Most teenagers fantasize at some point about becoming a recording star. Now, some Roanoke Valley middle and high schoolers getting a hands-on lesson in how to produce songs.
"Alright, think you're ready?" one student asked another as they prepared to record a guitar solo.
The trio of teenagers sat before a music board, trying to make a song.
"And then you could keep going, and slowly I could play and like bring in the guitar slowly, and with it, and you could keep playing and then suddenly the rhythm guitar would come back in," said a student working the board.
Another picked out a solo, then shook his head.
"Yeah, I don't know," he said.
It's going OK. They're trying to figure out structure and solo, and they're using a large screen that displays stacks of sound wave forms, layering them over one another to figure out what sounds best.
The guitar player was Easton Arnold, a 9th grader at Lord Botetourt High School. He's only been playing about a year.
"I was talking to this girl, [and] she played guitar, and I wanted to impress her," Arnold said, remembering how he learned to play the instrument. "I tried to learn a few songs. I wasn't very good. I wanted to learn a song to impress her, but I wasn't very good. But I kept playing, and she kind of dumped me. But I wasn't going to stop playing guitar, so I kept playing guitar."
Easton and the other two teens are part of Jefferson Center's Music Lab, an ongoing program for 6th to 12th graders. The lab opens twice a week for the aspiring musicians. The workshop focuses on how to produce songs.
Two Jefferson Center instructors are helping out, along with Stimulator Jones – aka Sam Lunsford, a Roanoke-based recording artist who's supervising.
"My plan is to just talk to these kids about songwriting, about production, about melodies, about what makes a song great," Lunsford said. "What is producing? What is a producer? What is the role of a producer in relation to an artist, things like that."
Lunsford attended the Music Lab himself, back when it was first getting started.
"Me and my brother Joe were some of the first students to sign up for the program, probably in 1999," Lunsford said. "We were both in high school, and we signed up for the program."
Back then, the Lunsford brothers were a lot more interested in rock music. But Sam always had an interest in hip-hop.
"I always was a bedroom producer, DJ, rapper," Lunsford said. "I always enjoyed working on that music in my spare time. Didn't really perform it out much or officially release anything. But I've always loved that music."
In the early 2010s, he got more serious and started releasing that music – first rap albums under the name Joneski, and then instrumental funk and hip-hop records as Stimulator Jones. That project developed a larger national following.
Today, Lunsford is a veteran of the music business. Which makes him a great mentor for the next generation of kids coming up.
And that next generation? It encompasses a range of kids of different experience levels and interests — like a trio of older teens working out a track on drums, bass and guitar.
Elsewhere, Connor Martinez of Patrick Henry High School partners with Aaron Walters of Cave Spring High School on a hip-hop track. Walters learned about the Music Lab from a social media post, and Martinez had an older brother who went through the program.
Around the corner, in yet another studio, a 17-year-old who's thinking about pursuing a musical career works with a 12-year-old just who's writing his first song.
12-year-old Wyatt is a middle school student.
"When I turned 12, my mom got it for my birthday, and it was a cool gift," Wyatt said. "It was cooler than I ever thought it would be."
The 17-year-old is Bryce Van Gieson, a high school senior.
"Right now, I'm just doing whatever he wants," Van Geesen said of his collaboration with Wyatt. "But I want to do music production. As a job I want to do that, or just anything in music."
So, for some of these students, the Music Lab is just a way to have some fun. And others are aiming to develop skills they can use for decades to come, building chops to make the music of the future.
