Children Learn New Skills by Recording Music

September 9, 2014

Being able to record your own music is a fun aspect of writing songs. Because I work a lot on composition with my students, I want them to have the experience of recording their music too. Recording music introduces new musical skills in a fun way.

To record a piece of music requires an amount of pressure to give your best performance. This teaches students how to play on the spot and learn to improve upon their execution. It is very valuable for students to be able to hear how they play from a different perspective. One of the goals in teaching music is to help students take the tools that they’ve learned to motivate self learning and exploration. By listening to a recordings of your own performance, you can begin to learn how to evaluate and improve upon how you play the piece; the recording becomes your critic.

Another great aspect of recording music is opening students up to new creative possibilities. With recording software, there are many virtual instruments that you can experiment with on the keyboard. You can teach students how to add new melodic lines or textures using strings, brass, or percussion. This introduces students to sound characteristics of different instruments; how they can blend sounds together or make them stand out from each other.