Module 2 | Music Production for

Module 2: Basic Track Editing

Discover the next level of working with tracks through the volume, pan, and volume automation effects. Also start to explore the basics of what instruments create a cohesive ensemble.

Lesson Plan and Materials (Module 2)

Lesson 2

Students should now have a basic understanding of how to play, pause, mute, solo, and loop several tracks and clips on those tracks. Before students start this lesson, they will need to review those skills.

Lesson setup:

Before your students enter your room, you have two steps to complete

Create a New Track in your "Personal Project" library that consists of 1 BandLab Sounds Track. Name it "Assignment 2." This track will serve as the beat behind your students' first song. You can choose to add drums or a less specific "Beat" from the BandLab Sounds Library.

Create a lesson template by copying and pasting the "BandLab Assignment Template" found below, and include your "Assignment 2" Personal Project as an attachment.

Lesson Setup

BandLab Assignment Template

Assignment 2: Adding Tracks and Automation

Use BandLab Studio to do the following things in order:

Choose 3 new instrument sounds to add as new tracks on your song. You can search for:
1. Guitar
2. Drums
3. Bass
4. Trumpet
5. Etc
After you have 3 new sounds, loop them all to measure 21.
Choose a starting volume for each track, some can start from 0, find a good mix.
Pan each instrument to where you want it in the "room."
Click the letter "a" and create a volume automation for each track.

Then save your work with the button on the top right.

See This On BandLab

Lesson Plan Sequence

Introduction Review

Open up Assignment 1 on your screen, and have students quickly guide you through all of the steps you completed last class:
- Play, Pause, Rewind, Stop, Finding the playhead, Mute, Solo, Looping 1 track at a time, Looping multiple tracks at a time.
Ask students what the most common mistakes are, and how to fix them.
- Playhead keeps moving past clips, opening the clip editor, looping from the wrong place on a clip causing dead space.

Finding and Adding BandLab Sounds

Describe the concept of "samples." Give examples of when samples are used in music, how they can be used ethically, and when they are used unethically.
- Depending on your students, you can go into this as much as you want talking about court cases etc. I only briefly touch on the concept of plagiarism as stealing with this age, then discuss how all the samples we are using are public access.
Demonstrate the steps students need to take to open the sample library, and search for instruments.
- They can click on the window for BandLab sounds, or hit the letter "L" on their keyboard as a shortcut.
- Then they have to click on "samples" and the search button before looking for instruments.
Search for 1 instrument to add to your own example and drag it over to the new track area.
- For today, all clips will start at the beginning of the song, point out where you drag your clip to.

Group Looping

If you didn't go over it last week, introduce how to drag select, or shift click to select multiple tracks.
- Still emphasize how to click the correct area of the clip for looping, students will often make this error throughout the whole curriculum.
Demonstrate group looping tracks so they all stop at measure 21.
- Depending on the original track length, students may have to single loop clips when they get close to measure 21 so they all end at the same time.

Volume Editing and Panning

Demonstrate where the volume slider is on their DAW studio screen.
Demonstrate where the pan control is, and discuss live performance and the "room" in your headphones
- A live performance doesn't have all the instruments directly in front of you, you can use a diagram of a band on a stage along with a listener to show them where each instrument would be coming from in a real room (right or left), and then create that room in your mix.
I like to point out the slider, ask "what is this doing?" and have students discover what changes with both the volume and pan controls.

Independent Work Time

Model each of these steps specifically, showing them exactly what they will do on their own computers.
- Find new BandLab sounds and add them as 3 new tracks.
- Group Loop them all to stop at measure 21.
- Change the volume for each track to create a good mix of instruments so none overpower the others.
- Pan each instrument to where you want it in your "room"
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.
- Students might accidentally hit "a" and open the Automation view, just hit "a" again to fix that.
- When searching for sounds, if they are not in the "samples area," they will find sounds they can't actually add to their project.

Extension - Volume Automation

After the students have completed these steps, bring them back to your example and introduce what "automation" is on a track.
- Define it as a way for "invisible hands" to change things in your song while it is playing.
Teach them the shortcut "A" to open the automation (on purpose this time), and click on the line to create a point. Click another spot on the line and drag them to create a swell at the beginning of your song, or a dip in the middle of a track.
Send them back to their independent work to create volume automation for each track.

Print This Plan

Lesson 2 Objectives