Emlen Elementary is lucky to have a great music teacher in Ms. Parker. And to support her in her work, PCF has converted an old storage closet into a recording studio during the last couple of months. And last week we had our formal opening with Principal Thomas belting out some Whitney Houston tunes, a visit by State Representative Chris Rabb and, finally, some kids taking their turn at the microphone.

To turn this storage closet into a a recording studio was no small task. It involved what felt like hundreds of (loooong) trips to the dumpster in the play yard, optimizing storage in Ms. Parker’s classroom closet, buying equipment, and outfitting the room with foam padding. The room is all done now and we have set up up multiple time-slots during the week for kids to come in and record.

While we were getting the room ready, we could tell there was a great interest with the students. They’d pop their heads in to ask questions and eager to take their turn. Some want to do Karaoke-style songs (voice-overs), other want to rap, and we even have some that want to do a podcast. PCF will also be offering sound mixing classes where students can help get the songs ready (trimming, adjusting volumes, adding sound effects, etc.)

To get started, we are doing a lot of karaoke style recording where:

  1. students pick the song they want to sing,
  2. we then use AI tools to separate the music from the original vocals,
  3. students sing along and we record their voice
  4. we then drop the original vocals and drop in the student’s recording.

To make all this happen, PCF purchased a very sensitive microphone, speakers/monitors, a USB interface (between the devices and the computer), and we donated a computer set up to run Apple’s Logic Pro DAW (digital audio workstation) software.

PCF intends to create a separate website to showcase their recordings in the near future.

Here are some photos: