Art Clast 4 – BBC News School Report – Music Special

Emma D’s Machinature CD

Emma D (S3, OLSP) has been working hard to finish off her CD Booklet Design that she has created along with the rest of her classmates.

Each pupil had to draw, colour, scribble and paint four separate studies, as well as create two separate transparent prints and write a set of lyrics for a song.

The studies, based on the conflict between nature and machines focused on plants, cogs, circuitry and animal patterns.

Emma’s patterns are extremely neat and vivid, her pen work is interesting and dramatic and along with her fun and dynamic robot painting, she has created a wonderful CD booklet.

The process wasn’t just visual images, Emma and her class were asked to produce or customise a song/lyrics to feature in the booklet. Emma’s lyrics below are based around a song by Adele, though read as if they should be in a Radiohead album.

A beautiful booklet and a great object to keep and look back on in years to come, great work Emma.

Ed Sheeran Logos

I did a little work for a friend of mine about six months ago, his name is Ed Sheeran and he just recently had a No1 iTunes album (just last week). His album, ‘No5 Collaborations Project’, is a mix of singer/songwriter music with London grime/rap.

I’m totally over the moon for him and anyone looking for something a little different than the usual pop-shlop should check him out.

This is the product of eight years of hard grafting and well deserved, when I met up with him last year he was slogging his rucksack around on trains from England to Scotland and selling a few CDs per gig. I’m glad people have come to there senses and given him the opportunity he deserves. Now signed to Atlantic, he has Jamie Foxx looking after him… I’m sure he’s in very good hands. Well done Ed!

Sticks & Stones

The soundtrack from the With/Without short film is available for download or streaming. The track, written and performed by Rosie B and Rachel W is maybe not to everyone’s listening taste, though I think it’s fantastic.

You can now also send me your tracks through Soundcloud and I can feature them if they’re any good. Click on the Soundcloud dropbox at the bottom of the right column.

Beerjacket – ‘Drum’

I was working a day long workshop in Notre Dame on Monday and was able to acquire permission to use Beerjacket’s ‘Drum’ song for use in a music video. Beerjacket is Peter Kelly, a once Glasgow based musician, he writes beautifully sour alt-folk songs.

The video is a shadow puppet short based around a little bear who becomes obsessed with drumming. This leads to some gruesome repercussions and a dramatic end. I’m so proud of the Notredame girls for making this in a day, it’s absolutely amazing.

If you quite like what you hear, you can visit Beerjacket’s site below and listen to more, as well as purchase tracks individually from him for a small fee.

http://beerjacket.bandcamp.com/

Digital Abstraction

Shaunee H from Notredame was asked to recreate her Kandinsky inspired artwork (drawn to the music of ‘Popcorn’) in Photoshop. Having never used the application before, I feel there are great elements here and the piece is interesting enough to return to time and time again. Like all good abstract art, the work should be something that you can revisit, it should be something that you can discover and rediscover. I feel she’s done a great job, especially for only having 30 mins and never using the software or a mouse to draw before.

Treasure In A Jewel Case

So I’ve posted a few examples of S1 CD design previously, though I’ve never actually posted the finished article.

A while back I took two S1 classes on a journey. We travelled through time exploring the history of music packaging and ended up staring at a future without any music packaging at all. We decided that it was an important aspect to music and that losing it only devalues music. By looking at the importance of music packaging and how it’s made, these few S1 pupils can see the effort and thought put into something that they took completely for granted.

The unit existed in three parts. The first part was the common animal pattern design. Pupils looked at four skin types; tiger fur, snake skin, fish scales and peacock feathers. These patterns would end up being the cover of the booklet, the back of the CD jewel case and the actual disc pattern.

The second section evolves around font selecting, cutting and and colouring. To keep a professional look, pupils worked with computer printed fonts and elements such as barcodes to make their design look more like a professional product. The pupils learned the reason for ‘bleeds’ and how a booklet and a case is made up.

The third part is slightly tougher to teach in Art class. Pupils had to come up with lyrics for an imaginary song on the album. Most pupils put words to a song they already knew, or they wrote a poem or rhyme. Some, like the ever talented Heather M even wrote a full song and sung it in front of the entire class. Her voice and ability to write melodies was absolutely amazing.

