In this Roland Champion School case study, Samantha Hudson from Admiral Lord Nelson School in Portsmouth explored using Notion music software and a range of other Roland music technologies (including guitar and bass amps, keyboards and a loop station) with her Year 8 students. Samantha takes up the story …

The students came up with four or five ostinato ideas which they arranged into layers. Using Roland keyboards, electric guitars, bass guitars and tuned percussion, they experimented with effects in the live performance. After coming up with their initial ‘loop’ they recorded it. They then set about arranging/editing loops in Notion with support. They changed their instrumentation to include orchestral instruments and many added a drum track. They created several copies of their loop on the score, using repeat marks, which they then altered dynamics and articulation on to create contrasts within their pieces. Some were encouraged to repeat the process and come up with a second section to create longer pieces. Once the scores were finished, some students went on to prepare live performances of their compositions, using the software. Some individual students used loop stations to create their pieces.

This project integrated live music performance with music technology, allowing the students to see how they could utilise music technology not only to help them create music but also to become better performers. Once they had experimented with expression markings in the software, they could use the performance software as a model for their own live performance.

Notion 3 proved student friendly. They easily understood the dynamic and articulation markings from the lower taskbar as well as how to add or change instruments on their scores. It didn’t matter that students couldn’t input pitch and rhythm if their notation skills were not strong, as with teacher templates, they can use copy and paste and input from the software’s drum tracks etc. to add extra parts. Many of our students were confident notating tab, which could also be changed into staff notation.

Last year, we started off aurally dictating students’ compositions and then inputting the bulk of the notation for students, giving them sections to copy and paste etc. Although this method worked, it was time consuming. This year we created two templates with several pre-composed loops which the students could edit and arrange. This gave quicker results and more able student scored in their own ideas. We focussed on Minimalism, particularly Living Room Music by John Cage as an example but also some of Ed Sheeran’s recent loop pieces.

While the notation software made looping possible for everyone, it was fun with loopstations and ideally, we would use these in the live tasks for the students to generate and record ideas. We produced our own model loop composition with a loop station owned by one of the teachers. Some students had their own and also used them.