When most of us think about classroom music in a large city school system, we contemplate tight budgets, funds for arts instruction diverted to preparing and passing tests, and little time and few resources for learning or for making music. All too many elementary and secondary students across the United States experience no music in the school week at all.

Thankfully, the VH1 Save the Music Foundation and its partners are doing something to reintroduce and preserve school music programs. The foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the quality of education in America's public schools by restoring music programs in cities across the country and raising public awareness about the importance of music participation for our nation's youth. The Foundation purchases new musical instruments to restore music-education programs that have been cut because of budget reductions, as well as helping to save programs at risk of being eliminated due to lack of instruments. It conducts awareness campaigns, musical-instrument drives, and fund-raising events. To date, the foundation has donated more than $25 million worth of musical instruments to approximately 1,000 public schools in 80 cities.

As part of this effort, VH1 Save the Music has teamed up with SoundTree to build technology-based music labs for K-12 schools. To date, the team, which also receives support from Fender Musical Instruments and several other music-industry leaders, has successfully launched programs in over 40 cities. We'll focus on a school music program in New York City, and then take a brief look at other VH1-supported programs from New York, Missouri, Kansas, and California.

FIG. 1: Janet Rudd, the second-year music teacher at Pedro Albizu Campos School (PS161) in Harlem, New York City, teaches her class using one of the Casio CTK671 keyboards she received as part of a grant from the VH1 Save the Music Foundation.

WELCOME TO HARLEM
Late last school year, I traveled from my Long Island office to the northern portion of Manhattan to visit Pedro Albizu Campos School (PS161) in Harlem, where music has been restored thanks to VH1 Save the Music. In this amazing New York City school, students can't wait to get into music class: the school has waiting lists of students who want to sign up. Where there once was no music, demand for music learning has dramatically changed the complexion of learning for hundreds of students each year. In the past three years, halls and classrooms that heard no music for a long time now have several hundred students who make music during the school week and hundreds more who come back into school in the afternoons after classes to play keyboards, compose, and learn.

When I drove to the corner of 133^rd and Amsterdam, the streets were clear and school was already in session. Several colleagues and I were going to visit Janet Rudd, PS161's second-year music teacher, who received a grant of an electronic keyboard lab from VH1 Save the Music Foundation in 2001.

We arrived between class periods, and Rudd's room was quiet. She was preparing materials for class and had an assignment for us: she asked if we were willing to play for her students, a group of fourth graders who were going to spill through the doors of her classroom at any minute. I quickly worked my way around the room to speak with the other visitors, and we planned a simple multikeyboard blues improvisation.

The bell rang, and as we finished our conversation Rudd came over to talk to me. We were surprised that she had a few minutes to talk even though the room was full — and quiet. We saw no wrangling for keyboards in the lab. In fact, none of the students were anywhere near the keyboards. They were across the room in small groups and pairs, quizzing each other with flash cards containing note names, clefs, and other musical essentials. Rudd told us that the routine was the same at every class meeting: the students knew that if they wanted to get to the electronic keyboards in the lab and play, they first had to accomplish other things.

Once finished with flash-card practice, students gathered around a human-size staff with a treble clef printed in indelible ink (much to the janitor's chagrin) on an open space on the floor. First they competed in a little skillful footwork. We called out note names, and students moved around on the staff — sometimes finding and sometimes missing the notes they were supposed to be standing on. If they missed, their buddies helped out by directing them to the correct line or staff.

FIG. 2: All students in the PS161 keyboard lab have a headset microphone that allows them to hear their instrument, their -teachers, and other students. Two students can even work independently at one keyboard without disturbing each other.

Then Rudd introduced an activity that connected the class warm-ups to the keyboards in the lab. Several students stood in a row, choosing places to stand on the lines and spaces of the staff. She asked volunteers to go to keyboards in the lab and perform the melodies that were created by the children standing on the staff, using a piano sound. Some of the tunes were tough, but everyone got involved and had fun.

Now that the students were well into musical thought, they moved to the 16 lab keyboards, with Rudd at the teacher's station (see Fig. 1). This particular class was unusual in that each student had his or her own station. Each student had a notebook containing repertoire and compositions. The students were careful to sit properly, then got their headphones on and jumped into practicing. The lesson continued, with every child engaged and focused. All of the visiting adults joined in, sitting with the students, listening, playing along, and sometimes helping. The balance of the class period included an amazing amount of work, including rhythm drills, note reading, scale and hand-position practice, keyboard technique, song review, and ensemble playing.

