Getting Started Teaching the DAW
Choosing the right DAW, accompanying technologies, and lessons to enhance your students music experiences.
Learning where to look is the hardest part of starting. Thankfully you’ve come to the right place! In this article, I’ll break down the best way to get started teaching the DAW, what tools to invest in, recommended resources, and lessons that have rocked in the music classroom! There’s no time to waste, so let’s jump in!
So, what is a DAW?
The acronym is short for “digital audio workstation”, an all-in-one computer application used for composing and creating music. When deciding on using music technology in the classroom, looking for the right DAW is a good place to start since it’s a full-proof way of engaging your students in most of the modern music industry disciplines like songwriting, audio engineering, music production, music performance and more. It’s also interdisciplinary, allowing your students to make connections between other related academic subjects (and STEM subjects).
Picking your Classroom DAW
There are two different categories of DAW application’s; those that are downloaded and stored on the computers hard drive, and others that are only available online through the internet. We call these software and web-based DAW’s. Selecting the right one is going to be based on your schools current (and near-future) technology devices. Here is an outline of what devices are best suited for certain DAW’s.
Web-based DAW’S - website applications that host editable music project files. All recording, looping, editing, exporting and sharing is done online. Teachers have access to all student profiles, providing a secure space for teachers to assign and access projects, give feedback, collaborate and more. Audio quality is good and built in effects and features are easy to use and good quality. Here are some examples of web-based DAW’s. The ones marked with an asterisk have EDU capabilities.
Bandlab *
It’s best to take a few for a test drive and see how you like the interface. Some of them are a bit more minimalistic, while others boast a ton of features and assets. Once you’ve decided on the one you like, try making a song using some of the built-in loops. The web-based DAW’s will have a lot to offer, but be mindful that for some of your more experienced students, they might feel limited. That’s where it’s also good to consider professional software DAW’s, which we’ll discuss next…