This four page lyric sheet was then placed inside the pupils’ animal pattern cover and folded to create a CD booklet. The booklet was stapled by pupils, then the title was added. The back and spines were  scored, cut and placed inside the jewel case. The booklet was guillotined and the CD disc pattern was cut with a compass cutter (an actual CD was used as a stencil) . All this was done by the pupils themselves, some of them received help at cutting or stapling, though most can say that the work is 100% theirs (I typed the lyrics, though typeface choice and words were the pupils’ own) .

When It’s O.K. To Have CD Filler

Today’s free resource (the third of seven for this week) is for S1 classes. For those that don’t use the ‘P & S’ system, that’s for children around the age of 10-12. This sheet was created as absent teacher cover when I had been off during my CD Cover Design unit. The activity requests the pupil to do three tasks; colour with tone, name the areas of the package and then show their music knowledge on the back of the sheet. This will fill a period (50 minutes) quite easily and I even had pupils asking to return to it to guess more artists later on in the project.

As with all my down-loadable resources, you’ll find the link below in the ‘Box’ (bottom of the right hand column).

Another Gleniffer Film Making Club Music Video

This is the 2nd music video made by Gleniffer High School’s Film Making Club. Set to the local Paisley band The Alt‘s song ‘The Jazz Bastart’, the video is based around puppeteering and public television. Created to look lo-fi and punk, the visuals were inspired by the band’s raw, but active sound. Puppets and props were made out of cardboard and as little editing effects were used as possible to make a fun, interesting and quirky addition to the sound. The props took around 2 months to make (over many lunch breaks), while filming itself took place within a week. The video could have been edited with cleaner shots and made to look more believable, but it was decided that out-takes and mistakes should be inserted too, as well as obvious signs of hands and things going wrong to give the look a more carefree ‘whatever’ attitude. There are two distinctive scenes in the video; the first is the band playing on the moon, while the second is an American style Police chase. Again, it was decided that the visuals should not be so certain and each scene was mixed and matched.

Epileptics Beware! – This video has strobe effects in it.

Radiohead Package Design For Intermediate

Over two years ago I devised a unit idea that would look at several large issues concerning design and the music business. The first was the collapse of solid media, in other words, how CDs would become worthless and how music packaging would no longer be collectible for the popular market. The second was how to actually package new music, whether it be an image on an iTunes file or a free PDF booklet with a download, this was no easy task. I finally came to the conclusion that a USB stick would be a marvelous way of allowing people to buy an object, though reduce the cost and packaging, while containing media files and artwork.

I know what you’re thinking… CDs are still around and that they tried the USB stick idea and it wasn’t a big seller. You’re right, though now is not the time or the place to cement your thoughts. The music industry has been in a state of panic now for around 8 years and there is no working template for what will be the next consistent media format.

Just over one year ago Radiohead released their new album ‘In Rainbows‘ as a download for people to pay whatever they saw fit. Before this release the album was rumoured to be called ‘Beware of Monsters’. This unit idea was to foretell what that album would look like and to allow pupils the chance to design something that ‘hadn’t been’.

This idea would push pupils into several states of thought. Firstly, about the changing face of media and technology, then the concept of music packaging and the market and costs involved, environmental issues and then putting political ideas across visually. A lot of teachers would possibly avoid some of these big issues, thinking that they are too big. Having dealt with units similar to this, I believe that this must be the way all art teaching should move. It must encompass all culture, thought and ideas to allow pupils the chance to experience real Art & Design at a professional level, so that when they leave school, they will be better at handling briefs and commissions.

Pupils would explore music media, some of which, they will never have seen or heard before. I was shocked when I introduced Vinyl and Mini Discs to S2 pupils and they hadn’t heard of them before. Why would they though? Music media has moved so fast over the past decade that it isn’t really important what state the music is on, it’s more about what customers want and what they will pay.

After this, then pupils explore news and issues. Modern issues. Things that are happening right now. My image is a little out of date even after just two years, but I’m sure you’ll get the idea of how pupils find magazine or newspaper images and compose them together to make a strong collage.

So as you can see the Critical is embedded into the actual practical work. Pupils should see a connection between the critical work and artists they are studying with the work they are creating. This is more in line with research for higher, college and professional life. Artists study the people and topics they enjoy, to create their own work from it.

This unit idea was completed as a student, then slightly reworked to make it possible to produce three sheets for the intermediate unit. I haven’t had the chance to try the idea out yet, but I would really like to know what pupils and other teachers think of it. Comments would be appreciated.