Palmer Foote whose profession and passion is music production led this session in which students unleashed their artistic side. Under Palmer’s systematic guidance students created their own musical arrangements using ready stems and a professional software.

Palmer introduced students to the different professional roles involved in music production and also helped them understand the difference between various music genres. He then helped them analyze the structure of the pop song “Sunflower” by Post Malone, a song that was a hit among the students

Through systematic micro-lessons, students then learned how to use Ableton, a professional software to drag beats onto the main screen, overlap beats, add effects to the overall sound. With different levels of facility in using the software, students had the freedom to then explore the software at their own pace and curiosity level.
They worked in pairs to put this all together to create their own recording which they proudly share with the rest of the group. It was fun to watch these students at work as they discussed (and at times argued) and experimented with different arrangements. The session ended with Palmer demonstrating how to use the midi controller to create music – students jumped at the chance of trying their hand at it.

Through this three hour session, students realized that you don’t need a ton of equipment to create sophisticated music that is good enough for commercial use. They also realized that music production has a chain of roles like song writing, mixing and editing.