Ten artists have been commissioned by Fachhochschule Dortmund to produce pieces of music for digital educational videos. The three to five-minute compositions are the university's first contribution to the new online state portal ORCA.nrw and are available to all teachers at schools and universities.
Although there is already a wealth of free music online, "the quality of these pieces is often less than ideal for teaching content and legal issues are not always clarified," says Dr. Sina Nitzsche, ORCA coordinator at Fachhochschule Dortmund. The University of Applied Sciences and Arts has therefore put the composition of background music out to tender. More than 30 artists applied for the commission. Ten of them, including students from Fachhochschule Dortmund, were awarded the contract to create three tracks each.
Music tracks can be used freely
"The requirements for the compositions were clearly defined," says Sina Nitzsche. Whether natural tones, hip-hop or electro - all sounds used had to be played or recorded by the artists themselves. The tracks are provided with the so-called Creative Commons license CC BY. This means that lecturers can not only use the music freely, but also modify it - shorten, mix and adapt it or use only individual audio tracks - provided the authors are credited. "They are part of our UAS-wide range of open educational resources - i.e. freely available learning and teaching materials," explains Sina Nitzsche.
During production, the young artists were supported by the Fachhochschule Dortmund project team and learned a lot in the process. "Until now, I've primarily made music for myself," says Simon Hemmers, an electrical engineering student at Fachhochschule Dortmund. Now he had to respond to the wishes of the client. "Together with the feedback providers, we developed new sounds and tried out sounds that I hadn't worked with before," says Simon Hemmers. The result is impressive. He is excited to see which educational videos his compositions will be used in.
Institute for Higher Education Didactics
Available on ORCA.nrw
Justin Weers from Dortmund gives concerts himself with "Das Weers", but had to take a back seat in this project: "Making music that works as background music is a challenge," says the 28-year-old. "Because even if it only plays in the background, a lot of work goes into every single track." The tracks have to be suitable for a wide variety of topics, they should convey a certain mood, increase attention - and at the same time not distract from the important learning content.
Fachhochschule Dortmund has now made a total of 30 tracks available on the state portal ORCA.nrw and in the university's own sound library in the video program Camtasia. The project was financed by the Corona emergency aid of the Ministry of Culture and Science NRW (MKW). The music tracks are available at: www.orca.nrw/oer-support/oer-tracks(Opens in a new tab)