M-Audio
Takes Music into the Classroom The
San Fernando Educational Technologies Team is an elective class
at California’s San Fernando High that teaches students
how to produce movies on digital video from start to finish—including
how to add music to their movies. Myriad educational disadvantages
and the fact that fewer than four percent of the school’s
students have computers in their homes make San Fernando High
a seemingly unlikely location for what SFETT coach Marco Antonio
Torres calls his “Community Inspiration Studio.” But
against all odds and with virtually no budget, Torres’ “classroom” has
acquired 100 Macintosh workstations, 5 servers, a videoconference
room equipped with a plasma screen, and a large screen projection
system. More recently, SFETT added a fully equipped recording studio featuring M-Audio’s Delta 66 sound card, Omni i/o, Oxygen8 MIDI controller, Studiophile SP-5B reference monitors, Propellerhead Reason and Ableton Live. “Initially, our primary focus was visual media,” says Torres. “Then the kids began producing things that needed an audio companion. Royalty-free music that we could download wasn’t for us—it sounded like retirement home music. The kids wanted something that was fast, something that would bump, something that would get people excited.”  “M-Audio
fit perfectly,” Torres continues.” When I went to the
M-Audio booth at Macworld, the reps were able to provide me with
the solutions I needed. I wanted to do something that was loop-based.
I wanted something that was flexible. And I wanted to use what
the pros were using. The M-Audio interfaces do exactly what the
kids need them to.” Torres has also found that software programs like Live and Reason are great teaching tools, and can act as jumping-off points for additional musical education. “The kids like Live’s organic way of constructing music instantly based on beat structure,” Torres attests. “They can develop things strictly based on feel. Reason is very simple and elegant, yet powerful for us to use. Reason gives a context for learning composition and theory so the kids want to learn it. It sparks an informal training of music.” To find out more about SFETT, visit www.sfett.net.
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