v) two simple, 3 chord guitar parts.

Here's a screen shot of the musical typing board with the garageband tracks.

 

You can save these tracks in any variation you like by muting the parts you don't want. So, if I wanted to teach the just the tune stripped of too much accompaniment I might save only these:

And then just the harmony part

Finally, the backing track to perform too once you have taught your pupils.

I haven't really shown how to do all of this using Garageband per se and could do so if people were interested. I have put up athe vocal and instrumental parts you hear on this page on my other site at www.souffler.co.uk if you want to download them. There is also the garageband mix if you have that software to see how it works.

Hint: give your Head of music the URL of this post, apologise for the musicianship and singing but PLUG the idea of doing some linked work!