Cultivating high-school students of music gifted class (exceptional talent class in music/ music class/ gifted class in music) focuses on classical music mostly; however, pop music has been the mainstream in musical industry. Not only most of the students in music gifted class concentrate on classical music, but also they have developed habit of listening, admiring or even performing pop music.
Hence, we could observe a new trend of employment of these students. Apart from traditional performing career, orchestral involvement and teaching , some graduates have devoted themselves into performing and teaching pop music. Even more professionally and commercially, songs and lyrics composing, arranging, soundtracks productions in advertisement, animation and movie.
Under this circumstance, the author brought the related course materials about creation(production) in pop music into the music gifted class Kaohsiung Senior High School. It could give students who already possess strong basics in classical music some basic concepts about creation in song and lyrics, arrangement, configuration about voice type, production in soundtrack and sound effect, practicing software about transcription and arrangement. With related experiences for over twenty years, the designed course could benefit students in music gifted class to have more exposure on the knowledge and skills about pop music, digital music and soundtrack production, equipping them with different skills and ability for their future career.
The examples used in this paper are soundtrack reproduction of 3D animations, including Chih-Fen Cheng’s Growing Fond of You, Pei-Hsuan Lin’s Snowflake, Pei-Yun Chen’s Fire and Dream, Pei-Ling Kuo’s A Piece of Quiche and Zhi-Fen Zheng’s Mr.Indifferent. Through analyzing and interpreting the works, to reflect on the teaching process.
This research results show that although students in the music gifted class havea profound musical basis, there are still rooms of improvement for them to learn about popular music and soundtrack production. Only when a systematic teaching framework is applied, the expected learning outcomes of the students could be observed, equipping themselves for the vast market of popular music. This paper aims to be used as a guide, to provide popular music teaching materials for teachers teaching students in music gifted classes.