Tool: Shed The Music
Bob Habersat is a high school guitar, music tech, and theory teacher at the Oak Lawn Community High School in Oak Lawn, Illinois. He is also the co-founder of an incredible resource for music teachers called Shed The Music. I saw Bob at both the GMEA and OMEA shows over the past two weeks, and realized that I' haven’t promoted his site in a while. Here goes!
What Bob has done so successfully at Shed The Music is looping in music theory from popular music to teach students music fundamentals. Here’s how he phrases it:
Shedthemusic is centered around empowering students through the authentic creation and performance of pop music. Engagement is balanced with the rigor of skill acquisition by meeting students where they are with the music they like.
I love Bob’s approach and his collection of videos are well produced, filled with engaging content, and often hilarious. The previous version of his website had a collection of awesome videos that taught students all about the fundamentals of music, including rhythm, harmony, melody, as well as jazz. You can still find these videos in the archived version of his site. He also has lots of free resources, as well as three complete curricula for teaching students:
Recently, Bob created a Teacher and Student portal so that teachers can have a complete online experience for their students in terms of assigning and turning in assignments. MusicFirst is very proud to partner with Shed The Music to offer his Production Through Performance Curriculum as a Premium Content addition to the MusicFirst Classroom. The Production Through Performance curriculum can be paired with Soundtrap and Noteflight Learn when purchased in the MusicFirst Classroom, allowing students to go and complete their assigned tasks in the software using our Single Sign On functionality.
If you are already a MusicFirst Classroom customer, you’ll find a link to the Shed The Music archive site in the Resources tab.
I urge you to check out Bob’s work, and if you see him at a conference, shake his hand and say thanks! Your students will love using Shed The Music.