The Spirit of Lennon Rolls on at USC
Photo/Courtesy of USC Thornton School of Music
The John Lennon Educational Tour bus came to the USC campus in February, parked in front of Doheny Memorial Library and opened its doors to USC Thornton School of Music students to spend a day writing and recording a song and shooting a video to accompany it.
The Lennon bus is a nonprofit, mobile recording studio outfitted with traditional musical instruments as well as current recording technology. Created to help publicize The John Lennon Songwriting Contest, an international songwriting contest that began in 1997, the Lennon Bus travels around the country encouraging students to play, write and record songs.
Rick Schmunk, assistant professor of music industry and scoring for motion pictures and television, was the impetus behind the project. “I liked the idea of bringing a fully-equipped recording studio to campus for our recording students to see,” Schmunk said.
“We have a great relationship with Apple, and it is a major sponsor of the Lennon Bus, so I contacted Apple about bringing the bus to campus. It was a great way for the students to work with the most advanced recording technology available while also collaborating with each other in a non-classroom setting.”
In the same way USC Thornton uses the interactive Web technology Internet2 in select classrooms, the Lennon bus brought technological advancements in music production to campus and into the hands of students.
The six students chosen for the project, a mix of music majors at the USC Thornton School and others enrolled in a songwriting course taught by Christopher Sampson, USC Thornton’s associate dean for external relations, met in the morning with Lennon Bus producer Jesse Jensema.
Singer Kina Grannis, who last year released her debut album as part of USC Thornton’s Protégé Program, a career-development music program for select USC students, worked with Thornton music majors including guitarists George Krikes and Owen Kortz, keyboardist Bill Zimmerman, bassist Matt Jung and drummer Sam Brawner.
“Bill, Sam and I are the essentially the house band for Chris Sampson’s songwriting class, and we met Kina that morning,” Jung said. “We started from scratch. It took about two hours to write the song. Then we had to record it and put vocals on top of it and everything. Then we went out and shot the video for it.”
Added Zimmerman, “It was really cool. Kina was great, and I was amazed that she could write lyrics in, like, 15 minutes.”
With the song recorded, the students headed out onto USC’s campus with Lennon Bus video engineer Steve Truschel Miller to shoot a video.
“The video was hilarious,” Grannis said. “Cheesy in an excellent way. We just kind went all over campus acting stupid.”
“It was great and a lot of fun. We accomplished a lot,” Jung added.
By that afternoon, the song was recorded and the video shot and edited.
“We travel the country for 10 months out of the year,” Jensema explained. “The bus is the best mobile recording studio in the world, touring the country and teaching students of all ages how to write and record a song, shoot and edit a music video and burn it all to discs – all in one six- to eight-hour, hands-on workshop.”
Sampson was enthusiastic about the experience. “It was wonderful to see our students immerse themselves into the super-charged creative atmosphere of this mobile recording studio. The creative energy and its output were palpable.”
USC’s effort is viewable on the Lennon Bus Web site. As the description written by the organizers reads: “Combining both incredible musicianship and infinite imagination made this day one of the most fun days thus far on board the John Lennon Bus. A must-see video.” To view, click on the following address: http://edcommunity.apple.com/gallery/student/item.php?itemID=12659
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