Band Lab is a free, cloud-based, social music creation platform which enables musicians to work collaboratively online. It enables musicians to develop new musical material from Band Lab loops, work with music production techniques or import your own material and create new musical arrangements. During lockdown, we have been working online with small groups of young people and have produced a series of video tutorials and guidelines to help you get started.
These tutorials can be used in group collaborations or on your own, individual work. We have focussed on different areas in each tutorial to help you get started, but these are not intended to be used in isolation, rather as tools to support your own exploration of Band Lab.
Whether you are a young person working individually, a group of friends collaborating online or a music leader who wants to support young people develop new skills, we hope these session plans will be of use.
The ‘Audio Stems’ below were created to develop the Soundtracks Songbank. You can download these stems individually and import to Band Lab to use in one of the projects below.
A. Getting Started and Understanding BandLab
B. Understanding the Timeline
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
C. Understanding Basic Mixing
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
D. Understanding Basic Audio Editing
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
E. How to Import Audio Files
F. Introduction to Creating and Editing MIDI
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
G. Exploring MIDI Instruments and External MIDI Controllers
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
H. How to Layer Audio Loops with Drum Machine
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
I. Replacing Drum Track in a Multitrack Session
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
J. How to Sequence Drums using the Drum Machine
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
K. Basic Audio Recording
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
L. Exploring Effects Guitar
Project Outline | Video Tutorial
M. Exploring Further Effects for Audio Mixing