The Music Exhibition: A Storied Composition

For the past six weeks, students in grades 7 & 8 have been working to record and compose audiobooks of Aesop’s Fables for their Music Exhibition. To begin, students chose an Aesop’s Fable and considered the mood and drama of the fable. Next, they created a plan for how they would record the story, what sound effects they would use, and how they would use music to create the mood for their fable. They considered instrumentation and musical style. 

After they created a plan, students began working in Soundtrap, a digital audio workstation. They recorded themselves reading their fable and added sound effects. They used the loop library in Soundtrap or created their own loops. Using these loops, they composed a prelude (introductory music), two interludes (music in the middle of the story), and a postlude (music at the end of the story). The final product was a 3-4 minute audiobook. 

On Nov. 15, students presented their audiobooks to an audience of their peers, parents, and teachers. Each student spoke about the process of creating their audiobook and then premiered their composition.