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Making Music on the Lennon Bus
Ryan Meinkoth playing the sax on the Columns
The John Lennon Education Tour Bus created quite the ruckus on Lowry Mall. The Lennon Bus spent two days on Missouri’s campus to introduce state-of-the-art mobile audio and HD video recording and production technology to young people. The bus invited a handful of Mizzou students to participate in the production of a music video in one day on the Lennon Bus.
Ryan Meinkoth, a junior music education student, was one of seven students invited to take part in this ambitious project. A few of the students involved had worked together before this. They were told in the morning that they would be writing and recording the music and lyrics of a new song. They would then put it all together in a music video by the end of the day.
A music video built in a day
At first daunted by this seemingly impossible task, the students sat down and brainstormed quickly about the music. Meinkoth said the best part of performing on the bus was the spontaneity of it.
“It started small and turned into this huge thing. It was cool to bounce ideas around off each other,” Meinkoth said.
The team went to work writing and recording in the morning while another student wrote and recorded the lyrics. At the same time, other students were running around campus taking pictures and video to be used in the music video.
Chelsea Sektnan, a senior photo journalism student, was taking pictures all morning trying to capture the spirit of the campus to be used for the music video later that day.
“It was 8:45 am and they were like 'ok you’re going to write a song today' but things started clicking fast, and I realized that you can achieve something like this,” Meinkoth said.
Step onto the bus
After a chaotic day of recording, the video was finally finished and ready for viewing the next day. The second day, the Lennon Bus hosted tours where the public could see the finished product and also the equipment used to produce it.
Walking through the door is the front studio, an audio and video production room with couches, Apple computers, Mackie studio monitors and Sony HD products. A few feet further into the bus is the rear studio, which offers professional level recording and mixing where you can find Godin guitars and basses. Here there is an iso booth for acoustic recordings and a chromate booth from Reflecmedia.
Meinkoth has ambitions to be a band teacher and sees this opportunity to perform on the Lennon Bus as something he will be able to reference as a band teacher. Meinkoth, a sax player, said performing on the bus was similar to jazz combo, which is very intimate; he wants to use that kind of intimacy when teaching.
To see a virtual tour of the bus go to the Lennon Bus Website.