Shed Studio

Play The Songs They Love
Help Them Write Their Own

A flexible music curriculum for playing covers and creating original music. Shed Studio starts with the music students know and the skills they bring. Students play, write, and record together from the beginning, building their musicianship through cycles of creative projects.

Get the first cycle free

Film scoring: a scene from a short film above its beats, Happy Bright, Looking Out and Dark Reveal, with the chords, bass and melody scored under it.

Can't Stop the Feeling as a lead sheet: its play-along video, the guitar chords playing now beside it, and the chords bar by bar.

Shed Studio in Basic mode with the My First Beat lesson open beside the chord buttons, showing the steps and a short video.

The sampler with a soul sample loaded: its waveform above sixteen chopped pads and the selected pad's settings.

Score a scene, beat by beat.

Use it in

Music production
Modern band
Piano
Guitar
Theory
Music appreciation
Band
Choir
Orchestra

How the cycles work

Students don’t have to master every part of a song before they start making one. Each cycle introduces manageable amounts of drums, bass, chords, melody, lyrics, and song structure, then puts those skills to work in a project.

The next cycle builds on what they’ve learned, giving students more musical choices and more responsibility for their work. They gain experience writing, arranging, recording, and revising while figuring out how they like to create.

Shed Studio’s custom-built instruments make it easier to get started. Chord and bass instruments, drum pads, and sample pads let students develop ideas by playing them. They can jam with classmates, perform covers, and write and record original music without needing years of instrumental experience first.

Collaboration is part of the course, not just a final group project. Students practice listening to each other, sharing ideas, making decisions, and playing together throughout the cycles.

Shed Studio Producer

The production sequence moves through four cycles and a final choose-your-own project, with Career Connections projects introduced along the way.

Cycle 1: Start creating

Lyric Remix, Type Beat, My First Beat, and My First Song. Students go from rewriting lyrics to a familiar song to building an original backing track and writing and recording their own chorus.
Cycle 2: Play together

Play Your First Groove and Jam Session. Students develop their timing by performing drum patterns with a click, then put those skills to work jamming with a partner.
Cycle 3: Develop the song

Students learn how to use chords by scoring a film scene, choosing chords, harmonic rhythm and texture to match each turn in the story. Then they write music for a commercial, building progressions that make a product feel the way the ad needs it to.
Cycle 4: Start with a sample

Students chop drum breaks and found sounds into patterns they can play, work with pitched and chopped samples for boom bap, and explore 808 bass and halftime drums for trap. They finish by writing and recording a hook/verse hip-hop track.
Choose Your Own: Find your process

Students choose where to start: a lyric, groove, progression, melody, sound, or sample. They draw on the approaches they’ve practiced to decide what comes next and develop a creative workflow of their own. The project can be repeated with a different starting point each time.
Career Connections

Students apply their skills to CTE alligned fields in video game audio, music for film, podcasting, and radio spots. These projects run alongside the cycles, with some introduced after Cycle 2 and others after Cycle 3.

The full Shed Studio Producer sequence is scheduled for January 2027. All updates are included with a subscription to the current Production Through Performance curriculum.

Get the first cycle free

Three modes, one studio.

Shed Studio has three modes: Basic, Standard, and Advanced. Basic fits elementary, Standard fits middle school, and Advanced is for high school and deep divers.

Each one is built around the same idea: get students playing and recording their own music by ear.

Shed Studio in its three modes: Basic with big triad chord buttons, Standard with seventh chords and Quality control, and Advanced on the Arrange page with the chord rack open.

Film scoring.

The best way for students to learn how chords and their combinations affect the listener is through film scoring. Students pick a scene, mark the beats where the mood and energy change, and score each one.

Two licensed films are built in, or bring in any video through YouTube. Students can also record their own sounds along with the picture in the Foley studio.

A scored scene: the picture above its beats, with the chords, bass and melody scored under it.

Watch the sample score

On a phone? Turn it sideways for the full picture.

Flexible for everyone.

Follow the production sequence, choose individual projects, or combine tools and lessons around what you’re teaching. Cover-song activities sit alongside the production sequence, giving students another way to explore the music they enjoy.

For modern band, students can use the built-in instruments to start playing together. Optional modules for bass, guitar, piano, and drums help them bring those skills to rhythm-section instruments and perform covers and originals as a band.

Shed Studio’s browser-based tools can be used on Chromebooks, laptops, and iPads. Students can play with MIDI controllers, typing keyboards, or on-screen controls, depending on their setup.

Use the tools on their own, or follow guided modules for Soundtrap, BandLab, GarageBand, and Logic.

Shed Studio is the new Production Through Performance from Shedthemusic. The other Shedthemusic curricula remain available.