I took a different approach with The Kids today. There is a music service concert coming up in a couple of weeks and so instead of trying to bash rhythm into their heads (with bats!) (not really.) I decided to usethat degree I've got and do a workshop style thing with them. So we're writing a song.
I was hoping to get four phrases today. It took us an hour to get one, I definitely should have started this process earlier. But It worked, and the music we produced is great- though I realized as I was leaving that in singing it all together we had shifted the rhythm over an eighth note- so now it is all jazzy and syncopated- which is fabulous and much more fun to sing and play, but it is no longer technically what rhythm they wrote down- and I'm not sure if that is a big deal or not...
Anyhow- we've been working on writing down and playing back four beat rhythms on the white board so we started with that and then took the first two bars and figured out how to tap them together as a group.
Then I took the keyboard and put it on the floor so that we could all see the keys and for each note in the rhythm I asked them if the pitch should stay the same, go up, or go down. I played each version and sometimes we voted on which we thought sounded best. We tried singing it just like that, but it turned out that it was very difficult to sing the tune without words- so we did a big brainstorm about legato and staccato and what animals or things were like that.
We didn't end up with the most inspired lyrics ever, but I like them anyway:
"This one is smooth, this one. Legato, Staccato!" Then we practiced singing that all together- the jazzy way, one eighth note displaced.
(I've spent the last 45 minutes trying to figure out how to make a picture of what I mean, but I haven't figured out a good way. I've got the lick typed into Sibelius so if anyone knows how to do a screen shot or how to turn something into a graphic that I can then insert into the blog as a picture... that would be keen.)
The kids were humming the riff on the way down the stairs to their parents and I sighed with relief- finally. A good lesson.
Showing posts with label workshop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label workshop. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Unexpected Workshop
Today I was wandering through the foyer of the main building on my way to return an overdue library book when I stopped and started chatting to Salima, another American bassist that I often run in to at various cross arts events. She's fun times and so I went and said hello. She was super bouncy about this project that she had just signed up for courtesy of gig-arts.com So before long, I was too a part of this.
I had to miss the beginning of the workshop due to my doctor's appointment, so instead of telling you what their mission is- I'll tell you to go check out their website. They seem like a cool organization. In any case, our mission for this afternoon was to create a show. We had three teams each with their own theme: Salima, Laverne, and I ended up with "equality." And Equality just screams 'carrots' to you, right?
Yeah, me neither, but for some reason that is what I came up with when we were told to come up with a character- "What about a giant talking carrot?" Fortunately, Salima and Laverne were cool enough to not only go with it, but to also get excited about making a piece about a giant talking carrot.
I think our finished product ended up missing the boat a bit on the whole equality thing- the carrot, which is a "walking, talking, gargantuan carrot" is due to some magic fairy dust. The hungry bunny rabbit singing the blues spies the carrot and wants to eat the carrot after the carrot's initial introduction song (la, I'm a carrot; la, I'm a carrot) but eventually the carrot convinces the hungry bunny that he is also a person (?) and so the hungry bunny has a change of heart and they leave the stage searching for food together as best friends....(?)
So maybe we need to work on plotting a bit more.
But I had SO MUCH FUN making up the random songs. And I made up nearly all of the random songs, lyrics and all. So here's what I want to do: I want to work on a children's show, or in a children's theatre, or in a children's band or something like that so that I can make up ridiculous songs all the live long day and hang out with tiny tykes. Sound like a plan?
Also, we put bunny ears on Salima's bass. It was awesome. (Sorry there are no pictures!)
I had to miss the beginning of the workshop due to my doctor's appointment, so instead of telling you what their mission is- I'll tell you to go check out their website. They seem like a cool organization. In any case, our mission for this afternoon was to create a show. We had three teams each with their own theme: Salima, Laverne, and I ended up with "equality." And Equality just screams 'carrots' to you, right?
Yeah, me neither, but for some reason that is what I came up with when we were told to come up with a character- "What about a giant talking carrot?" Fortunately, Salima and Laverne were cool enough to not only go with it, but to also get excited about making a piece about a giant talking carrot.
I think our finished product ended up missing the boat a bit on the whole equality thing- the carrot, which is a "walking, talking, gargantuan carrot" is due to some magic fairy dust. The hungry bunny rabbit singing the blues spies the carrot and wants to eat the carrot after the carrot's initial introduction song (la, I'm a carrot; la, I'm a carrot) but eventually the carrot convinces the hungry bunny that he is also a person (?) and so the hungry bunny has a change of heart and they leave the stage searching for food together as best friends....(?)
So maybe we need to work on plotting a bit more.
But I had SO MUCH FUN making up the random songs. And I made up nearly all of the random songs, lyrics and all. So here's what I want to do: I want to work on a children's show, or in a children's theatre, or in a children's band or something like that so that I can make up ridiculous songs all the live long day and hang out with tiny tykes. Sound like a plan?
Also, we put bunny ears on Salima's bass. It was awesome. (Sorry there are no pictures!)
Monday, April 27, 2009
job interview
I had an interview today for an internship with a composition project that is being put on in my area. It is working with early years children and had been advertised at GSMD so I thought it would be a good idea to go for it- expand my experience and all that. Also, combining composition with 3-5 year olds? I'm super curious to see how that would work.
My morning got off to a rough start with a lack of clean, presentable clothes and oversleeping. I ended up arriving 10 minutes late to my half hour interview slot, feeling like crap, and being uncomfortably damp from the unexpected rain. It wasn't a good beginning. Oh, and then I got lost.
But I arrived! We sat down to chat and the interview ended up being very positive over all, I think. It sounds like I'm probably not the best match for the project as I've got a bit too much training and experience already for what is essentially a trainee post. However, we ended up talking quite a lot about my approach to early years music education and what I'm hoping to do with my work next year and into the future and the interview ended up being twice as long as it was meant to be. I think that's rather encouraging.
I was proud of myself for being clear that I was interested in projects dealing mostly with education and workshops rather than projects involving me as a bassist. It may seem like an obvious thing to say, but it wasn't something I had articulated yet and it was good to realize.
This evening I got a message on my phone asking if I would be interested in doing a bass presentation and maybe some songs for one of their existing early years classes on Friday. I'll have to check with the MapMaking tutors, but hopefully that will work- it would be a great opportunity. I figure this is another audition sort of thing for other projects they've got in the pipeline.
Sorry for the vagueness, I haven't asked anyone if it is okay to blog about them so I am sticking to my experience and absolutely no identifying characteristics...
My morning got off to a rough start with a lack of clean, presentable clothes and oversleeping. I ended up arriving 10 minutes late to my half hour interview slot, feeling like crap, and being uncomfortably damp from the unexpected rain. It wasn't a good beginning. Oh, and then I got lost.
