Middle School Orchestra Students Create Their Own Remix!

Middle School Orchestra Director Nat Erde provided a fun and educational challenge to Orchestra students at West Hills and East Hills Middle Schools recently: create a remix, or variation, and present it in a video.

For this project, 6th - 8th grade Orchestra students chose a song or exercise from class and altered two aspects of the music, such as key signature, tempo, rhythm, articulation, or dynamics.

Max Triantafyllidis, a West Hills 6th grader who plays the viola, chose the “C major scale, because it was a fun song with many ups and downs.” Triantafyllidis’ favorite part was “seeing how my song came out with the changes. I like that I can learn more things every day about the instrument that I play!” 

Video projects like this help boost a student’s musical confidence, and teach students musical terminology and technical skills that will last a lifetime. And as Mr. Erde noted, "It is wonderful to see each student's individual creativity shine through!" 

To see some student examples of this video project, click here and here!