Our music class this term recorded this version of 'Californication'

[Jemusic]

Genre

Pop

Hi all,

One of my incomes is working in a school one day a week. I teach on a campus in a regional area and students from the three main large city campuses come up to a special campus and they stay here for 9 weeks. There are four terms and this is term 2. These students are Year 9 so they are 14 to 15. Many have classical backgrounds and they play a wide range of classical instruments extremely well even at their age. We let them cut loose with modern back line instruments. They really love it. Many have never played these backline instruments before. There are usually about 4 bands and they learn about 2-3 songs each.

But this was above average for sure for one of the bands. This group chose 'Californication' I work with another teacher and we have to teach them in about 7 weeks with only about 30 hours in total. To play all these parts. Mostly it works out well but its not often it ends up as nice as this. They are holding back with a high level of maturity. The girl has a great voice and she is not belting it but holding back also. The boy playing the solo really worked hard at working this out. He practiced it a lot. There are some mistakes in the music for sure but it would not take much if we had time to iron anything out.

I played drums on this. Normally I would have taught someone to play it but it just worked out with me having to play. Its a special feeling (at 70) to play with such nice young people. I am very lucky. We had to work with the other players to get their parts down. There is an acoustic guitar part too and he never played it before.

I record and mix everything for each term. I recorded it on Logic on a Mac as the school uses that but they pay me a day at home to mix it which I do all in Studio One of course. I can do a 24 track session through a Focusrite Clarett 8 Pre X which sounds great. This was a 16 track session though. They are playing live as well. We teach them to play live. They do a number of live shows one with an audience of over 500 so they develop confidence skills along the way.

 

[sintil8]

Watching and guiding those youngsters towards learning different styles of music must be a blast, I would love to hear them do a free form
of a track, Let them jam it out after they have learned their parts.
It's a good rendition and the space for each instrument is good. As you say the vocalist is restrained which suits the mood.
To my ears I found the Guitar intro in the left (earphones) is very left side, I assume that was a choice made during the mix.
It's an enjoyable listen.
Well done it must be a real buzz, just imagine if one day some of these youngesters end up as successful artists.

Nice one, regards to the students and yourselves.