6 Katy ISD students selected to create music on John Lennon Educational Tour Bus

HOUSTON – All you need is one chord to start creating a song, but what normally takes several days, a group of Katy ISD students did in a matter of hours.

Six students selected from across the district came together Monday on the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus to create something from nothing. Among them was Katy High School junior Luke Sturgis.

“I get to meet and work with musicians I don't even know and we get to start from scratch. It was pretty awesome,” said Luke.

“We're a nonprofit mobile recording studio going to schools, communities, that want to get involved in multimedia production -- music, video, photography -- so we do all those things with students all around the country,” said Gabe Smith, one of the on-board engineers.

The bus begin 20 years ago as a part of the John Lennon Songwriting Competition. Over the years, it has visited thousands of schools and thus has helped create thousands of original songs.

“It's kind of cool to see all the different music all around the country that these kids come up with, and a lot of it is really great music, honestly,” said Smith.

“It's different than the usual style I'm comfortable with, and I think it's different than all of the styles we're comfortable with.

So it's really good for us to get out of our comfort zone and try something new and I think we've made a really good product,” said Sturgis.

What's more, these students are involved with the audio engineering program at Miller Career and Technology Center. That means one day they could be the ones helping create the next generation of music.

“This gives them a real-world application aspect of it that in the classroom we try to give -- but obviously it's not going to be the same as the Lennon Foundation,” said audio engineering instructor John Bertram.

“I feel like I've grown as a musician and as an audio engineer from this whole program,” said Sturgis.

It's not just the song that the students got to come up with and record; they also created a music video out of the experience. You can see the final song and music video a few weeks from now at the bus's website - lennonbus.org.