Nameless by Josh Usdan

Written and performed by Maddy Regan and Zach Cohen in the ECFS Digital Music Studio in Spring of 2011.

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Hallway

01. Bernie Waldman

Digital Music at Fieldston - Syllabus for Middle School:

Digital, MIDI or Electronic Music call it what you will, but making music with computers is at the cutting edge of musical composition.  The New Fieldston Digital Music Studio affords our community an opportunity that is unique among middle and high school students.

Over the past few years,  ECFS Digital Music Studio has been extended to the Middle School, giving students in 6th and 8th grades in addition to an after-school club, a unique opportunity to explore this new and exciting medium.  Fieldston has built one of the finest Computer Music studios available to students in grades 6-12.  The facility consists of 17 MacPros with wide screen Apple iMacs and all computers are fitted with Logic Pro X, Reason X and Sibelius (a music notation program).

All Middle School students will compose music using Reason, a stand-alone music software composition program.  Within Reason, students create a virtual recording studio environment.  They create mixing boards, interfaces, vintage synthesizers and samplers.  Reason is equipped with many thousands of sounds that these instruments can play as well as effects such as reverberation

The class is a lecture/workshop format where “hands-on” hours with the equipment is essential and is at the core of the daily experience..  While Digital Music is a part of the Arts Rotation Cycle, students are introduced to professional level software where they can experience the skills and techniques required in order to compose music with computers.

It is always an asset if a student comes to the studio with traditional musical skills, but it is not in any way a musical deficit if they don’t.  Through the easy to use graphic windows, students perceive a clear association between their ideas and how to express them.  Like a pad and a pencil, students can “draw” musical ideas as if improvising.  Once the material is in the program, all aspects of the project can be easily edited like that of a word processing document. .  What is most exciting, when projects are completed, the music they have created can be found on this website throughout the year.

ecfsdigistudio