But I arrived! We sat down to chat and the interview ended up being very positive over all, I think. It sounds like I'm probably not the best match for the project as I've got a bit too much training and experience already for what is essentially a trainee post. However, we ended up talking quite a lot about my approach to early years music education and what I'm hoping to do with my work next year and into the future and the interview ended up being twice as long as it was meant to be. I think that's rather encouraging.
I was proud of myself for being clear that I was interested in projects dealing mostly with education and workshops rather than projects involving me as a bassist. It may seem like an obvious thing to say, but it wasn't something I had articulated yet and it was good to realize.
This evening I got a message on my phone asking if I would be interested in doing a bass presentation and maybe some songs for one of their existing early years classes on Friday. I'll have to check with the MapMaking tutors, but hopefully that will work- it would be a great opportunity. I figure this is another audition sort of thing for other projects they've got in the pipeline.
Sorry for the vagueness, I haven't asked anyone if it is okay to blog about them so I am sticking to my experience and absolutely no identifying characteristics...
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Cornwall: The end
Our last trip to Cornwall was last weekend and I'm sorry that it is all over now. I had a wonderful time with the project and became very attached to (not to mention proud of) my group of kids.
We had an uneventful drive up to Cornwall and were back at the first set of cottages. This time we didn't have the uninhabitable in the winter cottage up on the cliff with the outdoor toilet and the coffin bathtub- but we also weren't entirely sure where the other cottage was... so that let to a very late night the first night as we kept trying to figure out where we were staying. I say "we" but I actually slept through most of that as I was in the first cottage.
Fortunately for the more sleep deprived members of our party we didn't have to get to the school until 4:30 the next day so we had a leisurely morning and then FINALLY had a chance to explore a bit of Cornwall. Emma and Jo went for a drive while the rest of us explored the sea side and countryside around our cottages. We were blessed with gorgeous weather (also a first for our Cornwall trips) and went on a bit of a hike. I played unabashed tourist and took bunches of pictures which are now up on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10933141@N07/
That afternoon we only got one and a half hours with our kids, and actually it was in the evening too- so they were knackered and we were all like "Ahh! You have to remember the piece because this is the only time we get with you before the performance! Ahh!" So it wasn't quite as much fun as the other rehearsals/composition times have been. But my group is still pretty great. It was nice that the piece worked out the way that it did too- because there were clear wind sections and string sections which meant that I could send the winds out to the hallway to remember what they were doing and I could keep the strings in the room and tell them to "play that again. Nice, now listen to each other and try to get the same sort of sound. Sit up straight" etc.
Sunday was the day of the performance. The pieces that we wrote were only one part of a much larger "Super Sunday" that happens once a month at the Tate St. Ives. It is an open family day with free activities for all ages to help them engage a bit more than they might usually at an art gallery. In one room they were writing stories, another they were making textured collages, and in my room they were making graphic scores. The 9 of us were divided up in to teams for the various gallery spaces. Heather, Jo, and I were lucky enough to be in the gorgeous room with the giant windows looking out at the sea and the beach.
As kids came into the room they were encouraged to take some crayons and a giant piece of staff paper and make a piece for us to play. We started as a cello, tuba, and bass trio and then broke up to turn into solo acts as the room got busier. It was so much fun, and really quite rewarding to do so many graphic scores in a row. Instead of straight reading what they had drawn, we decided to have them conduct it and point to the shape/color/whatever that they wanted us to play. We encouraged them to point in any order and to go back to sounds that they really liked.
I had two favorites from the morning. The first was a child who had drawn a pink cloud. We tried something together first and that was "pretty good, but it sounded like a dark cloud" but then his father asked if the tuba could be played with out pitch, just air. So then Heather and I wanted in on the fun so we started blowing into our F holes which A: made a great sound and was louder than we expected and B: made both of us rather light headed... It was all to the good though because then we were "perfect." And you can't top that.
My other favorite was a toddler who had scribbled all over the page. There was one small, purple scribble in the centre and whenever he pointed there I played a short, loud, rumble at the bottom of my range. He loved it and would point quickly at the purple dot before burying his face in his father's knee over and over and over again. It was so cool that he understood that he was controlling what I was doing.
Whew. So that was a long and satisfying morning- and then we had the performances! The crowd was pretty large at this point. My group played splendidly (though I really would have appreciated a chance to do a run through on the day of the performance) and everyone else did as well. Two of the gallery spaces were too small to fit the crowd, so they got to play their pieces twice in order to let everyone hear who wanted to. It was a lovely day and really such a wonderful experience.
We had an uneventful drive up to Cornwall and were back at the first set of cottages. This time we didn't have the uninhabitable in the winter cottage up on the cliff with the outdoor toilet and the coffin bathtub- but we also weren't entirely sure where the other cottage was... so that let to a very late night the first night as we kept trying to figure out where we were staying. I say "we" but I actually slept through most of that as I was in the first cottage.
Fortunately for the more sleep deprived members of our party we didn't have to get to the school until 4:30 the next day so we had a leisurely morning and then FINALLY had a chance to explore a bit of Cornwall. Emma and Jo went for a drive while the rest of us explored the sea side and countryside around our cottages. We were blessed with gorgeous weather (also a first for our Cornwall trips) and went on a bit of a hike. I played unabashed tourist and took bunches of pictures which are now up on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10933141@N07/
That afternoon we only got one and a half hours with our kids, and actually it was in the evening too- so they were knackered and we were all like "Ahh! You have to remember the piece because this is the only time we get with you before the performance! Ahh!" So it wasn't quite as much fun as the other rehearsals/composition times have been. But my group is still pretty great. It was nice that the piece worked out the way that it did too- because there were clear wind sections and string sections which meant that I could send the winds out to the hallway to remember what they were doing and I could keep the strings in the room and tell them to "play that again. Nice, now listen to each other and try to get the same sort of sound. Sit up straight" etc.
Sunday was the day of the performance. The pieces that we wrote were only one part of a much larger "Super Sunday" that happens once a month at the Tate St. Ives. It is an open family day with free activities for all ages to help them engage a bit more than they might usually at an art gallery. In one room they were writing stories, another they were making textured collages, and in my room they were making graphic scores. The 9 of us were divided up in to teams for the various gallery spaces. Heather, Jo, and I were lucky enough to be in the gorgeous room with the giant windows looking out at the sea and the beach.
As kids came into the room they were encouraged to take some crayons and a giant piece of staff paper and make a piece for us to play. We started as a cello, tuba, and bass trio and then broke up to turn into solo acts as the room got busier. It was so much fun, and really quite rewarding to do so many graphic scores in a row. Instead of straight reading what they had drawn, we decided to have them conduct it and point to the shape/color/whatever that they wanted us to play. We encouraged them to point in any order and to go back to sounds that they really liked.
I had two favorites from the morning. The first was a child who had drawn a pink cloud. We tried something together first and that was "pretty good, but it sounded like a dark cloud" but then his father asked if the tuba could be played with out pitch, just air. So then Heather and I wanted in on the fun so we started blowing into our F holes which A: made a great sound and was louder than we expected and B: made both of us rather light headed... It was all to the good though because then we were "perfect." And you can't top that.
