St Mark's Catholic School is a mixed, voluntary-aided Roman Catholic comprehensive school with over 1200 pupils aged 11-18. The school gained Technology College status in 1999 and recently had this renewed.

The Consultation

When St Mark’s initially contacted Counterpoint, they were only nine weeks away from the completion of a brand new music block. They had spoken to a number of other music suppliers regarding this project but were still not confident with their proposals.

Daniel Callaghan
Deputy Head

The two components of the school’s vision for the music department were a networked computer music suite and a professional recording studio, both suitable for teaching from Key Stage 3 through to GCSE and on to the AS/A2 Music Technology courses.

The Solution

The new Music ICT facilities at Brooklands Middle are built around an audio network providing audio recording and remote control from the teacher's station to 16 pupil workstations. Each pupil has access to both a Casio portable keyboard and a Music PC, and visual networking tools add remote access, monitoring and interaction for the teacher.

Student work can be captured directly into the teacher's computer as both audio and midi recordings. These can then be used to help develop pupil learning as well as for on-going assessments. Assessment can be interactive in that teachers can make recordings, play them back to pupils and add comments and direction. The system enables the teacher to interact more directly with the pupils' creative and learning processes; to see and hear what pupils are doing, give direction in both spoken word to their headphones and even on-screen text messages.

Another facility proving popular with students is an electronic rehearsal facility for contemporary bands. This is built around electronic drums and piano, with guitar and bass instruments linking into a stereo PA system. In effect, this is the live room next to the recording studio, and is an often neglected aspect of many school's investment into recording studio facilities. Rehearsal is a very important part of the recording process, and this facility enables pupils to work together on performance and musicianship. An important factor is the reduced volume made possible by the electronic drum kit, which in turn enables better communication and group-work skills.

Computer Music Suite

After consultation, a meeting was arranged with the senior management team at the school and two senior Counterpoint consultants. At this meeting, key issues were covered including classroom concerns, cost implications, networking considerations, continuity between the computer suite and the recording studio, support and training.

At the end of this meeting, it was decided to install the computer suite based around Apple Mac hardware. An Xserve, with associated Xserve RAID for backup, provided the foundations for an advanced network configuration, to be supported remotely by Counterpoint. It was also decided that Apple hardware, also on the network, would be used within the Recording studio providing full integration with the ICT suite.

Recording Studio

In order to meet the specific needs of St Mark’s, the recording studio was designed by a Counterpoint studio consultant in close consultation with the Head of Music. Advice was provided on acoustic treatments and sound insulation, including the re-specification of the control room viewing window, to ensure adequate acoustic isolation.

Counterpoint worked alongside other key contractors on the project, detailing furniture and fittings requirements and cabling interlink specifications between the music classrooms, practice rooms, recording studio and editing suite. Subsequently, Counterpoint supplied, installed and commissioned the new recording studio.

Training & Support

To ensure the music department is able to achieve the maximum benefit from the new music facilities, Counterpoint delivered six days of INSET. Remote and onsite technical support is also provided ensuring that any issues are resolved promptly, allowing the Music Department to focus on providing effective classroom tuition.