Essex Primary at the Forest Gate City Learning Centre

Essex Primary followed up their blues workshop by coming to the Forest Gate City Learning Centre in April/May to record their own backing track for their class-composed blues song.

On their first visit, they learned how to use GarageBand, a music composition programme on the Mac which allows users to choose from a bank of readymade loops, or samples, to create pieces of music. In the afternoon they learnt how to transfer their knowledge of the 12-bar blues onto GarageBand.

After selecting a drum track with a bluesy feel, they used keyboards and composed their own walking bass lines. Getting into the more complex elements of Garageband, they learnt how to change the pitch to make their bass line follow the pattern of the 12-bar blues.

On their second visit to the CLC, they added tracks to create a harmony for their blues song and then used keyboards to compose melodic introductions and 'breaks' based on improvisations on the blues scale.

Click here to listen to one of their finished blues backing tracks:

Sana and Nujmin's Blues backing track

Listen to the children singing with one of their own backing tracks:

Essex Primary children singing their blues song at the CLC

Later on, the children composed pieces of 'ambient' music as the soundtrack for the Wednesday night performance of the Freedom Project. Fawjia and Mary composed a piece for a scene in which an albino slave is being shown off at a 'Birds and Beasts' show.

Soundtrack music for the Birds and Beasts show

Thank you Essex children and teachers for your hard work.