White sheet music sits on the black stands in front of the students, waiting to be translated into sound. A gentle tinkling comes from the flute section, followed by deeper notes from the brass section and rat-a-tats from the drum section.

The song is actually the theme from Halo 3, a popular video game. And the instruments playing the piece aren't flutes, trumpets or even actual drums.

They're laptop computers.

Students at Casper Classical Academy are learning to play the entire song using laptops and GarageBand, a program for editing music. Band director Scott Reinsbach said he stole the idea from the Stanford Laptop Orchestra.

"It's never been done before [at the middle school level]," Reinsbach said.

GarageBand has a program called musical typing, where letters on a keyboard coincide with music notes. Users can play music by typing away on their computers.

The program also allows users to adjust the sounds of a piece, so that songs can have a techno sound instead of a traditional trumpet sound, for example.

"It's been difficult," said ninth-grader Brianna Casey. "It's a lot harder."

"It's pretty fun though," added ninth-grader Paulina Strayer.

The students will showcase their newly acquired skills in a concert on Thursday night. Using the laptops has been a challenge for even the most seasoned musicians at the academy.

During Monday's band practice, students were still getting the hang of typing out the song. A series of triple notes brought a fury of clicks and clacks as students tried to force their fingers into playing the subtleties of the piece.

But whether it's played on a computer or with an instrument, the students know it's just a song to be performed.

"In the end, it'll just be like every other band concert," said ninth-grader Chelsea Coons.

Reach education reporter Jasa Santos at (307) 266-0593 or at jasa.santos@trib.com. Read her education blog at trib.com/blog.

Watch the video below to hear the class practice in a Star-Tribune report.

Hear the music

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Casper Classical Academy's band and choir concert is set for Thursday. The concert will take place at Frontier Middle School, located at 900 S. Beverly.

The academy's concert choir is performing a medley made up of commercial jingles from the 1960s and 1970s. Choir instructor Paul Searcey rewrote the piece, which was originally written by a college professor, to be performed by middle school students.

"It's almost eight minutes long," Searcey said. "It's about three times longer than any normal choir song."

The concert begins at 7 p.m.