This school year, Woodhaven High School introduced a new elective called music production. This class is a lot like what it sounds like. The students learn to make beats and music using technology and other instruments.
Fortunately, the school got the highly sought-after J Dilla Music Technology Grant, which brings them tens of thousands of dollars worth of nice music technology, production equipment, instruments, and software to help support the class. This grant was produced by the Save The Music Foundation Program. It was made to help support public schools by funding music education and creation.
J Dilla was a famous record producer, composer, and rapper. J Dilla was just 32 when he died of cardiac arrest after being hospitalized for pneumonia and lupus. He made a big impact on producers and composers nationwide. American writer Margo Jefferson said, “J Dilla turned what one generation deemed musical error into what the next knew to be musical innovation. In this splendid book, Dan Charnas offers an uncanny mix of research and vision, documentation and interpretation, plenitude and momentum. Dilla Time is definitive. And exhilarating.”
When he was young, Dilla would compete in rap battles with his friends at his high school. His mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey, said that he could match perfect pitch before he could even talk. He would stay in the basement, alone for hours, training to make beats.
Dilla started his career in the mid-1990s as a rapper in the underground hip-hop scene of Detroit, Michigan. He met musician Amp Fiddler, who let him use a music workstation, which he quickly mastered. He signed his first record label with MC Phat Kat, becoming the first hip-hop group to sign with a big label: PayDay Records. His career only skyrocketed from there. Although his life span was short, he is known as one of the most influential producers in hip-hop.
This J Dilla grant included time spent with the one and only music producer, artist, musician, songwriter, and teacher, Darell “Red” Campbell. Campbell has had great success throughout his life, including his high school years. He went to Detroit Cass Technical High School and learned string instruments through the Detroit Symphony Civic Orchestra.
Campbell has worked with many artists such as Eminem and Stevie Wonder. He has been all around the US, and now lends his creative opportunities to children around the nation at public high schools.
Now, with this being the first year that music production is being run, there isn’t much information about it throughout the district websites nor is there a lot of knowledge about it from the other teachers and staff. This year, music production is very small, mostly because of the lack of knowledge and advertisement for the class last school year.
Back to the grant, every single student part of this class gets their own mini keyboard, their own pair of headphones, a microphone, and a stand for the microphone. This all came with the grant the class got. This grant really changed how Faryniarz runs his class and he is beyond thrilled about it.
The kits they all got are theirs to keep for the semester. They help the students with a great deal of success and help them become better music producers. To create music and beats, the students use a website called soundtrap.com.
This site offers a variety of samples including samples of different loops of sounds, beats, voices, and different instruments like drums, violins, bass, guitars, trumpets, woodwinds, et cetera. You can even find samples of people talking, singing, and different sound effects like rain, and other things.
A nice thing about soundtrap is that you can also make music with others. You can form a community with other people on soundtrap, whether that be some people you just met or your friends.
As you can tell, this music production class got extremely lucky in getting this grant. If they did not get this grant, they would not have been able to do what they are doing now, which is a lot more than Faryniarz thought they would be able to do. These students are extremely grateful for the opportunity they have with this class, and many students who couldn’t do it this year, hope to be able to join sometime next year and keep growing the performing arts community.
