UMass Lowell Music Ed students work with local middle school students

Over the past year, senior music education majors have been taking General Music Methods I and II with Dr. Gena Greher and me at UMass Lowell. Since October of 2008 these students have spent Wednesday mornings teaching 3rd, 6th and 7th grade classes at the Bartlett Community Partnership School here in Lowell, MA. Last week one group of our students invited the 7th grade class from the Bartlett School to spend the day at UMass Lowell recording a song the class arranged in the UMass Lowell recording studio.

Students spent the morning rehearsing their arrangements and taking turns leading peer-conducted free improvisations. Once rehearsed, they spent the balance of the morning laying down the vocal tracks, classroom instrument and guitar tracks followed by the piano accompaniment.

The rehearsing and recording was facilitated by UML graduate sound recording technology major Tim Brault and UML music education majors Jo Price, Lindsey Sherman and Zach Cooper.

After the recording session, the Bartlett School students experienced a rare treat... a live lecture demonstration of vintage Edison wax cylinder recording. UML Sound Recording Technology Professor Alex Case made arrangements for Gerald Fabris, curator of the Edison National Historical Site in West Orange, NJ, to visit and present the lecture/demo. Virgin wax cylinders were flown in from the United Kingdom and UMass Lowell SRT major Brian Corey composed a piece to be used in one of six live takes directly to wax cylinder.



Each of the takes were recorded directly to wax cylinder as well as digitally in mono, stereo and surround sound mic-ing. After each take, the composer listened back to the wax cylinder performance and physically readjusted the placement of the musician's closer or further away from the recording "horn." We take for granted today that we can simply move a microphone to achieve a different sound. Back then you had to move the musicians!

I am told that all of the wax cylinder recordings from the session will be digitized and the audio will be posted side by side with the digital mono, stereo and surround sound versions on the Edison National Historical Site webpage in the near future. I'll be sure to post a link when that goes live.

Click here for the article and more information about the project in the Lowell Sun.