Audacity Lesson Plan!

Well here it is my epic Audacity Lesson Plan! It was fun starting to think like a teacher. I thought about activities that would be challenging for the students but not hard enough that they would become discouraged. It was fun being able to mess around with a new program. This is definitely a program I see myself using in my years of a dancer and a teacher! I am grateful i was able to figure out the basics to this program and I am sure as I get more into my teaching career I will look into different music editing programs to help me with my future dances.Well hopefully my lesson plan meets the qualifications of what we were supposed to do.

Audacity Lesson Plan

Introduction: Since this is a dance class music is a big part of what we do. Often times money does not permit for professional editing of music. The purpose of learning about this program Audacity is to learn the basic skills of editing music. We will learn concepts of fade in and outs, cutting a song to be shorter, slowing down or speeding up the tempo of a song and then the combination of two songs. We are going to learn the basic skills that you can use later in your dancing career. The benefit of learning how to edit your own music is you start to gain a better understanding of the mechanic of music which in the bigger picture can actually help gain a better understand of chorography and performance quality.

Assignment 1: The Basics
- Import a song onto Audacity
- Work with different effects - add 4 different effects to your song. (they don’t have to all fit together. ) This is just getting use to the program and exploring what different effects can be added to a song.

Assignment 2: Cutting a song
- Import another song to Audacity
- Cut a verse and a chorus out of your song (so it becomes a verse, bridge, chorus)
- This time it is required to make your song “fit” The song needs to flow together and sound as if you did not cut the music. (for some song it is impossible to make it sound totally perfect due to lyrics or instrumental qualities, but try your best to trial and error different cuts to make your song sound good!)
- Add effects such as fade in/out to make your song sound like it finishes

Assignment 3: Putting 2 and 2 together
- Get into groups of 2 or 3
- Import both edited songs into one Audacity project. (if in a group of 3 choose two songs to import. You do not need to do all three.)
- Take your two edited songs and find a way to mix the two songs together. (You don’t have to use the full length of both songs. Just find a way to mix the two songs to start forming a medley.)
- Once the songs are mixed together pick a section to change the tempo. (speed it up or slow it down)
- Choose one other effect that you want to add into the song
- The use your fades to make the song sound finished.

Assignment 4: Application!
- This is the most fun part of all!!
- Take your personal edited song and choreograph a small solo
- This is your opportunity to shine! The solos will be performed in class!

*This unit is estimated to take about 3 weeks, so don’t feel overwhelmed or stressed out. We will have enough time to get everything done. Have fun and let your imagination roll!!!

Music Editing?!?

Well since I am a dance education major, I was thinking about what technological resource would be beneficial for my field of study. I thought that learning how to use Audacity would be a great tool to learn. I am in a field where music is key, and very seldom do you choreograph a dance to a whole song. So learning how to cut and mix songs would be very useful. Yes there are professionals who cut music. But maybe I will be in a school where there is not a lot of money for things like cutting music, and I will have to resort to doing it myself. My goal with learning how to use Audacity is to not just learn how to cut music, but learn how to do all the little nick naks and tricks that the program has to offer. I think maybe for this project I will try and do things that I normally probably wouldn't use in a performance piece. But that way I can get the practice using all the tools. I am actually very excited to learn how to use this program because I really honestly see me using this not just in my future years of teaching. But right now while I am still in my college years!! So I guess we will see how it goes!! But I think this will not only be a fun program to learn how to use, but also very beneficial.

Movie Magic Has Been Perfromed!

The last couple of weeks we have been working on our movie projects. At first I was not quite sure how this whole thing was going to go down for me, because I have never done anything like this before. But I am not going to lie... I am pretty darn proud of myself!!! Now I no the movie is no where near perfect, and I am sure there are plenty of things I can do to make it better. But as far as this being my first time ever making a movie I am happy with what I did!

During the course of my editing and putting the movie together, the first stumbling block I came across was pulling the song I wanted off my itunes and then importing it to the movie maker. I tried multiple things, and for some reason it was not working. I had to kind of take a round about way but sure enough I was able to get the song I wanted and it was slightly smoother sailing from there. I learned that making movies it a lot of trial and error. You would have to try some things, and then see if it worked. If I was to put it simply it would be try, watch, watch, and watch some more! Well I am not quite sure what it going to come now that my first time movie is going to be posted online, but it is also kind of exciting to think that maybe my movie might actually make a difference and teach some students about proper dance etiquette. I am glad I had the experience of making a instructional video, and this is another thing I could see me using in my future teaching years!!