My other favorite was a toddler who had scribbled all over the page. There was one small, purple scribble in the centre and whenever he pointed there I played a short, loud, rumble at the bottom of my range. He loved it and would point quickly at the purple dot before burying his face in his father's knee over and over and over again. It was so cool that he understood that he was controlling what I was doing.
Whew. So that was a long and satisfying morning- and then we had the performances! The crowd was pretty large at this point. My group played splendidly (though I really would have appreciated a chance to do a run through on the day of the performance) and everyone else did as well. Two of the gallery spaces were too small to fit the crowd, so they got to play their pieces twice in order to let everyone hear who wanted to. It was a lovely day and really such a wonderful experience.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Programme Notes
These are the programme notes for the CYO concert next month. I couldn't remember what all of the links were between the music we wrote and the painting- so I made the kids brainstorm and remind me and we came up with a whole slew of reasons- many of which are contained in these here programme notes. (The concert is in Cornwall- therefore I am using their spelling of Program. Just so you don't think I've gone totally British on you here.) Some of the more esoteric ones I left off, these are plenty esoteric enough:
"In 'Six Circles' we are using the painting as a graphic score. Every section of the piece is based directly on one of the circles or sections of the painting. We looked at a number of ways of representing the idea of circularity in a musical context and included ternary beats and staggered entrances to sound like the music is rolling, repetitions as loops, literally passing the material around the circle, and phasing tempi and dynamics so that the sound is moving around the space. Every element of the piece is tied to the painting, from the minor tonality representing the colour palate to the Major key ending representing the largest and brightest of the six circles.
"In 'Six Circles' we are using the painting as a graphic score. Every section of the piece is based directly on one of the circles or sections of the painting. We looked at a number of ways of representing the idea of circularity in a musical context and included ternary beats and staggered entrances to sound like the music is rolling, repetitions as loops, literally passing the material around the circle, and phasing tempi and dynamics so that the sound is moving around the space. Every element of the piece is tied to the painting, from the minor tonality representing the colour palate to the Major key ending representing the largest and brightest of the six circles.
Monday, January 26, 2009
St. Ives
St. Ives is ridiculously pretty, and I will tell you more shortly about how the most recent Cornwall expedition went (in a word: Good!). But for now I would just like you to know that I have put up a BUNCH of new photos over on flickr and nearly all of them have notes on them as well- so it's pretty much like a blog entry. So please do go check it out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10933141@N07/
The new photos are in the sets "MapMaking" and "UK Adventures"
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Other stuff to tell you
Remember the MapMaking project? The collaboration with students from the Royal College of Art, a multimedia concert focusing on Equator countries and climate change? Well, it isn't over yet. The performance will be in October and we have to have the final drafts of the films and the music done by the 1st of October as well as the titles for the pieces and little blurbs about them for the program.
Kuku, my partner, and I haven't seen each other since late June and I was having trouble getting a hold of her so was getting nervous about the whole thing. Fortunately we managed to meet up today- in the British Library no less! It totally didn't occur to me until today that the British Library is a brilliant place to study. I mean, I guess that is sort of a "no, duh" statement, but still. It hadn't occurred to me.
Kuku has completely changed the film. Again. And while I agree with her that it hangs together as a narrative better now, it also means that I need to completely change the feeling and tone of the music. Before the film had a lot of color and charming hand drawn characters that were cute, if a little confusing. Now it is full of 3D paper characters filmed in black and white... I can't have such stark music with a stark film. So I need to sit at a piano and figure something out. Which is actually kind of exciting, if daunting. Quick! Write something in a weekend!
Remember all those 3 session school workshops I was doing in July? They're back! Today I helped out Juliet and Jo at Shapla Primary school. Our song is about the rain forest and I wrote the cheeriest tune ever to these lyrics that the kids wrote last week:
People are cuttin' down trees, Animals are losin' their homes.
Lonely and lost with no food, will they survive or die?
It is a really inappropriately jaunty tune.
I kind of love it.
Fortunately the kids are less cheesy than I am and when they made up the tune for the last line they came up with something *much* classier than I did. I kept wanting to either soar up to a high note on "die" or, alternatively, stage whisper it... In spite of the kids classing it up, Juliet is still planning on making them step from side to side and/or shrug their shoulders in time to the beat.
Kuku, my partner, and I haven't seen each other since late June and I was having trouble getting a hold of her so was getting nervous about the whole thing. Fortunately we managed to meet up today- in the British Library no less! It totally didn't occur to me until today that the British Library is a brilliant place to study. I mean, I guess that is sort of a "no, duh" statement, but still. It hadn't occurred to me.
Kuku has completely changed the film. Again. And while I agree with her that it hangs together as a narrative better now, it also means that I need to completely change the feeling and tone of the music. Before the film had a lot of color and charming hand drawn characters that were cute, if a little confusing. Now it is full of 3D paper characters filmed in black and white... I can't have such stark music with a stark film. So I need to sit at a piano and figure something out. Which is actually kind of exciting, if daunting. Quick! Write something in a weekend!
Remember all those 3 session school workshops I was doing in July? They're back! Today I helped out Juliet and Jo at Shapla Primary school. Our song is about the rain forest and I wrote the cheeriest tune ever to these lyrics that the kids wrote last week:
People are cuttin' down trees, Animals are losin' their homes.
Lonely and lost with no food, will they survive or die?
It is a really inappropriately jaunty tune.
I kind of love it.
Fortunately the kids are less cheesy than I am and when they made up the tune for the last line they came up with something *much* classier than I did. I kept wanting to either soar up to a high note on "die" or, alternatively, stage whisper it... In spite of the kids classing it up, Juliet is still planning on making them step from side to side and/or shrug their shoulders in time to the beat.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Workshops, again
This run of primary school workshops will be over soon: the last session I have scheduled is on the 9th of July.
We started these school's three week run this week and I've got 3 new leaders to work with, which is lovely. The kids at the current crop of primary schools are all really well behaved and excited about the process, which is nice- but not what I want to tell you.
As I walked to the main office of Canon Barnette primary on Tuesday a little girl skipped over to me, hugged me tight, and skipped off again.
Totally made my day.
Little kids are random.
We started these school's three week run this week and I've got 3 new leaders to work with, which is lovely. The kids at the current crop of primary schools are all really well behaved and excited about the process, which is nice- but not what I want to tell you.
As I walked to the main office of Canon Barnette primary on Tuesday a little girl skipped over to me, hugged me tight, and skipped off again.
Totally made my day.
Little kids are random.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Harry Gosling Primary School
I really want the first half of this primary school's name to be Hairy instead of Harry because then you'd get a hilariously shaggy baby goose. And that would be fun.
