Have you ever thought about where music can take you? Everyone has a favorite song, but few are able to fully produce one. At Minnetonka High School, we are lucky to have a robust and wonderful arts program that allows students to study everything from jazz to orchestral pieces and band instruments to music theory. However, there is one thing in particular that would provide even more opportunities in the arts – a class dedicated to the advanced production of music.
There already exists an elective tied to “Music Technology,” diving into what it takes to lay out tracks and how to navigate production software. However, from what the online “Skipper Log” shows, there is only one level for this course, meaning a student would only be able to take it once before they are left to their own devices in music composition.
Dylan Corey, ‘24, is the founder of Music Production Club and has taken this course. “The course is a good introduction to digital music production, but I think the software used is a little limiting,” he says. “I could see digital music production being incorporated into a class similar to VANTAGE Multimedia Communications, since the program deals with video production and story-telling through various types of media.”
I myself am very interested in the development of songwriting, and have been searching for a course like this outside of our school for some time. I have played the bass for about eight years, and have been interested in expanding my creative medium to digital looping and composition, but the opportunities to learn how to use these tools are limited outside of school.
This new type of class would allow students the chance to create, mix, produce, and share their own music in a fashion beyond what many parts of the arts program does not currently offer, and in a way that builds off of Music Technology. Our school already offers opportunities for sharing original music in programs like Coffeehouse. Thus, a course that bolsters this creativity would only provide further outlets of opportunity for all students. Every producer had to get their start somewhere. With opportunities like this provided at our school, the next Jack Antonoff or DJ Khaled could be walking the halls of MHS at this moment.
Tanner Holte, the advisor for Music Production Club, says “For music production, learning is doing, so the only thing necessary to be successful is a desire to experiment and try new things.” Holte is also a computer science teacher and connects his interest in music production to his studies of it in college. He says that there are many forms of learning how to produce music that can be met at all levels of expertise. “On one hand, there are some amazing software programs that practically let us drag and drop sounds onto a timeline, and we can have a completed song in an hour. On the other, there is also a lot of technical depth to how sound waves can be built from an oscillator, how music is mixed and mastered, and more.”
In the end, music production, quite simply, can be a course implemented for the betterment of everybody. As a club, it has already made a difference. “I think the music production club has made me happier since I am frequently surrounded by many creative ideas that my friends have,” Corey says.
No matter a student’s level of understanding, music production is something that can be taught with relative ease. Through the creation of an advanced music production class, all students could have the opportunity to express themselves in a brand new way.