The adults played the blues improvisation that we had planned, and student volunteers played a few of their end-of-the-year solo pieces. Rudd positioned the volunteers at her Korg GEC3 lab controller and routed their performances through the classroom stereo speakers, so we could all take a break from our headphones and listen to several pieces “live” in the room.

We visitors were smiling as the students left. In only 40 minutes, we had watched a talented teacher do some amazing work in a group keyboard lab. And for many of the visitors, the experience was far from what they had expected. Ms. Rudd successfully integrated electronic keyboards and contemporary music making, using many different sounds and accompaniments preprogrammed into the keyboards. She mixed general-music learning, group keyboard activities, and live performance, making the most of the technology resources at her disposal. In the process, she managed 16 students who often worked at their own paces, while she met a host of New York City and MENC standards.

Rudd's students learned a lot, had fun, and demonstrated a solid understanding of the musical concepts in her lesson plan. On their way out of the classroom, they were talking about what they would do the next time they came to music class.

BUILDING THE PROGRAM
As I wandered around the room after class, I met a teacher who had just been hired to join the PS161 staff next school year as a part-time music teacher. He will be the second new music teacher added in three years in a school that, not long ago, had no music program. How did this marvelous change come about?

FIG. 3: Sibelius Compass Tracker’s Toolbox section contains a Pitch Generator tool that takes any series of numbers or letters and -converts them to melodies.

It didn't happen overnight. The support for the keyboard lab and the program built up over time, with little successes occurring, one after the other. In the first year, several hundred music students used the keyboard lab. The second year, after-school lessons for children and adults expanded the program to nearly 500 participants. By the third year, so many student wanted to participate that the music program had waiting lists. The program's success is the result of good teaching, good strategies for using music technology, and lots of support from the principal.

Rudd speaks powerfully about how the program in PS161's keyboard lab has had a forceful impact on the lives of her students. “Music has become a real presence in our school,” she says. “There are waiting lists to get into keyboard class, and kids see it as a privilege and opportunity. Teachers have commented on the development of self-esteem in students who previously had little. Students are making connections to other subjects and are having the opportunity to develop an appreciation for music as well as a musical vocabulary. Having these keyboards in our school, as well as using other resources such as recorders and video tapes, has made a huge impact on our children.”

We asked some of Rudd's fifth-grade students to comment on their experiences in the music program, and they offered some interesting viewpoints. “One thing I never realized before was how sound is made — science and music are actually related,” commented Jorge. “I also have a keyboard at home now, and I play.” Added Luis, “I never knew before that reading music is just like reading a book.” Elizabeth said, “I learned to play music in our music class, and then I started to be in the mentor program where I teach younger kids. I realize that what you learn you can teach other people. I feel more like a leader in the school.”

“Through this program,” says Rudd, “music becomes an integral part of the children's lives. Once they can read music, many other programs are open to them, such as junior-high band. Reading also increases the possibility that they'll eventually get into more sophisticated music programs in high school. Most significantly, it opens up the world of music for the rest of their lives.”

AN EFFECTIVE MODEL
The technology in Rudd's Save the Music lab is doing what it should do: facilitating effective music learning and music making. The keyboard lab is well constructed and sounds good. It works in the background as a vehicle for effective music learning and is an excellent model for any application of technology in K-12 music — or any other subject, for that matter.

The daily lab lessons in Rudd's program help fulfill at least six of the MENC National Standards (and sometimes all nine). They are

Standard 2: Performing on instruments, alone and with others, a varied repertoire of music

Standard 3: Improvising melodies, variations, and accompaniments

Standard 4: Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines

Standard 5: Reading and notating music

Standard 6: Listening to, analyzing, and describing music

Standard 7: Evaluating music and music performances

The lab PS161 received from the VH1 Save the Music Foundation is simple, affordable, and effective. It is built around the Korg GEC3 Group Education Controller, which is a multistation group music-instruction mixer that allows for as many as 64 students at 32 instruments to practice, participate in lectures, and work in large and small groups. All students have a headset microphone that allows them to hear their instrument, their teachers, and other students — as the teacher chooses (see Fig. 2). In a setting such as PS161, in which classes can become quite large, two students can work independently at a single keyboard instrument without disturbing each other.

FIG. 4: David Haiman teaches electric guitar to late-elementary students at PS180, Hugo Newman School, on Manhattan’s upper west side.

The GEC3 allows teachers in keyboard and group guitar labs to listen in anonymously and help the students individually or in groups. Teachers can group students in pairs, trios, quartets, and larger ensembles, with few restrictions. A live mix can be created of any student's performance or of ensembles of any size, and the class can listen to and evaluate the music. A student or group can even be recorded to tape, CD, or computer hard disk to share with their families, administrators, and others.

