31/07/2025
🎶Lakeland SHS Opus Project🎼 A Recount by Mr Tom Haste
Finally, I have been able to present the Lakeland SHS Opus project at Perth Modern, Cyril Tyler Auditorium! It has been MONTHS of planning, preparing, revising, practicing and stressing.
Late last year we decided to submit an idea for Opus (which was originally going to be at the Perth Concert Hall but changed due to renovations), that utilised time and space. The plan was to simulate the atmosphere of the pipe organ from Hans Zimmers Cornfield Chase with synthesisers, by installing a quadraphonic surround sound PA system, and collaborating with the very talented students from Leeming SHS with Mr Gordon Ryder. Once approved, the daunting task of making the hardware, software AND the arrangement working.
I figured out the surround sound system quickly using Reaper DAW and mapped the pan to an LFO (low frequency oscillator) just to have it moving and instantly started hearing interesting ideas. Our year 8 superstar Ashley Qin began learning parts on her guzheng to start the arrangement. Next Mr Ryder set us the challenge of Footprints, which we tackled much closer to our final rehearsals. Mr Ryder and I agreed Radiohead's Pyramid Song would be an amazing song to tackle as the time structure in that song is wild. Our amazing drummer Ayo, our pianist Lochlan and guitarist Jorja did a great job performing their parts for it. We added an extra vocal part for Samara and had a mic that slowly swirled around all 4 speakers to accentuate the eerie singing parts in the song.
The most complex parts were designated to Toby and Alex. Toby was playing 2 different synthesizer parts live, which we mapped several tone controls to morph the sounds. This really drove the atmospheric tones that were vital to our rendition of the song, creating huge evil swells, unsettling drones and the “swooshing” highlights in Footprints. Finally, Alex programmed the XY and mixing interfaces on the iPads using TouchOSC, making a custom interface to control the surround sound pan in real time. Not only that, but he also worked with Mr Singh in the D&T department to engineer the mounting solution of the speakers to complete our surround sound PA system. My Year 10 team really worked together to push the arrangement into something VERY special.
The students had an amazing experience and were a part of something that IMSS and the audience has never experienced before. We were very happy to receive so much positive feedback after the show. We really are a small school, doing extraordinary things!
Mr Tom Haste and Mr Foo
Specialist Music Technology Teacher
Senior Teacher
