The new EHHS music production lab provides students with the chance to get ahead on skills to prepare them for modern careers in the music industry. The new music production lab was first pitched last year by music teacher, Mr. Steven Wolf to EHHS principal, Mr. Vincent Dinuzzo. The lab was a part of Mr. Wolf’s plan to rebuild the music program along with re-starting the choir program this past fall. The music production lab came from a $65,000 grant towards career technical education for all of the equipment.
Prior to being the music teacher at EHHS, Mr. Wolf worked as a free-lance audio engineer for eight years and taught a similar class as the last school he worked for. Having this experience made Mr. Wolf feel qualified enough to start a program here, especially since the direction of the music industry is changing. Mr. Wolf says the class is, “Creating an avenue for kids to get skills in this industry that they might want to go into. The world needs music which means the world needs music makers.” Mr. Wolf believes there’s not a lot of options for concert bands in the professional world, and that if students want to be professional musicians, the best way to go about it is to gain skills in audio and technical engineering.
As for inside the lab itself, the room needs to accommodate both piano classes and music production. Therefore, the desks have to have a special setup. It has a lower tray for the computer keyboard and mouse, a middle tray for the keyboard, and a top shelf for the monitor and speakers, as well as headphones and a microphone boom arm. One of the two main focus points of the setup is the piano, as it’s a specific model that can stand alone and plug into the computer for music production. The other main focus point and Mr. Wolf’s most valued piece of equipment is the $6,000 Yamaha central audio system that sits on his desk. Headphones and the piano get plugged into the audio system, which allows for Mr. Wolf to listen to each individual student. He can pair up students so they can listen to each other’s projects, listen individually, or play for students and connect it to everyone’s headphones. Mr. Wolf walks around the room and works with students individually. Mr. Wolf says the program would not be able to run without this central audio system as it is an important piece.
The class is project-based which means after each project, a new one starts and is built upon the skills learned throughout the class. Some of these projects include using GarageBand, making multiple episodes of podcasts, and putting speech clips into songs. One of the final projects involves taking out dialogue and music from a movie clip and students then add in their own. Recently, there was a recording artist guest that recorded audio with students. Students will then use these audio recordings and edit them and use them in a project, as well.
Right now, Mr. Wolf is the only music teacher at EHHS, which makes balancing classes difficult. In the future, he would love to add an Advanced Music Production class to get students even more involved with audio engineering and create more complex projects. Regardless, Mr. Wolf’s main goal of the class is to introduce students to the reality of the music industry because it is more than just performers. He says, “There’s so much more going on in the music industry than just the performers, the performers in pop-culture are the tip of the iceberg. There are tens, hundreds of thousands of people in the music field doing all kinds of different things and this is sort of the entry point to most of it.” At this time, Mr. Wolf feels like they have all of the equipment they need for a successful music production lab and he is very excited for the future of the music program at EHHS.
