Technology For Musical Futures Projects

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Any of us who have undertaken any of the Musical Futures projects in our schools will be aware of the basic requirements of space, staffing and equipment. Space and staffing are not easily changed, but equipment is an area where changes can be made. There are grants available and some schools may have sympathetic senior management who may be able to find some extra money from somewhere. Here is an example from Phil Simpson, Performing Arts Technician, Forest Hill School

In an ideal world, a MuFu room could be something like this:

Drum kit

Acoustic or electronic – both have their pros and cons. Acoustic kits give a better feel but are loud. Electronic kits give more control over volume but lead to fiddling – there’s many interesting and intriguing sounds on them

Bass &

bass amp

Don’t buy the cheapest you can find. Yamaha is a good start for the bass as they don’t compromise on quality, even at entry-level prices. As for the amp, at a bare minimum, the Roland Bass Cube is ok volume-wise. It’s rated at just 30 watts, but loud enough to compete with an acoustic kit. Avoid Behringer or Marshall 25 watt amps, they’re cheap, but they just haven’t got enough power.

Guitar &

guitar amp

2 of these. Again, avoid the cheapest. Squire strats are ideal. As for the amp, a small Marshall combo or Roland Cube are fine. The cube has better sounds, but the Marshall is more rugged. As with all their Cube range, the nuts on all the sockets are plastic and won’t last 5 minutes with heavy-handed kids. More on this later.

Keyboards

Any electric piano or decent synth will do. An acoustic piano is no good at all – it just won’t be heard. Running the keyboard through the PA is the way to go here.

Vocals

Shure PG58 mics are fine. They’re fairly cheap, but also fairly rugged. Shure SM58s are better as they have no switch – one less component to fail. They’re also a higher quality mic – the industry standard for live work. Consequently, they’re almost twice the price of the PG58.

P.A.

Your minimum here is 250 watts, with at least 2 mic inputs and a twin phono input for playback. As simple as possible is best - there’s less to go wrong and less to be fiddled with.

Playback

iMac. It’s a CD player and mp3 player all in one and avoids a massive problem inherent with using PCs as media libraries. Every time a pupil plugs in a new USB stick with their songs on, a PC asks for an administrator password. In most schools, teaching staff won’t have those details. If you do buy a new Mac, make sure you get the wired keyboard and mouse. They’re less pinch-able and there’s a handy USB socket on the side of the keyboard. Later on, you might think about recording some of the pupil’s work, at which point the iMac becomes the core of a very reliable studio.

In terms of layout and longevity, there are various methods you can adopt. We have guitars, basses and cables stored on hooks on the walls, as some of our rooms are very small. In an ideal situation, and with enough guitar stands, you’d have the space to keep everything set up. We could manage this in 4 of our rooms but not in the other 5, so everything gets put away each lesson. Supposedly. Tidying up is also not a bad way to control excitement levels before the pupils go on to their next lesson. If stuff gets put away and set up each lesson, even if it’s just plugging in leads, you’re going to get damage to sockets, both on the instruments and the amps. One golden rule is to not let the pupils sit on the amps, so you’re going to need either guitar straps, or chairs.

Meanwhile, Back In The Real World…

So you’ve got 1 room, 1 music teacher and very little money. Where do you start? Assuming you’ve got the basic instruments, i.e. a drumkit, a guitar, a bass and a keyboard, your first purchase may well be something like a PG58 mic and a Roland KC150 (or the KC350 if you can afford it). The KC is a 4-input full-range keyboard combo amp (amplifier and speaker), so you can stick everything through it. There’s a proper mic input (XLR, not jack) and 3 other inputs, plus an auxiliary for your playback source. What’s more, they’re fairly portable. We often use just a KC350 for bands in assembly (time constraints!) and it just about carries vocals, bass, keys and guitar across an assembly of more than 1200 boys. If your school doesn’t have any PA gear in the assembly hall, senior management may well be interested in splitting the cost.

Your next item is a simple playback library. A computer is ideal as you can add stuff to the media library in Windows Media Player (or iTunes if you’re enlightened) and avoid the hassle of having to make CDs, which will inevitably get scratched, lost, used as frisbees, etc. Having it connected to the internet is useful, as the pupils can search for guitar tab, chord sheets and lyrics when necessary. If you’re providing the tunes to add into the library, once your USB stick has been authorised, it should continue to work so you’ll only need to hassle your IT people once. If the pupils are bringing in their own stuff on USB sticks, you’re either going to need to have the admin password (unlikely) or have the IT people on standby at the start of the lesson. Or just get a Mac.

After that, it’s down to a simple balance of cost against usage. Again, never buy the cheapest stuff, it will fail on you and that’s frustrating for everyone. We use primarily Roland gear, as we were fortunate enough to be part of the MuFu Champion schools programme and got lots of toys for silly money. The build quality is decent enough, apart from the stupid choice of plastic nuts on sockets. But bear in mind that kids are able to break anything, given enough time and not enough stimulus, so there’s no significant difference between any of the major manufacturers in terms of lifespan. Your best plan is to make sure you give them clear instruction in how to safely and responsibly use the equipment, and then keep an eye on things. Obviously drum sticks and guitar strings get broken during normal use, so budget for spares, but you may want to consider a system where you charge pupils for breakages if, and only if, they were blatantly mistreating the equipment.

And finally, remember that MuFu projects are flexible. There’s always a way of adapting the projects to fit your situation and resources. MuFu is an attitude, not just a bunch of kids rocking out. Although that’s cool too.

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