Today was our 3rd and final week at Harry Gosling. Last week was bit of a dud because the kids we were meant to be working with had testing, so we had a bunch of year ones instead. This week we were back to our original batch- and man, I liked them.
We decided at the last minute to go ahead and try for a performance even though we hadn't had the second week in order to create much more material. So in order to pull together a piece we spent about 30 min reviewing the rhythms from two weeks ago and then split into two groups: one instrumental and one vocal.
Glynn wrote a very simple melody and then I got half the kids together to make up words about whatever we felt like. I figured talking about school would be a good way to go so we wrote a song about what their favorite classes are and what they do after school and the like.
My favorite part of these workshops so far has been when I get a batch of 6-12 kids on my own and then I get to manage the group however I please. So in this case when someone made a joke, I allowed time for giggling instead of immediately hollering at them to be quiet because we're working here! And I never told them that they were being rude, because even if they were- they're eight years old- the whole point of being eight is to be squirrely. I called on the quiet ones, ignored the loud ones until they actually had something to say, mixed up the seating arrangements constantly to mix up the boys and girls and also keep the chatty people away from the other chatty people.
And then, because we were efficient and got the words written and learned quickly, we sang "Hey, My Name is Joe" which is one of those additive songs where you end up jumping around a lot and then collapsing into a little giggly heap. My favorite.
Today was our 3rd and final week at Harry Gosling. Last week was bit of a dud because the kids we were meant to be working with had testing, so we had a bunch of year ones instead. This week we were back to our original batch- and man, I liked them.
We decided at the last minute to go ahead and try for a performance even though we hadn't had the second week in order to create much more material. So in order to pull together a piece we spent about 30 min reviewing the rhythms from two weeks ago and then split into two groups: one instrumental and one vocal.
Glynn wrote a very simple melody and then I got half the kids together to make up words about whatever we felt like. I figured talking about school would be a good way to go so we wrote a song about what their favorite classes are and what they do after school and the like.
My favorite part of these workshops so far has been when I get a batch of 6-12 kids on my own and then I get to manage the group however I please. So in this case when someone made a joke, I allowed time for giggling instead of immediately hollering at them to be quiet because we're working here! And I never told them that they were being rude, because even if they were- they're eight years old- the whole point of being eight is to be squirrely. I called on the quiet ones, ignored the loud ones until they actually had something to say, mixed up the seating arrangements constantly to mix up the boys and girls and also keep the chatty people away from the other chatty people.
And then, because we were efficient and got the words written and learned quickly, we sang "Hey, My Name is Joe" which is one of those additive songs where you end up jumping around a lot and then collapsing into a little giggly heap. My favorite.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Our Ladys Primary School
Oddly- spelled correctly in the title, but not anywhere else the school has been mentioned.
Heather and I finished up our three week stint there on Monday and wow! That went much better than we expected! Last week the kids were extraordinarily difficult to manage/focus and I was more than a little concerned that we weren't going to be able to pull off having a performance with these kids. Arriving this week was an effort because various construction projects were jamming up the Northern line. A 15 minute journey took me nearly an hour. However, when I arrived at the school Heather was already warming them up and they were focused and engaged little angels.
We practiced the song and the hand motions, practiced the percussion bits, practiced various entrances and cutting off as a group. We asked them what order they thought the performance should be and then sent them off on their break.
After break we set up in their cafeteria/gym/hall and the rest of the school tromped in. The kids were glorious, they sat quietly until they were meant to play, when they sang it was with full voices and they were better at hitting the notes than I was, they all hit the final note together without any stragglers and the audience even danced a bit in their seats.
Our year 3 kids really loved the song "kalele" which is an African welcome song so we decided to add that song to the performance as well, even though obviously the kids didn't write it themselves... but whatever- we chose a couple of kids to sing the lead parts, a couple of kids to do part of the drumming with me, and then Heather got the whole audience to sing along. It was incredibly successful.
So I'm converted now. I believe that having a performance aspect really *is* an important part of these workshops. There is something about the experience of performing in front of an audience that brings out qualities that aren't necessarily there without the audience and I'm so pleased the these year 3 kids got to experience that.
Heather and I finished up our three week stint there on Monday and wow! That went much better than we expected! Last week the kids were extraordinarily difficult to manage/focus and I was more than a little concerned that we weren't going to be able to pull off having a performance with these kids. Arriving this week was an effort because various construction projects were jamming up the Northern line. A 15 minute journey took me nearly an hour. However, when I arrived at the school Heather was already warming them up and they were focused and engaged little angels.
We practiced the song and the hand motions, practiced the percussion bits, practiced various entrances and cutting off as a group. We asked them what order they thought the performance should be and then sent them off on their break.
After break we set up in their cafeteria/gym/hall and the rest of the school tromped in. The kids were glorious, they sat quietly until they were meant to play, when they sang it was with full voices and they were better at hitting the notes than I was, they all hit the final note together without any stragglers and the audience even danced a bit in their seats.
Our year 3 kids really loved the song "kalele" which is an African welcome song so we decided to add that song to the performance as well, even though obviously the kids didn't write it themselves... but whatever- we chose a couple of kids to sing the lead parts, a couple of kids to do part of the drumming with me, and then Heather got the whole audience to sing along. It was incredibly successful.
So I'm converted now. I believe that having a performance aspect really *is* an important part of these workshops. There is something about the experience of performing in front of an audience that brings out qualities that aren't necessarily there without the audience and I'm so pleased the these year 3 kids got to experience that.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Loads of Projects: Workshops! Workshops everywhere!
The current round of workshops are through something called THAMES which is uh. Tower Hamlets... something something. Music Education Service? or something? Anyhow, each of us first years are paired up and sent off to one of the school to lead a three week long project. But there are so many of these set up that if we have extra time we can get paid to do others. So I'm doing three including the one I'm doing for school.
The one for my degree is the only one that has actually started so far. I am paired up with Heather which I just realized that you already know because I wrote about it four posts ago. The other two THAMES workshop I'm working with Glynn who was one of the people that the Masters degree was tested on three years ago. That makes it sound like it was some sort of medical trial, but really what it means is that he was in the first class of people to get a MMus Leadership. Like, in the whole wide world. Which is pretty cool, really. I don't know what we're doing yet because I haven't talked to him. (On list of things to do: talk to Glynn!)
This weekend was a CPD weekend (Continuing Professional Development) which is where some of the tutors come in and lead a workshop for people who either A: are at another school and want to know how this whole 'workshop' thing works B: are at another school and want to know how the Professional Development's outreach arm CONNECT works or C: are auditioning for the masters program or want to take the masters program but can't for whatever reason like scheduling. This was a CPD+ weekend which meant that in addition to the weekend workshop (and workshop leading skills) we also got a bunch of kids on their half term break to come in and participate in a four day workshop that we got to practice our leading in that then culminated in a short performance of collaboratively written pieces on Thursday.
