PBS

Celebrate independence with an epic mashup: US National Anthem [Star Spangled Banner] + Black National Anthem [Lift Every Voice and Sing]. Download the mashup at: www.beatmakinglab.com/mashup

The first Beat Making Lab was launched at UNC-Chapel Hill in the Fall semester of 2011, as a 3 credit hour course in the music department founded by Dr. Mark Katz (now the chair of the music department) and Stephen Levitin (aka Apple Juice Kid). This episode, shot and edited by UNC student Jon Kasbe for Reese News, shows the on-campus origins of the now international program.

Welcome to Fiji. Local rapper/producer Dave Lavaki (aka Mr. Grin) explains how they are building a scene 8000 miles away from the music industry.

A man in Fiji hits a PVC pipe with a flip flop, that sound meets a 17-year-old drummer in North Carolina. A beat is created. And around it all, Platinum selling producer Ski Beatz (producer for Jay Z, Camp Lo and Jay Electronica) lets us know why he even samples in the first place.

Walshy Fire plays you a Fijian Chant, Apple Juice Kid tells you the basics of Moombahton, we play the winning beat from the Senegal Challenge, and you get a chance to be featured on Mad Decent and Beat Making Lab via ETC!ETC!.

Zenga, is a global dance anthem by Congolese maverick guitarist Flamme Kapaya, produced by Apple Juice Kid. Created in a Beat Making Lab, the song and video were created during Yole!Africa's SKIFF Festival. Zenga is part of a free EP called "Amani Goma" released by Latino Resiste/Mal Dicen/ARTVSM with remixes by Apple Juice Kid, 13th Tribe, and Carnnibal.

Yaci, Osvaldo and Darin - three Panamanian youth - go from cowbell to MPC while learning the skills to become beat makers. Check us out Wednesdays for more stories, and beats from Panamanian festivals, schools and prisons. In Portobelo, Panama a Beat Making Lab was established at La Escuelita Del Ritmo.

Meet Martin, a young accordion prodigy from Portobelo. Apple Juice Kid vs. Pierce battle to make a trap beat sampling his accordion.

Beat produced and lyrics written by the youth of Portobelo, Panama. Created in a Beat Making Lab at La Escuelita del Ritmo. Inspired by festival de los Diablos y Congos.

In this video we make a beat in a prison, in the rain forests of Gamboa, Panama with Professor Angel Sound (an incarcerated DJ who was blackmailed into muling cocaine for the Nigerian mafia) and his fellow inmate, who loves Macaroni and Cheese.

Here is the full story about how beat maker and DJ, Professor Angel Sound ended up making music at a prison in Panama.

Professor Pierce Freelon and Apple Juice Kid collaborate with youth in the Democratic Republic of Congo at Yole!Africa.

During a blackout in Panama, we filmed this amazing video with Yomira. Lit by an iPhone and recorded with a usb mic. Check out the color explosion and how the graphics come alive at the 2min mark. Thanks Pan II Creative!

"The people need a female rapper," says Toussa, the president of GOTAL; an all-women's collective of Senegalese rappers, producers, singers and beat makers who paired with a woman-led NGO called Speak Up Africa to write songs about global health issues in their communities.

An all women's group of African beat makers recorded a kora player and created a dancehall-inspired riddim out of the sample. Now its your turn.

Ina, a Senegalese beat making student, takes a field trip to an Intrahealth hospital to make a beat. She records baby squeals and blood pressure gauges; and interviews health workers and community leaders about family planning. These recordings were then delivered to a group of Fijian beat making students, who composed an instrumental entirely comprised of the found sounds.

Why do so many beginning producers' beats sound flat? Because they make the error of using the factory drum sounds that come with their beat making software. One of the cardinal rules of beat making is: if you want to create an interesting beat - start with an original kit.

Cho Cho Cho is the first song and music video produced and written by the youth of Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo. Created in a Beat Making Lab, the song was inspired by a popular call-and-response chant in Goma, and the video was filmed during Yole!Africa's SKIFF Festival dance competition.

A Beat Making Lab is an electronic music studio small enough to fit in a backpack. We build Labs in collaboration with communities all around the world; donating laptops, microphones, software and other equipment. From our first Beat Making Lab in DR-Congo, producer Apple Juice Kid reaches into the backpack and reveals some of the tools that we use.

There are many fossils that challenge our ability to form even the most basic idea of how a living thing looked, or lived, or functioned. One of the longest-running of these mysteries involved a 270-million-year-old sea creature called Helicoprion that once swam the seas around the supercontinent of Pangea.

Do your eyes glaze over when you ever hear about the DOW? Are you still confused about what the DOW is?

Surprise! You're more optimistic than you think.

A halfalogue is that distracting half-of-a-conversation that you overhear. And you absolutely must know the other half. Because you're a curious human and your brain circuitry rewards you for finding out. Here's the lowdown.

It seems like some people have so many great ideas - like <a href="https://rumble.com/v31hih-did-einstein-know-the-truth-about-aliens.html" target="_blank">Albert Einstein</a>, who apart from changing everything we know about the whole of space and time, he also took a stab at fashion. Rest assured there are ways that the rest of us can be more creative, too. We explore some practical tips for boosting your creativity and generating ideas. Why do some people have so many great ideas? And how can the rest of us be more creative? Creativity is the result of large brain networks that interact with each other to generate random thoughts, change them and merge them and this happens through three mental skills: bending, breaking and blending. Bending is when we imagine things in new ways, breaking is when we take an idea and break it into pieces and blending is when we mix few things together. In 2017 study, researchers found those who score high on creativity tests have more connections between brain hemispheres and stronger communication between brain networks, and the people who come up with many original answers to a question possess a skill called divergent thinking. Remember that you are not stuck with the brain you have, your brain networks are flexible and you can practice creativity. So read more, pay more attention, visit a <a href="https://rumble.com/v45fql-museum-of-selfies-to-open-january-2018-in-glendale.html" target="_blank">museum</a>, and travel to feed your imagination. Keep generating ideas and come back to the ground with fresh eyes and hopefully fresh ideas. Don’t forget to surround yourself with interesting people. We need humans and our society for creativity to flourish.

Creativity depends on the cooperation of two competing networks: one that generates spontaneous thoughts (the default mode network) and the executive control center of the brain that governs everything else. Our random, free-flowing thoughts that are worthy of further exploration pop into our consciousness when they're recruited by the executive control network.