Music Prodcution - December 2018

At Regent Park Focus throughout these weeks, Hopeton has imparted workshops imparted collaborative songwriting, writing help, harmonizing. Youth explored ideas, shared stories found commonalities with their peers, and converted these experiences into song form. That process generated a few original songs that the participants helped to mould from start to finish.

The technical knowledge acquisitions that happened during some of these sessions were sampling from online audio sources, sampling instruments, learning the difference between generating sound from internal program sounds and external audio inputs, and synchronizing rhythms.

Every participant got an introduction to basic music theory in order to input melodies with the piano keyboard as their input device. An understanding of why certain notes are "harmonic" vs. "dissonant" made their note selection to all the audio works more delightful to the ear. If melody hiccups were still made, the participant was then guided through the digital correction features of the program such as quantizing, piano roll note editing, and transposition (the changing of music keys and scales).

Based on all of the technical skills explored through real-time song creation, the participants collaboratively contributed a lot this time around to an anthology of collected works, which is to be produced and released widely. We also recently decided to debut some of the songs on Radio Regent as part of this project.

In other intensive sessions, some of the youth remodelled instrumentals they enjoy personally to witness how the components of the song were achieved. This provided great insight into seeing how much work goes into even the most simplest of audio pieces.

An appreciation for the music art form was discussed in their own words as "difficult but achievable if you push through it". The emotional vulnerability is the greatest realization that the more dedicated of the bunch concluded. What was once thought to be impossible is now more possible based on the achievements during the Beat Production program with Regent Park Focus Youth Media Arts Centre and Music Coordinator, Hopeton LaTouche



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