Dubspot is proud to announce our new partnership with Rockstar Games, which surrounds their ground-breaking new music making program, Beaterator. Going way beyond a simple video game, Beaterator is a self-contained music making system, with far-reaching capabilities and cutting edge design and function.
Through this partnership, Dubspot has agreed to bring our educational expertise to the table, and develop a curriculum for the program, harnessing Beaterator’s capabilities and channeling them towards music education for kids.
Our unique 2-hour workshops provide an introduction to music making with mobile technology via Sony’s PlayStation Portable (PSP). The objective of the workshops isn’t necessarily to just teach the tool; even in a short period of time, students can significantly increase their knowledge of compositional and musical materials through the filter of this application.
We will be leaving each school 2 Sony PSP systems and Beaterator titles for future use in the classroom. We’ll schedule one class period for hands-on work with the students (see outline below), plus an additional period for follow-up. This is really an opportunity for us to get your input for these kinds of programs in the future, too.
Musical practice has always been an opportunity for young people to be active creators, to engage critical and expressive faculties, rather than simply act as passive consumers. Mobile technology offers a new window into those kinds of expression, composition, and musical play.
Sony’s PSP is technically a game platform, but it’s also a handheld computer that can match the processing capabilities of desktop computer systems from only a few years in the past. Rockstar’s Beaterator employs that power to make studio production tools portable, as a game developer discovers that creative interaction can go well beyond the conventional realm of games. Reaching beyond modes for casual play, one finds editing features, signal processing, and production tools that work just as desktop computer equivalents do. At the same time, its portability can encourage play and experimentation not possible with conventional studio tools.
This project will reach out to young people to give them basic tools for exploring compositional ideas, extending their musical abilities and voice to the digital medium. Rather than simply rearranging loops, a brief workshop will introduce them to compositional and arranging tools, and help them sample their own performances with voice, instruments, and found sound to produce truly original creations.
By documenting the feedback from students and educators, the project also seeks to discover how a game developer’s users can interact with a tool creatively, and how mobile digital technology can work with music education. Bridging the gap between “play” and “education,” this pilot program can find new media for musical learning and discovery.
(A more detailed lesson plan will be provided)