Students and teachers have Casio CTK671 multitimbral electronic keyboards that include several hundred sounds, with layers and splits. The sound set is General MIDI (GM) compatible, meaning it includes the standard 128 GM Level 1 sounds and drum kits. The CTK671 offers fine-sounding auto-accompaniment rhythms that are fun to play and practice with, and its 5-track MIDI sequencer allows students to record performances and compositions.

MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
Some of the VH1 Save the Music Lab recipients have classrooms with a single computer. Sometimes their district or school provides a Mac or PC. You'd be surprised what you can accomplish with one computer and a little planning and creativity.

I recently provided a full-day professional-development workshop for teachers in the St. Louis (Missouri) Public Schools, where six elementary schools recently implemented keyboard labs. The St. Louis elementary schools have Windows-based PCs that can be interfaced with their lab's teacher-station General MIDI keyboard synthesizer. The computers are provided by the city school system.

As I worked with the St. Louis teachers this fall, we brainstormed a fun, one-computer classroom extension to the “Numbers, Numbers, Numbers” lesson (see the sidebar “Numbers, Numbers, Numbers”), using a new Sibelius program called Compass. Compass is available for Macintosh and Windows computers and includes a complete set of music lessons, audio and score examples, assessment, and projects. The content is focused on the musical elements: form, pitch, rhythm, and so on.

FIG. 5: Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge works with music students at Earl Lawson Elementary School, in her hometown of Leavenworth, Kansas.

Compass comes with a sister program called Compass Tracker, which is a simple MIDI sequencer. Tracker includes a Toolbox with 60 student MIDI activities, all written to correspond to musical elements covered in Compass. Within the Tracker Toolbox we discovered a Pitch Generator tool that takes any series of numbers or letters and converts them to melodies. For instance, I typed “music music music” into the Pitch Generator, and it created a melody for me (see Fig. 3). Every space was converted to a rest, and each letter in the word “music” was assigned to a pitch in a tone row.

Melodies created by the Pitch Generator can be added to a new sequence or song in Tracker. As an extension to the “Numbers, Numbers, Numbers” lesson, the St. Louis teachers and I created a melody part in Tracker using the Toolbox Pitch Generator. We selected a timbre — Electronic Piano 1 (GM 005) — for that melody; added a rhythm accompaniment, selecting a reggae beat from Tracker's library of rhythms; and created a third part for accompaniment, selecting a Major 5 progression (I-IV-V-V7-vi) from Tracker's library of chord progressions.

For teachers with a keyboard lab and one computer, I highly recommend Sibelius Compass. Other good additions to a music teacher's arsenal of tools include notation programs for worksheets and printing student compositions as scores, such as MakeMusic's Finale or PrintMusic, or Sibelius, and computer-aided instruction programs for drill and practice, such as Harmonic Vision's Music Ace and Sibelius's Instruments and StarClass (180 lessons for elementary, tied to the MENC standards). All of these programs are available for Macintosh and Windows computers.

You also will want a digital audio sequencer (music-production program) to record MIDI and audio performances of student projects. There are many such programs; affordable and user-friendly examples include Cakewalk Home Studio for Windows, Apple GarageBand for Mac, and Steinberg Cubase SE for Mac or Windows.

I'LL TAKE MANHATTAN
Many VH1 Save the Music lab recipients implement group electric-guitar programs instead of group electronic-keyboard programs. David Haiman is a music teacher at PS180, Hugo Newman School, on Manhattan's upper west side. He teaches electric guitar in small and large groups to late-elementary students (see Fig. 4).

PS180's electric-guitar lab includes a Korg GEC lab controller (an older model, not the GEC3) for 16 student guitar stations; a DeArmond electric guitar and Korg ToneWorks Pandora effects processor for each station, with tuner, metronome, and grooves to practice with; Warner Brothers Publications 20^th Century Guitar Method, by Aaron Stang; and monitor speakers that are at the teacher's station in order to broadcast any individual student or group of students to the class. The students are equipped with combination headphone-microphones.

Haiman combines his substantial experience as a guitarist and percussionist with an interest in world music to create exciting student projects and experiences. His classroom has enough space to move and stretch out with percussion instruments and guitars. Students play through the lab system, controlled by the GEC, rather than playing live through amps. With the guitar-amp models and effects in the Pandora, they can practice individually and in small groups without disturbing each other or other classes in the school, which is usually a big problem with electric-guitar instruction in schools.

