The BandLab Film Music booklet has everything from starter pages, step by step lesson guides for students and assessment pages and feedback grids.

The project is more suitable for students who have had some experience of BandLab prior to starting this project. BandLab is the medium through which students are learning and completing activities on, rather than the focus being on learning how to use it for the first time.

The overall concept of the project is to introduce students to Leitmotif, Harmonise chords to fit an existing leitmotif, and then to compose their own leitmotif for a villain, fit it with chords and then introduce either an ostinato or drone (or both) to students to add to their projects. There is also some work on quantizing and structuring work, along with adding automation to their assessment project once it is more complete.

The sequence of lessons in this booklet are designed as follows:
Flexible starter pages at the beginning of the booklet

Lesson 1: Signing up/Logging into Bandlab, Introduction to Leitmotif and learning to play either first 4 bars of Darth Vader’s theme, or 4 bars of Bowser’s theme from Super Mario 64. Some additional leitmotif options are in the booklet, for students to try.*

Lesson 2: Recording a Leitmotif into BandLab. Recording the leitmotif students learned how to play in the previous lesson. could take an extra lesson depending on BandLab progress*

Lesson 3&4: Creating and recording chords for a leitmotif. Introduction to difference between minor and diminished chords, then using chord charts for help, Using either minor or diminished chords to harmonise the leitmotif they recorded. Then, recording the chords onto a separate track on BandLab.

Lesson 5: Composing my own Villain leitmotif. Using notes in the key of either A minor or E minor.

Lesson 6: Composing chords for my own Villain leitmotif. Similar to Lesson 3 and 4, but with their own leitmotif.

Lesson 7&8*: Adding a Drone/rhythmic ostinato, then finishing the Assessment Villain theme. There are additional step by step guides here to add features such as automation, panning, and looking at the structure and texture of their piece.*

any lesson with a * on it will form part of the assessment at the end of the project. could easily take an extra lesson depending on progress and quality of students’ work

Success criteria and assessment feedback pages at back of the booklet.
There are spaces for WWW/EBI feedback after lesson 4 and lesson 6.