Today, we're looking at sidechain.
Say it, put the lesson on the board and press Start. It teaches one idea on a drawing of the device: the pen draws and labels, the sound plays, the class answers before anything is shown, and then every student takes the controls.
Or set it for homework. Each lesson takes about 15 to 25 minutes.
Sidechain, step 1. Start pressed: the parts it is about lit, the rest in grey, the pen writing beside them
Every lesson has the same four parts, so a class knows where it is. Here is the sidechain lesson, step by step, as your students see it.
The lesson shows it
The pen draws on the device and writes the labels where they belong. The part being taught is lit, and everything else goes grey, so the eye has one place to go.
Every few steps it stops and asks. The class picks an answer before the pen moves anything, then hears and sees whether they were right.
Every student does it, one move at a time
Now the controls are theirs, with the moves laid out: first what the lesson does, then what they do. Each move plays the sound, and the lesson answers the way you would from beside their desk.
What it said to one student, one go at a time. After three goes that change nothing, Show me appears.
Every student does it alone
A sound to copy, and no moves to follow. They play the sound, play theirs, and press Check. Check names the first control that's off and which way to turn it.
Three Makes a lesson, each a sound they would hear in a real mix. In the sidechain lesson: a light duck, the club pump, and the swell.
Every student writes it as the paper asks
The last step is the written answer. Sentence openings to start from, and a value or a direction for every setting, because a word on its own earns too little.
Then the points that earn marks appear, and the student ticks the ones their own words make. The page never marks the writing for them.
Some lessons add a Describe step before it: hear a clip, then name the process and its settings, as the listening paper asks. A card sets the paper's words beside the names Live and other software use.
The lessons are drawn for what a student finds hard on the papers: knowing which control does what, what it sounds like, and saying so in the right words. Each choice below rests on research most teachers will recognise: the idea first, then where it comes from.
Nothing to install. A lesson opens in any browser, on the board or on a student's own laptop.
Say what today is about and press Start. Watch together: the class calls each answer and one student taps it. Then Try and Make on their own screens, while you go round.
Send the link. The steps open as each student reaches them, and the page keeps their place on their own computer, so they can stop and carry on later.
Dynamics is eight lessons in teaching order, from the compressor to Which tool?, a mixed practice: see the course. Synthesis is being written next.
The teacher's side comes with the school licence. Here it is as it stands, with a sample class.
Set a lesson to a class with an opening and a due date. See where each student is up to and whose written answer is ready to read: names and done or not yet, never a score.
Under the class, the two or three steps they found hardest, each with a button that opens that step on the board. Hide names before it goes up.
The one idea, the minutes each part takes, where students slip, and which past-paper questions each step prepares them for.
Built for my own A level classes, and changed when something doesn't work for them. More are added a topic at a time.
All four in order on the course page.
The noise gate is free: fourteen steps, about twenty-five minutes, in any browser. If it works for your class, the school licence gives every student the rest.