Tuning the World One Note at a Time

Before beginning this project, students will be enlightened to the world of photography by a local professional photographer. They will learn elements of photo and video composition, manipulating videos to create an original movie.

Providing a solid ending to a unit of music around the world, students will produce a movie/video rendition of world music. Students will have access to teacher provided musical software that enables students to produce and document original music compositions.

After studying about various cultures and their relationship to music and the arts, students will take a field trip to a dance hall. At the dance hall, students will receive a back stage tour allowing time to interview dancers and photograph pictures to incorporate in their video. After doing so, students will attend a performance, giving them opportunity to gather ideas of how to put moving pictures with sound to produce desired emotions.

Students will then take what they have seen, heard, and felt from this performance mingled together what they have gathered to produce their movie/video. They will utilize photo editing software to adjust their photos, skills learned by the photography clinician, and create their own masterpiece theater. This masterpiece allows for written descriptions and voice recordings using Podcasting software.

After the completion of the movies/videos, students will present their inspirations to the parents, teachers, and
students of Robert E. Howard Middle School.

Finally, students will be able to create a Robert E. Howard Middle School Instrumental Music Department website to attach their movie/video. Students will include photos and video clips of the exciting journey they explored while creating their videos. This website will be linked on the school's web page as well as the OCSD 5 web page.

"Tuning the World One Note at a Time" is an inspirational project that allows instrumental music students the opportunity to leave the method books for a while and apply what they see on paper to real life. The use of Olympus Digital Cameras and Tool Factory Software provide technology integration in the music classroom and prove to music students that there is more to music than what is printed on staff paper. South Carolina state curriculum standards require that students in grades 6-8 explore compositional devices in large group settings and compare, in several cultures of the world, functions music serves, roles of musicians, and conditions under which music is typically performed. This project will provide means to implement these standards in a nontraditional setting.