Live from TED

The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus stops at TEDActive

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Throughout TEDActive, TEDsters had a chance to participate in something truly magical: the making of a music video (UPDATE: watch the video!). To help out, the musicians and producers with the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus stopped in Palm Springs for all four days of the conference. The Bus, a nonprofit mobile recording studio, travels all around the country 10 months out of the year, providing free hands-on workshops to students of all ages, working with both audio and video projects.

We dropped by their ingeniously designed studio (how did they ever figure out how to fit it all in there?) mid-jam session to talk to the song’s chief collaborator (and longtime TEDster) Jill Sobule.

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“There was an assignment to write a song for a video for the end of TED, for ‘What the World Needs Now.’ We wrote it the first day we were here, and we’re mixing it right now. It’ll be shown Saturday.

The song started with a 20-dollar pawn-shop guitar that a friend bought and gave to me. It was just a mess, and it only plays in open tuning and C#. So we just took that guitar, and that was the seed of it, and built upon it with other instruments. For the lyrics, we took the theme of ‘What the World Needs Now’ and brainstormed for about three hours.” — Jill Sobule

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(Photos: TED / Michael Brands)