School Of Rock After Hours At NMS

By Eliza Hallabeck

For nine years students have been rocking the halls of Newtown Middle School after school hours, and this year the after school rock band group is taking names and playing covers (songs made famous by a name band).

Being a part of a rock band has been an after school option for students at Newtown Middle School for years, and this year four student bands will be getting together with social studies teacher Will Ryan to practice their skills.

“The first step is getting the bands together,” said Mr Ryan.

Tryouts were held at the beginning of the school year, and now students are finding out what bands they will be in for this year. Only three students are returning to the program from last year, because many of the students who participated last year were eighth grade students who have since moved on to attend the high school. The students chosen to be in the bands know how to play instruments already, Mr Ryan said, because the rock band group is not designed to teach students how to play an instrument.

Mr Ryan said the idea for an after school rock organization for students came to him ten years ago when a student band was playing for an eighth grade dance at the middle school. The band was playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana. Mr Ryan said he stood there watching the band play, and he kept thinking he could help them with their sound quality.

“They all knew their parts,” said Mr Ryan, “but they were all coming in at different parts.”

 The next year was the first school year the after school rock band group was announced for student participation, and it has been taking off since then.

Danny Bittman, Evan Isaacs, and Lyam Reynolds are returning students to the program, and they said they enjoyed the program last year, when they were all in seventh grade. The students said they all are expecting to play more this year.

Danny, who plays the guitar and the piano, and Lyam, who plays the bass, said they originally heard about the program from Mr Ryan announcing it over the loudspeaker. Evan, who plays the keyboard and the saxophone, said he heard about it from Mr Ryan talking about it one day.

Students have to try out to make the bands after school, because the rock band group is not a technical after school program, but it works the same way as one.

After they try out, Mr Ryan will let them know who made the bands, and this year there will be four individual bands. Danny and Lyam will be continuing a band they started over the summer with other students, who will be starting to play in the rock band after school group with Mr Ryan for the first time. 

“A lot of the time the kids don’t even know each other,” said Mr Ryan, while explaining how the groups start to work together once their bands are established. Each band will have a drummer, a bassist, a keyboardist, two guitarists, and a singer.

“The hard thing is trying to find a singer,” said Mr Ryan, “because not a lot of middle school age students can project their voice that far.”

Lyam is the only student playing the bass so far this school year for the rock bands, and Mr Ryan said he is the guy they will be going to for all the songs so far until another bass player can be found.

“Some of it is teaching the instrument,” said Mr Ryan, “and a lot of it is learning how to communicate while playing in the band.”

Mr Ryan said he approaches the students in the bands with videos or songs of bands he thinks they should learn from, and the students will take off from there. Evan, Lyam, and Danny said they normally look up the videos to songs online to listen to the songs and learn how to play them better.

He likes to introduce the students to bands they have not yet been made familiar with. Games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, which are video games that let players act out classic rock songs as if they were actually playing them on a stage, he said, have started helping students be familiar with classic rock songs, but he still finds things to teach them through the songs.

“I’m a big fan of a band called Tribe of Judah, which no one knows who they are,” said Mr Ryan.

With many of the students he said he has to pay attention to the electric aspect of the instruments, like working with the amps, because the students have never had to do that before.

Expectations for this year are running high among the three returning students already. Danny said he wants the bands to play more shows and learn more cover songs, because those are normally big hits with the audience.

“We want to really write our own songs this year,” said Evan.

Both Evan and Danny said they want Mr Ryan to help them write their own songs more in their bands. Danny said his band writes their own songs already, but he said he wants to be guided a bit more with that aspect. Danny also said he wants to play more cover songs and play more shows with his band. The other members of his band, which was formed over the summer, will be joining the after school program.

In the past, bands from the after school group with Mr Ryan have played dances, and Mr Ryan said it helps to get more students to go to the dances if there is a student band playing. Nothing has been decided yet for this school year, and according to Mr Ryan; the first step is putting the bands together. From there, the school year will rock.