This weekend there were eight of us. I was there because it is always nice to get more experience, Katey and Carey were there from the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama because they are the outreach dept. there, some other people were there for reasons that make my list of people too long because really I want to get to is: Paul was there because this school in America with a funny name wants to know what this CONNECT program and workshop thing is all about.
Paul Matthews was my theory teacher at Peabody my sophomore year and man-oh-man did it throw me for a loop walking into the Sundial Court music room and finding him there.
Name wise it got a bit confusing that weekend. The leaders/tutors were Paul and John. In the group we had another Paul and John and then a whole slew of C/K names including Carl, Chris, Carey, Katey and Casey. With British accents "Katey" and "Casey" are actually very similar names. The name confusion was not helped by the fact that Katey and I are about the same size, both wear glasses, and are both double bassists. She was cool.
One of the things that was really fun about the CPD+ weekend+ was the lunch time discussions. Lots of talk about how outreach differs from location to location and how schooling and education in general differ from location. I now have an invitation to come down to Cardiff to see what they are doing workshop wise there. (super exciting!) We were also of course talking about what we were learning each day and what we were working on in our own smaller groups sessions which meant that the vibe was quite a lot like university hallways right after a freshman class has let out during the first month of college.
I've obviously had a lot more of this specific type of training than anyone else in the group, but I was still learning buckets and really enjoying the fact that we got feedback immediately and all the time. In the mornings before the kids showed up we would talk about what we were planning to do that day, during lunch we would talk about how the morning sessions went, and in the afternoons we would talk about how the post lunch bits went and what we needed to think about and sort out for the next morning. Lots of really productive work and sketching done on the backs of envelopes in coffee shops.
The kids were also uniformly sweethearts. The age range was supposed to be something like 12-18, but a lot of younger siblings snuck in there so it was really something more like 10-16. They were so very giggly. And the height/developmental difference between 10 year olds and their 12/13 year old siblings?! Sheesh.
The one for my degree is the only one that has actually started so far. I am paired up with Heather which I just realized that you already know because I wrote about it four posts ago. The other two THAMES workshop I'm working with Glynn who was one of the people that the Masters degree was tested on three years ago. That makes it sound like it was some sort of medical trial, but really what it means is that he was in the first class of people to get a MMus Leadership. Like, in the whole wide world. Which is pretty cool, really. I don't know what we're doing yet because I haven't talked to him. (On list of things to do: talk to Glynn!)
This weekend was a CPD weekend (Continuing Professional Development) which is where some of the tutors come in and lead a workshop for people who either A: are at another school and want to know how this whole 'workshop' thing works B: are at another school and want to know how the Professional Development's outreach arm CONNECT works or C: are auditioning for the masters program or want to take the masters program but can't for whatever reason like scheduling. This was a CPD+ weekend which meant that in addition to the weekend workshop (and workshop leading skills) we also got a bunch of kids on their half term break to come in and participate in a four day workshop that we got to practice our leading in that then culminated in a short performance of collaboratively written pieces on Thursday.
This weekend there were eight of us. I was there because it is always nice to get more experience, Katey and Carey were there from the Royal Welsh School of Music and Drama because they are the outreach dept. there, some other people were there for reasons that make my list of people too long because really I want to get to is: Paul was there because this school in America with a funny name wants to know what this CONNECT program and workshop thing is all about.
Paul Matthews was my theory teacher at Peabody my sophomore year and man-oh-man did it throw me for a loop walking into the Sundial Court music room and finding him there.
Name wise it got a bit confusing that weekend. The leaders/tutors were Paul and John. In the group we had another Paul and John and then a whole slew of C/K names including Carl, Chris, Carey, Katey and Casey. With British accents "Katey" and "Casey" are actually very similar names. The name confusion was not helped by the fact that Katey and I are about the same size, both wear glasses, and are both double bassists. She was cool.
One of the things that was really fun about the CPD+ weekend+ was the lunch time discussions. Lots of talk about how outreach differs from location to location and how schooling and education in general differ from location. I now have an invitation to come down to Cardiff to see what they are doing workshop wise there. (super exciting!) We were also of course talking about what we were learning each day and what we were working on in our own smaller groups sessions which meant that the vibe was quite a lot like university hallways right after a freshman class has let out during the first month of college.
I've obviously had a lot more of this specific type of training than anyone else in the group, but I was still learning buckets and really enjoying the fact that we got feedback immediately and all the time. In the mornings before the kids showed up we would talk about what we were planning to do that day, during lunch we would talk about how the morning sessions went, and in the afternoons we would talk about how the post lunch bits went and what we needed to think about and sort out for the next morning. Lots of really productive work and sketching done on the backs of envelopes in coffee shops.
The kids were also uniformly sweethearts. The age range was supposed to be something like 12-18, but a lot of younger siblings snuck in there so it was really something more like 10-16. They were so very giggly. And the height/developmental difference between 10 year olds and their 12/13 year old siblings?! Sheesh.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Our Ladies Primary School
Heather and I had our first workshop session on our own today. We are working with a class of year 3 students at Our Ladies primary school in the Canary Wharf area. They have had next to no music education so far (year 3 is 8 year olds), and while they very much enjoy singing- they haven't had any instrumental experience at all.
We started them out with singing "kalele" which is a welcoming song from South Africa (?) and then started working on they rhythmic base for our piece (bananas and mangoes is how it goes). They eventually got it pretty well and we put it on our lovely rag-tag bunch of random hand percussion. Ooo, that was a fun part. We gave them each an instrument (a stick with bells, maracas, tambourines, a chair with a couple of sticks) and had them figure out how to make four different sounds. That part was fun. And loud. "bang it on your head! How about the floor? How quiet a sound can you make? How short? How long? How loud?" So cool to watch them experimenting with the instruments. If you have no preconceptions about how an instrument should be played- there are all sorts of interesting things you can come up with. We played with dynamics and starting and stopping the sounds as well as the rhythm itself. They're good kids, they did really well.
After break we worked on our song. Heather and I wanted to base the workshop at least loosely on our trip to the Gambia. In The Gambia greetings are very important and can take up to five minutes just to say hello, so we decided to brainstorm as many ways of greeting your friends as possible and wrote them up on the board. We ended up with a bunch of different languages and my personal favorite: 'yo!' We then had them choose three that they thought would go well together for a line and made four stanzas if you will of those. Example: hello, hola, bonjour. Heather had written a bass line so she started playing that on the cello while the kids mumbled tunes under their breath. That was what was really amazing- that was exactly what we wanted them to do and they just went ahead without any prompting at all- it was just their natural reaction to being presented with some words and a bit of music. How neat is that?
We're going to need to do a bit of tweaking because with the bass line and their tune it ended up sounding quite minor and lackluster which is not really the emotion of the sound world we were trying to get to, so I think that Heather and I will need to change the pitches a little bit in order to make the song a bit peppier.
