PRESCOTT — Jason Canfield, who has been the band director at Prescott for 28 years, has continuously pushed for further creativity and creation in the arts throughout the district. He helped kickstart a garage band course that has been on and off for much of his tenure, and, most recently, guided the creation of electronic music courses.

“You have some students that are not interested in band, they’re not interested in singing,” Canfield said. “I think every kid listens to music. I think every kid wants to create in some form… They all like playing on technology too, right. So, if you can put all those things together where you have music, you can be creative and you’re using technology, especially state of the art stuff that’s happening, that’s really just enticing these kids to be like, ‘Hey, I want to do something like that.’”

In the electronic music courses, students use computers to create their own music, test styles, make seamless loops and create videos to go with the music. Electronic music is becoming increasingly popular in not only today’s music, but also through content creators that livestream themselves creating music.

“A lot of the people that they listen to, like pop artists today, and rock artists and all that stuff, they’re using programs like this to record,” Canfield said. “When you listen to pop, you hear all those things in the background.”

As for garage band, students often cover existing music, but they make it their own through the changing of the style and notes. During the pandemic, students stuck at home could record themselves playing music, input it into a program and have it overlaid with the rest of the class to make a full-on band. That idea continued to grow, with Prescott creating a recording studio well above what is available at most schools.

“When kids play in a sandbox, that’s all about learning. That’s all about discovery,” Canfield said. “The same thing, when you put headphones on and you’ve got thousands of thousands of things in front of you to be able to do and create, it’s basically creating that same sandbox time in music education.”

The introduction of the online programs paved the way for the post-pandemic introduction of the electronic music courses. Canfield said the modern music courses have similar enrollment numbers to traditional band and choir, allowing him to step away from the band director position and focus on the modern music courses in grades 6-12.

“Music is moving more this direction, the creativity, the electronic,” Canfield said. “Who knows where we’ll be 10 years from now, 30 years from now.”

Canfield said one of the biggest differences between traditional band class and the courses he teaches is creation versus emulation. In band, students receive a handful of songs that they spend months perfecting to sound just like the original.

While this is a valuable skill, Canfield said a true mastery of music requires an understanding of music theory and creation that can only be understood by going through the steps yourself. He compared it to the popularity of video games, mentioning video games have many processes to get to a solution. If there was only one path to the finish, they would not be as popular.

“Mozart’s awesome, but for me to spend 10 hours just recreating that one song, that has a purpose, but what about creating our own song. That’s one thing that we don’t do,” Canfield said. “Music is an artform. So, where’s the art if we’re not creating.”

Canfield grew up as a drummer, and when asked his favorite style, it was not to drum like Neil Peart or Rush or Lars Ulrich of Metallica, it was to drum like himself. The aim is for that mentality to translate to students, becoming the best artists they can be, not the closest to someone else that they can be.