Sorry, I got inspired thinking back to the Cruelest Month Poetry and Performance Festival that took place on April 6th outside our local library here in Waverly.

I hosted the open mic and facilitated impromptu lessons with kids of all ages. As I packed my speakers, I couldn’t help but appreciate the wonderful community in which I live and the unending potential of children engaging in the arts.

More info and some choice pics below!

Poetry in Community and Ink Press Productions presented the 8th Annual Cruellest Month Poetry and Performance Festival (CruMoPoPerFest) to celebrate National Poetry Month, joining in with the talented, quirky Baltimore community that’s got poetry running through its charming veins.

Thanks to the efforts of a lot of very cool teachers, I have been able to collect enough footage of my arts integrated assemblies, classes and workshops to put together a video reel that I now humbly present to you.

Outside the Box Reel from Max Bent on Vimeo.

Are there metrics currently in existence that can assess learning outcomes generated by arts based strategies?

The answer, or at least some part of it, is being explored in New York City.

Watch Songs for Biology: Students Write Hip-Hop to Learn Science on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.

About an hour south of New Orleans, just between Houma and Thibodeaux, is Levytown, Louisiana. It’s bayou country, so it’s flat, sparse, and probably really hot in the summer. I found myself there in December, however, so I can’t be sure.

Caldwell Middle School serves the students of Levytown. Thanks to a grant from the Houma Arts Council, I was able to visit Caldwell Middle School and work with three classes of fourth graders over one week. I arrived on a Thursday night, performed for a large group of students in multiple grades the next morning, met the awesome fourth grade team with whom I would be working and then got to work buying PVC pipes. Lots of it. 300 feet to be exact.

I can’t thank enough the truly wonderful people of Lowe’s in both Houma and Thibodeaux. Armed with a letter from Caldwell’s principal and an unflagging sense of purpose, I asked for an unprecedented price on 10 foot length of 3″ diameter PVC along with the caps needed to make Beat Tubes for the coming residency. What are Beat Tubes you ask? Well they are, of course, the to-die-for beatboxing accessory of the season darling! More on these instruments later. Suffice it to day the people at Lowe’s gave me a monstrous reduction in cost which allowed me, in the end, to make 75 Beat Tubes for Caldwell’s permanent collection.

Music takes place over time, which, interestingly, differentiates it from a painting. Although I would be the first to say that music and painting have more in common than not. But not more than music and cooking have in common, but that is another topic all together! So if one considers the time-based nature of music, it becomes evident that musicians must divide this time into some sort of unit in order to effectively communicate the message of the music. It is here that we find a very powerful connection with the concept of fractions. We decided that for the fourth graders participating in this residency, integrating music and fractions would be an important step towards playing the beat tubes. It turned out that for many of the students, it was an opportunity to look at fractions in a new, meaningful way.

The objectives of the music-fraction activity were to allow students to “perform” fractions and gain new insight into terms like numerator and denominator as well as add fractions of both same and different denominators. We populated rhythm charts with Bass Drums (B), Hi-Hats (T) and Snare Drums (K), and then analyzed these rhythms with the aid of “fractions blocks.” These cool little manipulatives are cut to scale so that a student can kinesthetically compare 1/6 and 1/8, for example. The activity culminated in lots of beatboxing and genuine working with fractions.

Breaking music-time into units proved to be the perfect primer for playing multi-part Beat Tube rhythms as an ensemble. While the beat tube activity further reinforced the students exploration of fractions, they also provided a great real-world tool to investigate the concepts of pitch and amplitude. The students had a blast playing the tubes and discussing why longer tubes produce a lower pitch.

I was sad to leave Caldwell, but the students left a bright spot in my heart that continues to glow without fading. I hope to visit them again soon.

I personally know of two, and I suspect there are many more. The Washington Post recently wrote about the math rapper/teacher known as 2 Pi. But my personal favorite (caution, I am severely biased) is math teacher Ernesto Lara. I have worked with Ernesto for years, and his rapping skills are comparable to a fine, well developed wine, complete with nuance and depth. Therefore I wasn’t surprised to see him rapping on the news! Check it out:

These amazing teachers are not alone…I will continue to promote these musician/educator hybrids on this blog, so stay tuned!

Wired Magazine’s recent article entitled “What Beatboxing Looks Like Through an MRI Scanner” describes some surprising results from the University of Southern California’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory’s study on the “paralinguistic mechanisms” used by beatboxers in the formation of their musical sounds. The gist of their findings is embodied in this statement by the lead author of the study:

“We were very surprised to discover how closely the vocal percussion sounds resembled sounds attested in languages unknown to the beatboxer,” the study’s lead author Michael Proctor said in an email to Wired. “Even though his goals were musical, the beatboxer converged on methods of sound production which have been harnessed in the phonology of other human languages.”

I’ve always been really good at picking up new languages. I never linked that to my beatboxing skills, but it appears that their is strong evidence to support that connection. And one cannot help but consider the implications for education! Does beatboxing help prime young people for learning second and third languages? Does beatboxing aid in authentic pronunciation?

Read the full article here.

The NY Times’ recent piece on the 12 o’clock boys is pretty awesome. Check it out!

This game is rich with musical concepts, and students get to witness the application of Elements of Music (such as dynamics) in real time! Check out the video below:

Switch! from Max Bent on Vimeo.

Last night was the second gathering for the EMBODY Lab. Hosted by Jamaal Black Root Collier, it was an evening of celebration of the human vocal capacity. What I enjoy most about this series is its emphasis on tearing down the wall between performer and audience. Black Root lead a variety of vocal activities which required direct audience participation, and in some cases audience members getting on stage to perform. As in the first EMBODY Lab, last night’s list of performers was varied: beatboxers, chanters, classical opera singers, all improvising together with direction provided by Shodekeh and Black Root.

I left Metro Gallery feeling inspired and enchanted, and more than anything, lucky to be a vocal artist.

Here’s a video of the beatboxing set from EMBODY Lab 1:

Every first Saturday of the month at 3pm, the Waverly Beat Club assembles in the public meeting room of the Waverly branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library system in beautiful Waverly, Baltimore. The program is facilitated by your truly, teaching artist MaxBent. The number of students has ranged from as few as 1 to as many as 10. The target age group is middle school and up, and adults are welcome, especially those adults who can contribute equipment and/or expertise in the area of music production.

Music production is quite a fluid term. I advocate a hands-on approach. We use computers, as well as a combination of different controllers and effects processors. As a beatboxer, I focus on leading students in creating beat-based compositions anchored by drums of one kind or another. We use microphones to record our voice, which is then processed in Ableton Live, our software of choice. We also study beat making, including drum and synth programming, arrangement and editing.

At the present moment we are only limited by our single production station. Students must work together and take turns in building the compositions. While this has proven valuable in learning team building skills and cooperation, I am hoping to expand my available equipment as soon as possible. If you are interested in contributing to the Waverly Beat Club in any way (time, money, etc.) please contact me at maxbentmusic@gmail.com