On a recent visit, I saw students in the electric-guitar lab learning blues progressions, playing along with accompaniments from the Pandora, and improvising on a simple blues scale. Haiman used a tape recorder to capture student performances from the GEC teacher controller.

Here are several practical ideas that Haiman has found effective:

• Record your students often, whether to tape, CD, or hard disk.

• Encourage other performance instruments to join in, including vocalists.

• Take your budding guitarists out of the lab and have them perform in concerts.

• Create class recordings for parents, administrators, and the community.

These techniques can all be implemented by any guitar-class teacher and offer many benefits, including raising the profile of your program, which in turn helps build local support.

MUSIC FROM THE HEARTLAND
Leavenworth is in rural Kansas, near Kansas City. The Leavenworth school system recently received support from the VH1 Save the Music Foundation. The program was jump-started with the help of Grammy Award — winning singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge, a hometown hero who grew up in Leavenworth's schools (see Fig. 5).

The Earl Lawson Elementary School was the first of six Leavenworth schools to get keyboard labs. Cheryl Tellez is a first-year teacher at Lawson and had never before taught in an electronic keyboard lab. She teaches traditional keyboard skills, music reading, rhythm, singing, and recorder in her classroom and uses an interesting approach to integrating keyboards into her general music teaching.

Tellez uses familiar songs to teach her students to sing, play, read, and write music. Once students know and can sing a song, they clap and vocalize melodies and rhythms. After they have spoken and clapped melodies and songs, they transfer what they've learned to the keyboards in the lab. The students play songs with accompaniments that Tellez generates at her teacher Casio CTK-691 keyboard in the lab, and they can select accompaniments in styles they choose. They then play along with the accompaniments for the teacher, for partners, or for the class.

SUCCESS IN SACRAMENTO
Jerry Hicks teaches music and English-language skills to students who come to Success CHESS Academy in the Sacramento City Unified School District in California, another recipient of VH1 Save the Music support. Students attend Success Academy if they've been expelled for one reason or another, and work with Jerry and the other teachers at the Academy for relatively short periods of time to earn their way back into their regular school classroom.

Hicks' classroom is striking, as it is two spaces combined into one. On one side is a traditional classroom where English language and literacy skills, math, and other subjects are taught. Adjacent is a 16-station, 32-student keyboard lab. Students who work successfully in reading, writing, and other subjects have an opportunity to make music, playing keyboard and composing. In addition to learning traditional keyboard skills, students compose grooves and accompaniments for raps and songs they have written.

Success Academy's music program encourages students to connect reading and writing with music composition and performance, with creative, tangible outcomes: songs with original lyrics, in defined, formal structures.

Hicks' language-arts students compose stories and poems in specific forms and styles. They then create accompaniments to rap or sing along with.

You can work with your language-arts teachers to develop similar projects that meet the standards of both the MENC and National Council of Teachers of English. Students can create accompaniments using programs like PG Music's Band-in-a-Box or Apple's GarageBand. Record the student projects using a digital audio sequencer, and make CDs or post the recordings to a class Web site. You also might have your students study standard song forms from a variety of eras and locate poetry and other written works that can be set to music.

EVERYBODY'S DOING IT
These Save the Music keyboard and guitar-lab success stories are inspiring. Programs quickly grow from literally nothing — no music teacher, no classroom, no music — to amazing heights. PS 161 went from nothing to 500 program participants in three years. There are hundreds of keyboard and electric-guitar programs, involving tens of thousands of students, in cities across the country, from Los Angeles to New York City, from Houston to Milwaukee, and from West Palm Beach to Philadelphia.

Thanks to Save the Music Foundation's commitment and the dedication of hundreds of talented teachers who know how to think out of the box and make things happen. Students in these programs meet the MENC standards every day, and many are involved in programs that meet literacy and math standards, too.

If these stories inspire you, and if you can take any of these strategies and use them in your labs and classrooms, please return the gesture. You can share good keyboard and lab teaching ideas with the teachers in this article and others by writing to me directly (leew@soundtree.com) or by writing to MET (meteditorial@primediabusiness.com), and we will share your comments on the Web at www.metmagazine.com and possibly in future MET articles. I'll also collect your ideas and make them available to all the Save the Music lab recipients around the county.

Make a difference!

Lee Whitmore is the managing director of SoundTree, Korg USA's education division, and is the treasurer of the Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME).

FIG. A: It's easy to prepare a handout with a tone row like this one for Dr. Frankel's "Numbers, Numbers, Numbers" exercise.

