Garage Band and Choral Assessment
by Shari Tarleton
Let’s see if this description is one you can relate to. You will be teaching chorus to middle
school students in grades 6-8. You can see them once every other day (if it doesn’t interfere with coun-
seling, math tutoring, or other issues.) You need to teach them to read music, sight sing, sing in parts,
sing in tune, posture, breathing, blah blah blah, - Oh, and perform three times a year for the public.
And by the way, don’t forget to grade them.
As a choral director, time is precious, but assessment of the vocal instrument is necessary in the
learning process. Vocal assessment is performance-based. We need to hear the voice in order to know
what is happening. What transpires is an acrobatic display of time and effort between teacher and stu-
dent to complete this process. We call them in before and after school or during study halls. We have
them sing in small groups. We walk around while they are singing. The possibilities become endless.
And what do we do with the student who, the closer we get to them, the softer they sing until they are
merely lip-syncing while those around them provide the sound?
In this article, I would like to share how Garage Band can help support the assessment process
in chorus. It allows for individual assessment in a group setting in a manageable amount of time. It
provides a comfort zone for all singers that is supported in a realistic choral setting. It allows students
an active role in the assessment process.
An overview: In a nutshell, the assessment process involves students recording themselves live
on garage band, saving their files to their desktop, then dragging and dropping them into a general
choral folder on the student common space of our server. As simplistic as it seems, there are several
steps that must be observed to be successful.
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