What Is the Tapestry Music Collective?
The Tapestry Music Collective is an extracurricular program at Tapestry Charter High School, located in Buffalo, New York. The mission of the Tapestry Music Collective is to empower students through musical expression and encourage an adventurous do-it-yourself spirit.

The program is open to students of all grade levels and requires no previous knowledge of music or the recording arts. Each year begins with several basic training sessions in Apple’s Garage Band software and students are then encouraged to start making their own original music, either as solo artists or bands, meeting twice a week after school. Occasionally, workshops are offered by school staff or visiting artists.

Students participating in the Tapestry Music Collective program are not obligated to publish their work. But for those wanting to share their work with an audience beyond their peers, this website has been created. All music on this site goes through an application process to ensure that no existing copyrights are being violated and that all lyrics are school appropriate.

Tapestry Music Collective material is published under a non-commercial Creative Commons license, which means that while students own the copyright to their music, others are free to distribute and sample their work – as long as no one is profiting from it. Because the mission of the Tapestry Music Collective is to empower students and encourage an adventurous do-it-yourself spirit, all music published on this site is offered for free. Removing profit from the creative process emphasizes to our students that expressing one’s self through music is a reward in itself. For our purposes, music is not a business; it is a right. Of course, students are always free to pursue commercial a path outside of the collective, even after music is published on this site.

The Tapestry Music Collective was founded in 2009 by Jesse Mank, an English teacher at Tapestry Charter School. Mank currently moderates the collective as well as this site. To donate instruments, equipment, or money to the collective, click here.

Visit this link for more information about Tapestry Charter High School.

Technical Information

Tapestry Music Collective members make their music using Garage Band software on Macintosh laptops. Some students make music by piecing together the prerecorded, copyright-free samples that come loaded into Garage Band. However, most Tapestry Music Collective members challenge themselves by composing original music with USB keyboards and acoustic instruments. This is remarkable considering a majority of our students have no formal music training. In fact, for many of our members the Tapestry Music Collective is the extent of their music composition experience.  What these students lack in formal training, they make up for in creative energy, composing from instinct and a natural ear for music.