The kids are, for the most part, very well behaved. There are of course a couple of squirrely ones and a couple that aren't terribly interested, but all of them were excited at the end of the lesson when they got to have a go on Heather's cello, my djembe, and the school's keyboard. There was a teaching assistant helping the class today too, and I forget what his name is, but Heather and I were impressed with his singing voice during the welcome song. It turns out he is having his West End debut later this week (tomorrow?) as one of the hyenas in The Lion King...he was having a great time with our workshop!
I was very impressed with Heather's manner towards the kids. She is very good at validating them (even when we're looking for greeting words and they keep coming up with various words for food items in Spanish) and guiding their attention without making it seem like she is doing so. She was really not feeling well though, which makes it even more impressive how well she was conducting herself with the kids. I kept forgetting she was sick until the kids had a break and then she basically collapsed. Then the kids came back and she was totally on again.
They have mid-term break next week, so we don't see them for another two weeks. I'll keep you posted!
We started them out with singing "kalele" which is a welcoming song from South Africa (?) and then started working on they rhythmic base for our piece (bananas and mangoes is how it goes). They eventually got it pretty well and we put it on our lovely rag-tag bunch of random hand percussion. Ooo, that was a fun part. We gave them each an instrument (a stick with bells, maracas, tambourines, a chair with a couple of sticks) and had them figure out how to make four different sounds. That part was fun. And loud. "bang it on your head! How about the floor? How quiet a sound can you make? How short? How long? How loud?" So cool to watch them experimenting with the instruments. If you have no preconceptions about how an instrument should be played- there are all sorts of interesting things you can come up with. We played with dynamics and starting and stopping the sounds as well as the rhythm itself. They're good kids, they did really well.
After break we worked on our song. Heather and I wanted to base the workshop at least loosely on our trip to the Gambia. In The Gambia greetings are very important and can take up to five minutes just to say hello, so we decided to brainstorm as many ways of greeting your friends as possible and wrote them up on the board. We ended up with a bunch of different languages and my personal favorite: 'yo!' We then had them choose three that they thought would go well together for a line and made four stanzas if you will of those. Example: hello, hola, bonjour. Heather had written a bass line so she started playing that on the cello while the kids mumbled tunes under their breath. That was what was really amazing- that was exactly what we wanted them to do and they just went ahead without any prompting at all- it was just their natural reaction to being presented with some words and a bit of music. How neat is that?
We're going to need to do a bit of tweaking because with the bass line and their tune it ended up sounding quite minor and lackluster which is not really the emotion of the sound world we were trying to get to, so I think that Heather and I will need to change the pitches a little bit in order to make the song a bit peppier.
The kids are, for the most part, very well behaved. There are of course a couple of squirrely ones and a couple that aren't terribly interested, but all of them were excited at the end of the lesson when they got to have a go on Heather's cello, my djembe, and the school's keyboard. There was a teaching assistant helping the class today too, and I forget what his name is, but Heather and I were impressed with his singing voice during the welcome song. It turns out he is having his West End debut later this week (tomorrow?) as one of the hyenas in The Lion King...he was having a great time with our workshop!
I was very impressed with Heather's manner towards the kids. She is very good at validating them (even when we're looking for greeting words and they keep coming up with various words for food items in Spanish) and guiding their attention without making it seem like she is doing so. She was really not feeling well though, which makes it even more impressive how well she was conducting herself with the kids. I kept forgetting she was sick until the kids had a break and then she basically collapsed. Then the kids came back and she was totally on again.
They have mid-term break next week, so we don't see them for another two weeks. I'll keep you posted!
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
So pretty much? I rock.
I'm so happy right now I keep grinning and squinching up my shoulders and toes in order to get some excess happy energy out. If I were a runner I would run, but instead I'm just sort of hopping in place and smiling.
This morning I joined my flatmate Meredith to travel down South for the East meets West project in Poplar. The project is reaching its culmination; today was the penultimate rehearsal and the performance is next Friday. Unfortunately it is looking like I'm not going to be able to make it to the performance because I'll be working on a project in Kensington which is just about as far away from Poplar as you can get and still have both be in central London. But no worries, I will be there all day next Wednesday and that will be when the musicians and dancers are in the same place for the first time- it is sure to be hilarious.
The songs for this project have taken on a surreal nautical aspect. This morning we spent time thinking about various jobs on ships and broke up into four small groups to make actions and short rhythmic sentence pairings that we then used as verses. 3 of the 4 groups decided that they were pirate ships. Probably this was inevitable, but we had to figure out how to discourage the 9 year olds from using this as an opportunity to make finger guns and shoot their classmates.
I couldn't be there for the afternoon session because I had an assessment meeting with Sigrun for the Globetown project and since she is heavily pregnant it was at her house which I wasn't sure how to get to. Meredith convinced me to join everyone for lunch though, and I am very glad I did.
The East meets West project is being run by a woman named Lucy Forde (not to be confused with any of the seven other Lucys floating around). She is extraordinarily good at making the kids feel involved and validated while at the same time carefully steering what is going on in the room. On the walk to the small Italian cafe where we all had lunch I got to pick Lucy's brain which was totally informative and fun. Lunch was lovely too and it was great to sit and chat with nearly everyone involved in the project. You know how you can tell the college freshmen coming out of lectures because they are the ones excitedly discussing concepts they were just introduced to? Lunch was kind of like that.
I then returned to Guildhall and caught up on emails and phone calls. I had to call Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs because I need a National Insurance number in order to not get taxed through the roof. Currently I am on *EMERGENCY TAX* which, while extortionately high-amuses me with the concept of anyone freaking out and declaring it an emergency because they are not sure what level to tax me at. In any case, it doesn't seem like it would be a pleasant thing to have to call HMR&C, right? Sort of like the DMV...but to my great surprise and pleasure I ended up talking to a woman who was not only pleasant and cheerful but actually took a moment to tell me how much she loves her job...how cool is that? So I am now set up for that and for a consultation with a nurse about my Gambia trip immunizations. So sweet- I'm on top of things.
Then I traveled down to Sig in Sydenham and got a little bit lost so I asked a woman with her wheelchair bound daughter where to go and they walked me most of the way there while telling me about a barbecue they had been to on that street. The meeting with Sig went really well and she said that I had made noticeable progress even just over the course of the project which I was not only pleased to hear- but also already knew because I had seen that for myself and knew that I had worked hard and well during Globetown.
I know I haven't written much about my thoughts and reactions to the Globetown project but one of the things I discovered was how much I really enjoy thinking through various aspects of leading- Nick and I talked extensively about who was going to lead which portion of the session, how we were going to lead each section, and then even the choreography of where each of us would stand so that it was very clear at all times who the kids should be paying attention to. I really enjoy thinking through how various actions from the leaders are going to affect the kids' attention.
