Hi friends!
It’s been a busy first couple of weeks of summer at BeatNest. I just finished teaching two back-to-back workshops at the Berkshire Music School. The first was part of the Adventures in Music program for kids 5 – 9 years old. At this program, the kids spend the day at different workshops taught by a variety of teachers ranging from movement class to instrument building. My class was a big success! The kids were very interested in learning about electronic music and I provided many cool toys for them to make noise with 🙂 One 7-year-old proudly proclaimed that her DJ stage name is DJ Koalagirl (So we’ll have to look for her on the mainstage in the future!). I heard from the faculty that the kids were all talking about how much they loved it!
The second class that I taught was for kids 10 – 14 years old. Since any form of music technology is new to the school, I took all the equipment I needed to teach from my studio and set up a makeshift classroom. It took a bit of figuring out, but I was able to set up two back-to-back fully equipped workstations for the kids to use. This workshop also went very well. Each kid went home with a piece of music that they had made from start to finish. We blew through a bunch of topics in three days including sequencing, arrangement, song structure, and sound design so I hope I didn’t overload their brains too much! Some of the kids had no musical background at all, and some have been playing for years, but none have had experience with music production so it was a real treat to show them the ropes!
I hope Berkshire Music School has me back for more workshops!
For the rest of the summer, I have a handful of regular students (who are all working on really cool projects) and maybe some events coming up. (I was supposed to attend a pitch contest soon to promote BeatNest, but it was unfortunately canceled).
Stay tuned for BeatNest’s revamped program starting in the fall!
