Shed Studio
Make music now, build skills naturally.
A flexible songwriting and music production curriculum that starts with the music students know and the skills they bring. Students write, play, and record from the beginning, then develop their musicianship through cycles of creating.
Try Cycle 1 FreeA free one year trial, for your whole class.
Music first. Technology second.
Start creating. Keep building.
Some students arrive with years of instrumental experience. Others arrive with playlists, lyrics, and ideas. Familiar music, guided projects, and flexible tools give them a place to begin and something to build on.
Students do not have to master every part of a song before they start writing one. Each cycle introduces manageable amounts of drums, bass, chords, melody, lyrics, and song structure, then puts those skills to work in a creative project.
The next cycle returns to those building blocks with more depth, and hands students a little more of the decision making each time. They keep making music while developing the skills to take their ideas further.
Learn a little. Make something. Build on it.
Shed Studio Producer
The production sequence. Five stages of writing and recording, plus Career Connections projects that open up along the way.
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Cycle 1
Lyric Remix, Type Beat, My First Beat, and My First Song. Students go from rewriting a chorus over a familiar song to building an original backing track and recording their own song.
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Cycle 2
Play Your First Groove and Jam Session. Students stop placing parts on a grid and start performing them, in time with a click on a MIDI controller or drum pads, then jamming with a partner.
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Cycle 3
Going deeper. Students write their own drum patterns and progressions, work with harmonic rhythm and rhythmic variation, layer chordal instruments so verses and choruses sound different, and finish a full verse/chorus pop song.
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Cycle 4
Sample based music. Students chop drum breaks and found sounds into patterns they play, pitch and cut samples into boom bap, add 808s and halftime drums for trap, and finish a hook/verse hip hop track.
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Choose Your Own
The final step. The scaffolding comes off. Students decide where a song starts, whether that is a lyric, a groove, a progression, or a sample, and build the process that suits them.
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Career Connections
Projects that run alongside the cycles rather than at the end. They open up after Cycle 2, and some after Cycle 3: game audio, music for film, podcasting, and radio spots.
Shed Studio Producer is released January 2027. All updates are included with a subscription to the current Production Through Performance curriculum.
Follow the course. Or make it fit your class.
The same tools and lessons are sequenced differently depending on the class, and each one gets some lessons of its own. Follow a sequence, or open a single tool when a musical question comes up.
- Music production. Run the songwriting sequence as the spine of the course.
- Modern band. More than charts. Students develop ideas in Songwriter Studio, then turn them into parts a group can rehearse, arrange, and perform.
- Piano and guitar. Pull single projects and skill building tools into class.
- Theory and music appreciation. Use the chord and lead sheet charts alongside what you already teach.
- Band, choir, and orchestra. Bring writing and recording into the ensemble room.
There is some cover material inside the cycles, but playing covers sits outside the production sequence rather than forming a stage of it, and that is where the playing modules for drums, bass, piano, guitar, and vocals live.
The built in tools work on their own, or follow guided modules for Soundtrap, BandLab, GarageBand, and Logic if your school already uses one.
"I can't tell you how excited my kids are to be using a midi controller to record drums and chords, especially this early in the year."Christopher Scher, Bay Shore Senior High School
Try it with your students.
Start with Cycle 1, four projects that move from familiar music to an original backing track and a recorded chorus.
Teacher lesson plans, student materials, and the creative tools for the projects are included. All updates are included with a subscription to the current Production Through Performance curriculum, so the January 2027 release arrives in your account without a second purchase.
Try Cycle 1 FreeShed Studio is the new Production Through Performance from Shedthemusic. The other Shedthemusic curricula remain available.
