blog
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Making Rap Beats with Students
This is the third lesson in my unit on rap music. Today, we are looking at creating a drum beat using a simple and free drum machine that can be easily downloaded. There are several of these programs that you can use. I used Hammerhead simply because it was already installed on our school computers.…
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London was a Buzz with Skaters
The World Figure Skating Championships were held in London, Ontario, Canada this past week. The whole city was abuzz with energy. The downtown core was certainly the place to be, even if you didn’t have tickets. Every night, there was a special light show projected right onto the side of the Budweiser Gardens. The show…
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Chasing Content – March 2009
It’s time for another edition of Chasing Content. Let’s glide through the clouds and find some of the great posts of the past. Read all of the posts from March 2009 . . . or just these extra special ones. The Internet Should Be Free “I think the Internet is to this generation what the…
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Shad Autograph
Shad is an incredible rapper. In fact, I think he’s one of the best that Canada has ever seen. I had the chance to interview him a few years back and he gave me this autograph. You can listen to the hour-long interview with the player below, download the podcast for free, or read the transcript now.…
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A Lesson Plan on the Structure of Rap Songs
This lesson looks at the structure of rap songs and gets the students writing their first rhymes. You can download this Smartboard lesson for free and have some fun in your music class. Rap is pretty much based around groups of 4. Here you see a basic drum pattern with the kick, snare, kick, snare.…
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Women in Hip-Hop 3 Mixset
This weekend, we celebrated International Women’s Day by dedicating our entire night’s worth of programming on DOPEfm to the Women in Hip-Hop. It was our 3rd Annual Women in Hip-Hop Spectacular and it was a lot of fun delivering great content to you all night long. This is the mixset that kicked off the show…
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3rd Annual Women in Hip-Hop Spectacular
DOPEfm’s 3rd Annual Women in Hip-Hop Spectacular runs tonight on 93.3 CFMU on your radio dial with live streaming from the radio station’s website. You can also listen to us on Cogeco Cable Channel 288, on Shaw Cable 93.9 fm, through your phone by dialing 704-702-7627 and inputting station ID 10042, and with the Tune In…
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Celebrating International Women’s Day – Women in Hip-Hop 3
Beautiful poster done by one of my students DOPEfm celebrates International Women’s Day every year by dedicating the entire overnight program to the Women in Hip-Hop. This year marks the third annual special presentation. For this year’s show I have produced two hours of Know Your History detailing the important moments in female-fronted hip-hop from…
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How Did I Get Here? (The Power of a Good Story)
Here are the latest books that I have read. I am continuing to catalog every title here on Silent Cacophony. This is part of my 2013 reading log. How Did I Get Here: The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO by Tony Hawk Tony Hawk is probably the most recognized name when it comes to extreme…
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Ice T’s Rap School (Lesson Plan)
Ice T went to a prestigious prep school in New York and taught a group of kids who literally knew nothing about rap music and hip-hop culture, how to write and perform their own rap song. The best thing about the whole experience is that it was filmed for a television series on VH1 back in…