I've also always been a big one for intentionality so I'm really enjoying thinking about how to bring what I understand of eurhythmics sensibilities to the workshops that I work on. I want to see if I can make sure that every activity that we do from the introductions to the warm ups to the music we write and create can have a musical concept behind it and a musical purpose. It's like a big fun puzzle.
This evening I made myself a tasty dinner and listened to a bunch of sea shanties to get myself in the mood for electro-acoustic class where I am using LogicPro to write a sea shanty. When Daddy and I were in Greenwich on Sunday I took my Handy Zoom H2 recorder with us and recorded some really great clips of water lapping and then later the docks for the Thames Clipper creaking with the waves. I'm a big fan of the shanty "Row Bullies Row" which is in 3/4 time and D Dorian so I decided that my shanty would be the same.
I love electro-acoustic class. I like the people in the class (a mixture of 1st and 2nd year leadership students) and I like playing around with the program and I like our tutor Mike and I really like composing and creating things that I get to hear immediately. (In addition to being a big one for intentionality, I am also a big one for immediate gratification.)
So this evening I wrote a sea shanty. It doesn't have words yet but it has a clear phrasal structure and it has super neat atmospheric sounds (courtesy of Greenwich) and I *like* it! And I'm doing all sorts of patting myself on the back (see the title of this entry). I have a lot more to learn, tons and tons more to learn but currently? At this very moment? I feel like I can do anything.
This morning I joined my flatmate Meredith to travel down South for the East meets West project in Poplar. The project is reaching its culmination; today was the penultimate rehearsal and the performance is next Friday. Unfortunately it is looking like I'm not going to be able to make it to the performance because I'll be working on a project in Kensington which is just about as far away from Poplar as you can get and still have both be in central London. But no worries, I will be there all day next Wednesday and that will be when the musicians and dancers are in the same place for the first time- it is sure to be hilarious.
The songs for this project have taken on a surreal nautical aspect. This morning we spent time thinking about various jobs on ships and broke up into four small groups to make actions and short rhythmic sentence pairings that we then used as verses. 3 of the 4 groups decided that they were pirate ships. Probably this was inevitable, but we had to figure out how to discourage the 9 year olds from using this as an opportunity to make finger guns and shoot their classmates.
I couldn't be there for the afternoon session because I had an assessment meeting with Sigrun for the Globetown project and since she is heavily pregnant it was at her house which I wasn't sure how to get to. Meredith convinced me to join everyone for lunch though, and I am very glad I did.
The East meets West project is being run by a woman named Lucy Forde (not to be confused with any of the seven other Lucys floating around). She is extraordinarily good at making the kids feel involved and validated while at the same time carefully steering what is going on in the room. On the walk to the small Italian cafe where we all had lunch I got to pick Lucy's brain which was totally informative and fun. Lunch was lovely too and it was great to sit and chat with nearly everyone involved in the project. You know how you can tell the college freshmen coming out of lectures because they are the ones excitedly discussing concepts they were just introduced to? Lunch was kind of like that.
I then returned to Guildhall and caught up on emails and phone calls. I had to call Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs because I need a National Insurance number in order to not get taxed through the roof. Currently I am on *EMERGENCY TAX* which, while extortionately high-amuses me with the concept of anyone freaking out and declaring it an emergency because they are not sure what level to tax me at. In any case, it doesn't seem like it would be a pleasant thing to have to call HMR&C, right? Sort of like the DMV...but to my great surprise and pleasure I ended up talking to a woman who was not only pleasant and cheerful but actually took a moment to tell me how much she loves her job...how cool is that? So I am now set up for that and for a consultation with a nurse about my Gambia trip immunizations. So sweet- I'm on top of things.
Then I traveled down to Sig in Sydenham and got a little bit lost so I asked a woman with her wheelchair bound daughter where to go and they walked me most of the way there while telling me about a barbecue they had been to on that street. The meeting with Sig went really well and she said that I had made noticeable progress even just over the course of the project which I was not only pleased to hear- but also already knew because I had seen that for myself and knew that I had worked hard and well during Globetown.
I know I haven't written much about my thoughts and reactions to the Globetown project but one of the things I discovered was how much I really enjoy thinking through various aspects of leading- Nick and I talked extensively about who was going to lead which portion of the session, how we were going to lead each section, and then even the choreography of where each of us would stand so that it was very clear at all times who the kids should be paying attention to. I really enjoy thinking through how various actions from the leaders are going to affect the kids' attention.
I've also always been a big one for intentionality so I'm really enjoying thinking about how to bring what I understand of eurhythmics sensibilities to the workshops that I work on. I want to see if I can make sure that every activity that we do from the introductions to the warm ups to the music we write and create can have a musical concept behind it and a musical purpose. It's like a big fun puzzle.
This evening I made myself a tasty dinner and listened to a bunch of sea shanties to get myself in the mood for electro-acoustic class where I am using LogicPro to write a sea shanty. When Daddy and I were in Greenwich on Sunday I took my Handy Zoom H2 recorder with us and recorded some really great clips of water lapping and then later the docks for the Thames Clipper creaking with the waves. I'm a big fan of the shanty "Row Bullies Row" which is in 3/4 time and D Dorian so I decided that my shanty would be the same.
I love electro-acoustic class. I like the people in the class (a mixture of 1st and 2nd year leadership students) and I like playing around with the program and I like our tutor Mike and I really like composing and creating things that I get to hear immediately. (In addition to being a big one for intentionality, I am also a big one for immediate gratification.)
So this evening I wrote a sea shanty. It doesn't have words yet but it has a clear phrasal structure and it has super neat atmospheric sounds (courtesy of Greenwich) and I *like* it! And I'm doing all sorts of patting myself on the back (see the title of this entry). I have a lot more to learn, tons and tons more to learn but currently? At this very moment? I feel like I can do anything.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Globetown rehearsal
The dress rehearsal for Globetown went very well. The video should give you an idea of how many kids we were dealing with. The final rehearsal was over 3 hours long without a real break. The primary school kids in particular were remarkably well behaved while the rest of the schools were doing their run throughs. We were seated in a circle around the perimeter of Morpeth's smaller gym. Each school sat in a group with their own instruments.
This was the first time since the launch of the Globetown project 5 weeks ago that the students were all in one room together and the first time that they had heard any of the songs that the other schools had written and been working on.
In addition to the individual schools' songs the kids also learned the tune to the sun song and the words to the asteroids song (asteroids-interplanetary, asteroids- dark and dangerous, asteroids- useless cosmic garbage, asteroids- mysterious). Those two choruses combined with "Welcome to the solar system" are the big tutti bits of the final concert.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Venus and Mars
Bonner's planets are Venus and Mars. They have pretty great lyrics:
(venus)
Beautiful but dangerous
fatal yet glamorous
fire most mysterious
clouds of acid poison us
(mars)
standing on the surface of mars
lonely and very very cold
gazing up at two moons
icy rocks and rusty dunes
(chorus)
oh what beauty, mystery
exists in outer space
oh what bright and shiny stars
mars and venus eclipse them all
neat, huh?
