Monthly Archive for February, 2009

“Good morn­ing chil­dren,” Mr. Green said mer­rily to his class as he whooshed through the class­room door to teach his group of enthu­si­as­tic and bright-eyed group of twelve year olds.

“Good morn­ing Mr. Green,” the school chil­dren all greeted back in uni­son, a cho­rus of mea­sured voices honed by years of prac­tice dat­ing back since their preschool days.

“Today we’re going to learn sim­ple maths,” Mr. Green enthused, his voice sound­ing slightly deliri­ous. But then again, was it really a per­son that was deliri­ous? After all, his­tory is demon­stra­tive that one sin­gle thing can be viewed in a num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways. For exam­ple, is a per­son a dic­ta­tor or a lib­er­a­tor; hero or ter­ror­ist; social climber or just good at networking?

With an ele­gant swoosh of his right arm, Mr. Green picked up his wooden chalk-stick. The stu­dents gig­gled as the two-and-a-half-inch piece of chalk danced pre­car­i­ously on the end of the wooden chalk-stick, ready to fall off at any given moment should it choose to take advan­tage of an oppor­tune moment to make its escape from its fate of scratch­ing at the black­board for a very long time.

“We’ve been hav­ing trou­ble grasp­ing basic con­cepts lately, so after much con­sul­ta­tion with esteemed inno­va­tors of alter­na­tive educa­tive method­olo­gies and ide­olo­gies, I have decided to cre­ate a hypo­thet­i­cal for your­selves to pon­der, to make learn­ing more rel­e­vant and thus more eas­ily iden­ti­fi­able and under­stand­able to your­self,” Mr. Green explained in his pro­fes­so­r­ial tone. The stu­dents all nod­ded eagerly, wait­ing with antic­i­pa­tion to see what Mr. Green would say or do next. Mr. Greene was famously unpre­dictable and his class­room was renowned for his inno­v­a­tive and adven­tur­ous teach­ing methods.

With an excit­ing flour­ish of his swishy left arm, Mr. Green cre­ated an atmos­phere of delec­table mys­tery and intrigue. Low­er­ing his voice to a grum­bling bari­tone, he chal­lenged the class, “What hap­pens, when you com­bine the elec­tronic tal­ents of a beat-maker with the song­writ­ing of a singer who isn’t afraid to sing like a girl?”

The chil­dren, although pre­co­cious, chose not to answer for despite their young age, they knew that this was not a real ques­tion but rather, a hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tion; a state­ment that is posed as a ques­tion but is one which the giver does not expect a response for the answer is so obvi­ous that it goes with­out saying.

“You get sSalvia. An uncon­ven­tional band that isn’t a real band in the con­ven­tional sense, but rather a col­lab­o­ra­tion between two minds with com­ple­men­tary abil­i­ties. Totally kick-ass.”

As the class­room waited with bated breath for an expla­na­tion, Mr. Green con­tin­ued, “After months of work­ing together, the mem­bers that com­prise sSalvia have writ­ten many songs. The best five were cho­sen to become what would be then known as their first EP; a col­lec­tion of five songs.”

“But Mr. Green,” Con­nie Cooper inter­jected, her right arm wav­ing at impos­si­ble speeds through the air. With an encour­ag­ing nod from Mr. Green, Con­stan­tine Cooper con­tin­ued, “After they have cre­ated these five songs, what hap­pens next?”

“Excel­lent ques­tion Con­nie,” Mr. Green beamed for he was as sure as sure is him­self of the pride he had for his stu­dents, the bright minds and lead­ers of tomor­row. “Does any­one here know the answer to Con­nie Cooper’s question?”

Before any­one else could answer, Mr. Greene con­tin­ued, “After the team cre­ated their EP, what they needed to do next was to get their final mixes mas­tered. To make it more eas­ily under­stood, mas­ter­ing is the process music under­goes to make it sound even bet­ter. It’s like adding the final layer of pol­ish to a wooden oak cab­i­net to make it gleam.”

Col­lec­tively, the class ooa­hed and aahed.

Pleased with the day’s progress and the obvi­ous under­stand­ing that the bright stu­dents of class 5A dis­played, Mr. Green pulled out a col­lec­tion of Polaroids that he had taken that day of the mas­ter­ing process. “Gather round chil­dren as I have a treat for you all. Here with me are the pho­tos of the mas­ter­ing process.”

With delighted squeaks and squeals, the entire class jumped out of their industry-approved, wooden seats and hur­riedly gath­ered around Mr. Green’s desk. Mr. Green grinned in amuse­ment for he usu­ally only had one or two stu­dents at his desk at any given time, but this was a his­tor­i­cal moment.

And this is what the chil­dren of class­room 5A saw: