Greetings BeatNest crew!
I am so delighted to announce that we had such a successful three weeks of summer camp here at BeatNest! Lots of new students were able to experience our program as well as returning members. Each week we focused on something new: Djing, songwriting and live performance with every camp ending in a unique camper showcase to show off each student’s skills that they have learned during that week.
Spin Club 🎧
We started out with our half day DJ camp with only six students. I was so impressed with each kid’s learning ability and growth throughout the week. Each DJ group prepared their own sets, with playlists that they spent time curating each day. We also held daily scratch battles where we would vote on which participant had the best record scratches! On the final day, we held our showcase outside at Persip Park, where families, friends and passersby were welcome to join in on the celebration of the students’ hard work.
Pop Star Studio
Our second week we started our full day camps hosting ten students with the pop songwriting camp. I was so excited for this week because I had not done workshops like this in my space before. I was so delighted with this group of campers who were all so eager to learn about songwriting! We dove into topics like song structure, beatmaking, lyric writing and recording.
Towards the end of the week, our first guest of the summer, Valarie Orth visited to do an intensive workshop on writing lyrics. I was so impressed with how all of the kid’s lyrics improved over the course of one afternoon! Valarie is a professor of songwriting at Berklee College of Music (where I also went to school), so the campers were so lucky to have her come in to share her expertise!
On the final day we ended with a deep dive in album artwork creation and every kid made their own art to go with the songs that they made that week.
Stage Ready
Our final week was our live performance week, dedicated entirely on performing live with electronic instruments.
At the beginning of each day we would have a performance challenge where each student would have to get up in front of the camp and improvise something for a few minutes each. We would grade them after based on creativity, stage presence, interest, how musical it was and how they used their resources. By the end of the week each student was confidently improvising with live electronic music!
In addition, teams of two worked on prepared projects and remixes together that they shared at the end of the week in a student showcase attended by families and community members.
Some students from this week even opted to take advantage of the unique opportunity to perform in this year’s Common Ground festival that was held at Bousquet. It was definitely a proud teacher moment!
Don’t Forget, New Group Classes Starting this Fall!
I’m so excited to announce that I am bringing back DJ, and Songwriting classes in the fall for weekly after school sessions! If your child would love it, don’t hesitate to sign him/her up now because they are going to start soon on September 8th!
– Geoffrey
