Course title

Music Production 2

Pre-requisite

Music Production 1

Course description

The Young Producers Group Music Production 2 Curriculum builds on the fundamentals covered in our Music Production 1 Curriculum. The first course explores the basic functions of a digital audio workstation and how music composition principles are exercised using those tools. Music Production 2 delves into more advanced and technical functions within music production software and encourages students to elevate their songwriting and musicality with more substantial projects. While staying aligned with the music VAPA standards, this course explores sampling, synthesizers, digital signal processing, and other essential principles for modern music making. This second course in the YPG Music Production Curricula completes students’ tool belts and gives them all the techniques and know-how they need to make any music that speaks to them. Much of the pedagogy is the same between the two courses, but the subject matter, scope of the projects, and technical demands will all be at a much higher level. Everything still revolves around writing original music. Composition serves as the vehicle for students to put their knowledge into practice. Each unit revolves around a single, substantial project that requires students to synthesize all of the interconnected skills related to a specific concept like sampling into a piece of music. There are smaller projects, activities, and games peppered throughout the curriculum, but the main project drives much of learning in each unit. These projects more closely reflect the work of professionals that compose and produce full-length, well-mixed songs. Students will continue to develop their abilities to participate in creative discourse and critique, responding to each other’s work and connecting their music to societal, cultural, and historical contexts. At the end of every major project, students share their work in what we call a listening party. Each song is followed by a discussion where students share what they perceived and analyze what is working in the song and what could be improved. The teacher models the process and helps establish the criteria for evaluating each other’s creative work. Ultimately, the goals of this course are for students to develop mastery of the processes and techniques used in making music, film scores, podcasts and other media with music technology, express themselves and their cultures through creating full songs with and without lyrics, recognize and identify why a peer’s project or an example piece from the marketplace is working or not using relevant language when presenting an analysis, and to connect their work and that of their peers to the rich histories and ever-evolving world of music and media. Students will leave the class empowered to make whatever they want with music technology as well as with a solid understanding of how they can apply these skills professionally across the music industry and modern media landscapes.

School country

United States

School state

California

School city

Los Angeles

High school

Carson High School Los Angeles Country High School for the Arts Theodore Roosevelt High School

School / district Address

2317 Edgewater Terrace

School zip code

90039

Requested competency code

Fine Arts

Date submitted

02/8/2024

Approved

Yes

Approved competency code

• CTE
• Career and technical education

Approved date

02/22/2024

Expected grade level

10th

Online / Virtual

No