Meet the Teacher, Mr. Keith Galasso
| Visual and Performing Arts director Keith Galasso has taught at the school for the past 15 years. A former session musician at Studio West in San Diego, Galasso began seeking funds to create a music-technology lab and digital recording studio at his new school as soon as he arrived. In 1993, he wrote a modest grant proposal to purchase some recording equipment, but when he discovered how much money was being offered per student through the Florida Technology Incentive Fund, he raised the amount of his grant request — and got it all. With that original grant money, he purchased a five-station music-technology lab and purchased a multitrack hard-disk recorder and editing software. | |
Fifteen years later, with the help of an extremely supportive administration and with persistent fund-raising, the music-technology program at DPHS has grown tremendously. The 5-station music-technology lab now has 20 stations. The original recording equipment has been expanded into a fully operational recording studio, complete with a control room and an isolation booth. All of the students in the music department are required to take a keyboard class and an electronic-music class.
With the adoption of national and state standards in music education, music-technology labs afford opportunities — sometimes the only opportunity — for students to fulfill the standard for composing and arranging music. (For more on this subject, see the two-part feature “Music Technology and the National Standards” in the Spring and Summer 2004 issues of MET.) Galasso believes that this reason is one of the most important ones for continuing to pursue funding for technology. “Our students are outstanding musicians,” he enthuses. “With technology, they are given a chance to explore their creative side, something not easily achieved without it.”
This is just a part of the article featured in the Septermber, 2004 issue of MET Magazine. For the full article please follow this link: