The teacher plays an extract from Pierre Schaeffer's 'Étude aux chemins de fer' (1948), built from recordings of trains, and explains that he worked with recordings on discs, changing sounds by slowing them down and repeating fragments in loops. Over two lessons each student records ten sounds around the school site, such as a bell, footsteps on stairs, a running tap and a closing door, without recording anyone's voice, and loads them into GarageBand's Sampler. Playing a sound lower or higher on the keyboard changes its pitch, and the Reverse button plays it backwards; students try each change, listen, undo it if it does not work and layer the results on separate tracks. The finished 90-second piece must follow an arc they can describe, for example quiet to busy to quiet, and they hand it in with a timeline sketch naming each altered sound.
Tools: GarageBand Nine ideas for your own version in Generate
This page is one of a growing set of PICRAT examples by cell, subject and grade. Page maintained by Andy Perryer.