Longmont Times-Call

More than a decade ago, Tommy Reddicks stood inside a cramped janitor’s closet in a Seattle Catholic school, trying to professionally record students singing songs from the school musical. “I told them I could do it without even knowing how,” said Reddicks, 36, now a teacher at Flagstaff Academy charter school in Longmont. Reddicks succeeded in making the CDs, and the sound quality was good for what was available in the 1990s, he said.

Reddicks’ recordings now are near-radio quality, similar to a large recording studio’s output. And his elementary and middle school students no longer sing in a closet. Instead, their music is recorded in a homemade recording studio in Reddicks’ classroom.

“It gives our students a sense of the real world,” he said. “More and more, we are reaching that higher level.” Reddicks designed and built a recording booth on a shoestring budget of $500 and enlisted parents, friends and family to help build it. He then added a 15-headphone amplifier system outside the booth so larger groups could record together.

Since he started at Flagstaff Academy almost three years ago, Reddicks has been adding professional equipment using proceeds from sales of the CDs he engineered of the school’s musicals. Besides the homemade studio, his classroom also contains a five-person work station to help with composing, a digital recording mixer, a synthesizer with a hard drive, microphones and the headphone amplifier system.

One recent morning, 15 headphone-clad third-graders belted out the title track for “All I Want for Christmas,” an original album that Reddicks wrote for the school’s holiday musical. “We’re not just singing a song,” said Caroline Stokes, 8. “He (Reddicks) makes it like we’re really doing it in real life.”

“All I Want for Christmas” is about spoiled children who have lost the Christmas spirit, Reddicks said. The town mayor puts Santa Claus in jail to teach the kids a lesson, and the children eventually have to work together to fix the toys that keep breaking, all the while regaining the spirit of Christmas.

While they sang together, Reddicks adjusted the sound levels as he recorded another track. Each of his classes will have a track, he said, and when they are finally added together, there will be about 60 to 70 voices per song.

“It’s fun when you do the recording (that) you can actually hear the song in one earphone and your voice in the other,” said Mariah Powell, 8. Reddicks, who has a master’s degree in education from the University of Wyoming, said he writes two school musicals every year. Scripts take four to five days of concentrated work, he said, but the music takes about a month to compose. He began writing musicals in 1995 out of necessity, because he wanted to record the music and couldn’t legally record copyrighted songs, he said.

The “All I Want for Christmas” CD, which will be sold after the Dec. 6 performance for $12, will include seven original songs, including one written by fifth-grade teacher Naomi Lin.

Reddicks predicts that about 150 to 200 CDs will sell after the holiday performance and another 100 after the school’s spring musical.

“We’re like real professionals,” said Angela McKelvey, 8, a third-grader at Flagstaff Academy. “He tells us what to do to look professional. If someone waves at you (during a performance), you shouldn’t do anything — just smile.”

Susan Glairon can be reached at 303-684-5224 or sglairon@times-call.com.

Susan Glairon

The Daily Times-Call

LONGMONT — Tommy Reddicks dreamed of becoming the best saxophone player in the world. . .After realizing his dream wasn’t going to happen, Reddicks turned his efforts to studying world music and finishing a teaching degree at the University of Wyoming.

“I was opened up to those new and funky sounds,” Reddicks said.

Reddicks will present a workshop about the Shakuhachi (Japanese flute) at Nan Desu Kan 2007, the Mile High anime (Japanese animation) convention, which opens today.

The convention is a celebration of Japanese animation, games, music and traditions and includes presentations by actors who do the voiceovers for anime characters, and by artists who draw those characters. The convention also will feature Japanese musicians, and workshops for Japanese language and history, as well as video game and costume competitions and nonstop screenings of the latest anime releases.

At Reddicks’ workshop, attendees will learn how to make and play the traditional Japanese instrument, which is used to help the musician ease into a meditative state.

This will be the second time Reddicks has presented this workshop at Nan Desu Kan. It’s appropriate for anyone old enough to reach their fingers around the instrument, such as fourth- or fifth-graders, he said.

During Reddicks’ workshop, the instruments will be made from polyvinylchloride pipe instead of traditional black bamboo, which is difficult to obtain and cracks in the dry Colorado weather, he said. The plastic pipes, when finished with a wood stain, look uncannily like wood. Reddicks will pre-cut the mouth piece and drill the tone holes before the event. Those who attend also will receive a sandpaper kit and complete instructions on how to finish the instrument. But the bulk of the two-hour workshop will include instruction on how to play the instrument.

The Shakuhachi is a “very quiet” instrument with a “haunting sound,” Reddicks said. Players angle the air half over and under the mouth piece to create friction to make the sound. The player then plays the first note and from there, slowly builds a song to create his or her own melody.

To simulate the wooden appearance, Reddicks roughens the PVC with sandpaper — which exposes a grain that can absorb a stain, much like wood. He also heats the PVC to create subtle bends, so that the plastic flute takes on the character of a piece of raw wood. The heating also can be used to shape the flute so that those with small hands can reach the tone holes more easily.

After he finishes a flute, even woodworkers guess it’s made from wood, he said.

He got the idea to use the plastic piping from his brother, who made a didgeridoo, the wind instrument of indigenous Australians, from PVC. Reddicks said the PVC gives the instrument a better, more consistent sound than using wood, because it doesn’t have the natural roughness of wood. It’s also cost effective and durable, he adds.

“Unless you roll a car over it, it isn’t going to break,” he said.