Introduction 

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• Give students a brief introduction explaining that a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) is a place where they can create, edit, and mix music. 

• Go over all the steps to log into BandLab, find their classroom, and go into the assignment 1.

  • When students are on the classroom page, they will need to click the name of the assignment on your feed, then "Start Assignment" and "Teacher's Assignment."​

    • This will start them all with your pre-created tracks for them to work with later in the lesson.​

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Play, Pause, Stop, Rewind, Cycle

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• ​As simple as it seems, students at the elementary age need a description of every button on their screen. This will give them landmarks for the more challenging options in BandLab.

  • Go over where to find the play, pause, stop, rewind buttons.​

  • Demonstrate using either your quickly created song, or the attachment to Assignment 1 using each of those buttons.

  • Common mistakes to go over: 

    • Often students will leave their playhead going when they reach the end of the clips in their tracks. Make sure you show them (as seen in the lesson video guide) how to navigate back to the beginning of a song if they forget to stop their song.​​

    • Stop and pause have different functions in BandLab, show them the difference between the pause and square, and when to use each button.​​

    • Kids accidentally hit "Cycle" all the time, or they click the little red bar, and make their music cycle. Show them how to avoid this mistake, and how to fix it if it happens.

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The difference between Clips and Tracks (Soloing, Muting, Deleting)

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• Define and demonstrate the difference between the whole Track, and a single Clip on a track. Show students that there can be more than one clip on a track by moving one of your clips to the top track (as shown in the lesson video guide).

• Demonstrate how to mute a track, ask why you might want to do that?

  • To hear the song without that particular instrument or part.​

• Demonstrate how to solo a track, ask why you would do that?

  • To isolate a sound so you can hear what it is.​

• Demonstrate how to delete a Clip, and how to delete a track.​

  • For this assignment they will need to delete a whole track from the song.​

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Looping and Measure counting

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• Explain the meaning of Looping, you can also use the word ostinato if your students are familiar with that term.

• Go through the process of Looping 1 track at a time. 

  • Common mistake (Probably the most common mistake students make) is grabbing the side of a track and creating dead space instead of clicking the loop circle at the top.​

• As an extension, or if they are really tech savvy, teach them how to drag select multiple clips and loop all of them at the same time.​

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Independent Work Time

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• Model each of these steps specifically, showing them exactly what they will do on their own computers.

  • Solo each instrument to hear one at a time.

  • Mute one instrument at a time to hear what the song sounds like without one instrument.

  • Delete the instrument you like the least in the song.

  • Loop the remaining 3 instruments so they stop at measure 17.

• SHOW THEM THE UNDO BUTTON!!!!

• After you set your students loose to work, monitor and help as needed. Again the most common mistakes you will see are:

  • Looping wrong, not clicking the little circle and just dragging empty track.​

  • Double clicking a clip and accidentally opening the editor window, you just have to "X" it out for them most of the time.

  • Losing their clips because their playhead keeps going when they aren't paying attention.

  • Deleting just a clip instead of deleting the whole track.

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