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers
The VH1 Save the Music keyboard labs include curricular resources and training in the form of a professional-development session with classroom and lab-experienced teachers, such as Dr. James Frankel of Franklin Avenue Middle School in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey. Dr. Frankel (a MET magazine contributor) is the author of Teaching Classroom Music in the Keyboard Lab, a 15-unit course of instruction for elementary and secondary general music. Alfred's Basic Group Piano course is also used to teach general keyboard skills.

With Dr. Frankel's curriculum, classroom teachers have access to months of standards-tied lessons that incorporate music reading, pitch and rhythm, composition, and other general-music concepts. One of the most interesting units is “Numbers, Numbers, Numbers,” in which young students, starting in elementary school, compose and learn about serial-composition techniques. That may sound complicated for elementary school students but it's not, and the lessons you build around the concept can be quite fun. It's is an easy way to get your students composing, no matter what their level of expertise.

The objective is for students to demonstrate their understanding of the different degrees of a major scale and the process of composition by creating a piece of music that uses sequences of numbers that dictate the sequence of pitches. Materials include a networked keyboard lab with headset microphones and General MIDI — capable keyboards and a handout with a tone row (see Fig. A). National Standards accomplished include Standard 2, performing on instruments alone and with others; Standard 4, composing to and arranging music within specified guidelines; and Standard 6, listening to, analyzing, and describing music.

Start by giving the students a copy of the tone row, projecting it from your computer, or writing the row on a chalkboard. Then, introduce the concept of using sequences of numbers to compose melodies. For example, using a seven-digit phone number. Each scale degree would represent a number, so 555-1212 would indicate starting with the fifth degree of the scale, in this case G (see Fig. B).

With headset microphones turned on in the keyboard lab system, “lecture” to the class, playing the resulting melody of the example (555-1212), using GM sound 010, Glockenspiel. Then have the students create rhythms for melodies on their own. With the lab system in Practice mode, students can practice the example tune you demonstrated. Next, with the lab system in Group mode, students can work in pairs, trios, or quartets and create their own number sequences. After sufficient time (more than one class session), students should share their finished work with the class, with headset microphones off, while you select and play groups through the classroom speakers connected to the lab system.

FIG. B: A seven-digit phone number makes a great example for introducing the concept of using sequences of numbers to compose melodies. Each scale degree would represent a number, so 555-1212 would indicate starting with the fifth degree of the scale, in this case G.

Dr. Frankel has suggested a great extension to the “Numbers, Numbers, Numbers” lesson that connects with math: use a number like pi to create melodies from a tone row, and record them. This past year a student at the new Creative and Performing Arts High School (CAPA) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, used a Korg Triton keyboard and an Apple Macintosh computer running Mac OS X and Propellerhead's Reason synthesizer-workstation software to create melodies, accompaniment tracks, noise, and speech. From this, the student composed a complete, original work in which every element of the piece, including the form, was based on pi.

(“Numbers, Numbers, Numbers” lesson excerpt is from Teaching Classroom Music in the Keyboard Lab, by Dr. James Frankel. Copyright 2004 by SoundTree, Melville, NY. This excerpt has been reprinted with permission of the publisher and has been reedited for MET's purposes.)

Product Contacts
Apple Computer tel. (408) 996-1010; Web www.apple.com

Cakewalk tel. (888) CAKEWALK or (617) 423-9004; email sales@cakewalk.com; Web www.cakewalk.com

Casio tel. (973) 361-5400; Web www.casio.com

Harmonic Vision tel. (800) 474-0903; email sales@harmonicvision.com; Web www.harmonicvision.com

Korg USA tel. (631) 390-6500; Web www.korg.com

MakeMusic tel. (800) 843-2066 or (952) 937-9611; email finalesales@makemusic.com; Web www.makemusic.com

Propellerhead Software/M-Audio (distributor) tel. (800) 969-6434 or (626) 633-9050; email info@propellerheads.se; Web www.propellerheads.se

Sibelius Software tel. (925) 280-0600; email infoUSA@sibelius.com; Web www.sibelius.com

SoundTree tel. (800) 963-TREE (8733) or (631) 393-8535; Web www.soundtree.com

Steinberg tel. (877) 253-3900; email info@steinberg.net; Web www.steinberg.net

TI:ME (Technology Institute for Music Educators) tel. (610) 519-7215; email TimeMusEd@ti-me.org; Web www.ti-me.org

VH1 Save the Music Foundation tel. (888) VH1-4MUSIC (841-4687); Web www.vh1.com/partners/save_the_music/home.html