McCready Make Your Own Music

Make Your Own Music: A Creative Curriculum Using Music Technology provides an organized approach to creating your own music using modern technology. It contains lessons, skill sets, and projects for using the PreSonus Music Creation Suite. An incredibly valuable tool for the enthusiast, student, or teacher, this book is a complete classroom curriculum for both learning and teaching music technology, incorporating composition ideas, notation skills, and digital audio workstation proficiencies. Each chapter focuses on building musical and compositional knowledge using Notion and/or Studio One.

The book is organized into easily digestible chapters that cover topics such as Getting Started with Recording, Getting Started with Notation, Creating Electronic Music with Virtual Instruments in Studio One, and Mixing and Mastering in Studio One. Each chapter contains three demonstrable skills that students can learn by working through self-paced projects, examples of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) problem-solving strategies from music technology history, and composition assignments with reproducible grading sheets for teachers. Supporting materials can be accessed online. They round out the educational and instructional experience through video tutorials and printable documents.

About the Author

Richard A. McCready, M.M. (Clarksville, Maryland) teaches music technology at River Hill High School in Clarksville, Maryland, and is also the music technology resource teacher for Howard County, Maryland. McCready was born in Northern Ireland and studied tuba performance, vocal performance, piano, and composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, England, and at Towson University in Maryland. He plays many musical instruments, but the focus of his teaching is music technology, in which he is widely regarded as one of the outstanding innovators in the U.S. McCready was awarded the Mike Kovins TIME Teacher of the Year Award in 2013 and also the 2013 Howard County Music Educator of the Year Award. His work at River Hill High School was featured in a feature article for School Band and Orchestra in April 2013.

He writes curriculum and lessons for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the International Baccalaureate, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of African American Culture, the Maryland State Department of Education, andHowardCounty Public Schools.