Charlie Puth builds song from classroom sounds with Harlem pupils

Charlie Puth built a song with Harlem school pupils using a comb scrape and peeling tape as the beat. He appeared as the special guest on Celebrity Substitute, the series hosted by Julian Shapiro-Barnum, in an episode posted on Oct. 6.

The class met at PS 197, a public elementary school in Harlem, New York City YouTube. Puth stepped in as a substitute teacher for the day. The lesson focused on rhythm, the pattern of sounds in time, and songwriting, the process of turning ideas into lyrics and music.

Instead of starting with an instrument, he started with the room. He asked pupils to hunt for everyday noises and record them directly into his music workspace, the software where producers layer drums, chords and vocals. Each sound became a building block for the track.

One student held a microphone close while scraping the teeth of a comb. The scratch turned into a crisp, repeating tick. Another student peeled masking tape on and off its roll, making a soft rip that Puth could loop.

The classroom became the drum kit. Puth trimmed the clips, stacked them and shaped them into a beat the whole group could clap along to.

Lyrics came next. Puth and the pupils wrote and then performed a chorus built for young voices: “All of my friends, they all like music / They love the beat when it goes da da da da da da.” The line gave every child a part to sing. They performed it together at the end of the lesson.

For Puth, the school visit carried a personal note. He recently welcomed a son with his wife Brooke Sansone. His mother was a music educator when he was growing up, teaching at the stage when children first learn notes and rhythms.

What makes this stand out is how open the process was. Nothing arrived finished. The pupils could hear an ordinary scrape turn into percussion and an ordinary phrase turn into a chorus they could sing back.

The episode arrived after a busy stretch on the road. Puth has wrapped the North American leg, the grouped run of dates in one region, of his Whatever’s Clever! Tour, which kicked off in April. He cancelled the tour’s dates in New Zealand and Australia. His album Whatever’s Clever! debuted at No. 46 on the Billboard 200, the US chart that ranks albums by sales and streaming activity Billboard.