The structure of the song looks a bit like a pallindrome: chorus V1 V2 instrumental break instrumental break v1 v2 chorus. Sig leads the vocal parts and since the boys don't really sing (they growl) the girls are the only ones who sing the chorus and most of verse two. I lead the percussion enterances and Nick leads the wind instruments and the break.
singers piano clarinets flutes trumpets trombones
singers twinkle-thing drums shakers cabasas
singers xylophones xylophones xylophones
There are four bangladeshi trombone girls. They rock. They are the best instrumentalists we've got- a lot of power and they're actually in tune. They're pretty awesome. The shakers are a bunch of squirrelly little boys- we've been working on egg shaker skills. Hold two shaker eggs firmly in one hand and then shake from your elbow but make small motions....
(venus)
Beautiful but dangerous
fatal yet glamorous
fire most mysterious
clouds of acid poison us
(mars)
standing on the surface of mars
lonely and very very cold
gazing up at two moons
icy rocks and rusty dunes
(chorus)
oh what beauty, mystery
exists in outer space
oh what bright and shiny stars
mars and venus eclipse them all
neat, huh?
The structure of the song looks a bit like a pallindrome: chorus V1 V2 instrumental break instrumental break v1 v2 chorus. Sig leads the vocal parts and since the boys don't really sing (they growl) the girls are the only ones who sing the chorus and most of verse two. I lead the percussion enterances and Nick leads the wind instruments and the break.
singers piano clarinets flutes trumpets trombones
singers twinkle-thing drums shakers cabasas
singers xylophones xylophones xylophones
There are four bangladeshi trombone girls. They rock. They are the best instrumentalists we've got- a lot of power and they're actually in tune. They're pretty awesome. The shakers are a bunch of squirrelly little boys- we've been working on egg shaker skills. Hold two shaker eggs firmly in one hand and then shake from your elbow but make small motions....
Globetown Project
The concert for the Globetown project is this Thursday so today and Tuesday are the finsal rehearsals at the primary schools. The team at Globe School wanted a bass line, so I went and played with them today. Globe School is a very vertical school- six stories, but only one building. It is also, paradoxically, a short school which meant that I kept knocking the top of the electric bass on the ceiling of the stairwells.
The Globe school has a lot of steel drums, so they feature heavily in their song which is about the Gas Giants (Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter). There is also a full row of guitars, a row of recorders, and a couple of trombones, clarinets, and trumpets. My favorite lyric from their song is "Giant spherical orbs" because what better time to work on vocab words than during a music workshop?
Today we rehearsed and ran the song for about an hour and half and then we played it for the assembled students of the school. The youngest kids were totally rocking out during the performance and bouncing around in their seats (mostly in time! I was impressed).
We had an evening rehearsal at Morpeth secondary school this afternoon. We haven't seen them in a week because of half term break. There is still a fair amount of work to go with them, but it's coming together. This whole thing has been really exciting getting to see all of these pieces coming together and the kids learning fairly long bits of music entirely by ear.
The Globe school has a lot of steel drums, so they feature heavily in their song which is about the Gas Giants (Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter). There is also a full row of guitars, a row of recorders, and a couple of trombones, clarinets, and trumpets. My favorite lyric from their song is "Giant spherical orbs" because what better time to work on vocab words than during a music workshop?
Today we rehearsed and ran the song for about an hour and half and then we played it for the assembled students of the school. The youngest kids were totally rocking out during the performance and bouncing around in their seats (mostly in time! I was impressed).
We had an evening rehearsal at Morpeth secondary school this afternoon. We haven't seen them in a week because of half term break. There is still a fair amount of work to go with them, but it's coming together. This whole thing has been really exciting getting to see all of these pieces coming together and the kids learning fairly long bits of music entirely by ear.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Another Workshop
Do you guys all remember CREATE? That is the organization that I helped out with that developmentally disabled kids’ workshop for a couple of months ago. Some of CREATE’s funding is from an organization trying to promote volunteerism amongst 16-25 year olds, and since I am both an eager volunteer and fall within that age range I am now helping out with a project in the Canary Wharf area with two primary schools.
This Wednesday I rushed from our morning session at Bonner School for the Globetown project down to Bygrove Primary School for East Meets West. East Meets West is a project that takes two primary schools (Bygrove and Holy Family Catholic Primary School) and divides their 2nd and 3rd years into two groups so that half of the Holy Family kids trek over to Bygrove to work on music and half of the Bygrove kids trek over to Holy Family to work on the dance half of the project. There are three musicians leading the Bygrove half of the kids. They are Lucy Forde: a flautist who is actually on our GSMD tutor list but whom I met for the first time at Bygrove; Alison (another flautist); Tony (trumpet); and Jon (percussion). My flatmate Meredith is another one of the music volunteers along with a cellist named (I think) Kate who is studying at another school doing a program similar to the one I am on.
Kate played her cello and had the kids try to figure out what instrument it was. My favorite part of that interaction was when the group had figured out that it was similar to violin and one of the kids shot up his hand and said, in a totally confident ‘of course I am correct’ sort of way “It’s a trombone!”
Lucy had prepared a melody and rhythmic accompaniment to it that is going to be the basis of the kids' piece. She started the process by having them imagine a land that no one had ever been to, that hadn’t been discovered yet and asked them what it would look like, like what temperature would it be? They started off a little shakily saying it would be really warm, freezing, hot, very cold and any other variation of an extreme temperature that they could think of. Eventually Lucy was able to get them to move away from temperature (not even weather, just the temperature) so that now the mystery land is pink and white, has lollypops growing on trees, and all the animals are people. Once we had an idea of what the land looked like Lucy suggested that we should think about what it sounded like, at which point the musician leaders played the melody and accompaniment that Lucy had written.
We then divided the kids into three groups and gave everyone hand percussion so that the kids could get involved both in playing and in helping to figure out what the world was going to sound like. One group ended up making a rhythmic pattern based on the names of the kids in the circle, our group ended up with a lot of metal and shaker instruments and based most of our stuff on a rain stick, I’m not sure what process the third group used but it involved wooden xylophones.
We were just finishing up the first session getting the kids to write words about the mysterious land (I think it ended up being named ‘Dream World’ ) to set to the melody Lucy had written when one of the kids suddenly started vomiting all over the floor. We then had to figure out how to distract the rest of the seven year olds so that they would keep writing the words and let the poor sick kid alone. It was sort of like waving a birdie and saying “look kids, look at that!” while physically blocking their view of the little boy who continued to vomit as he was being led away. Aren’t kids fun?
This Wednesday I rushed from our morning session at Bonner School for the Globetown project down to Bygrove Primary School for East Meets West. East Meets West is a project that takes two primary schools (Bygrove and Holy Family Catholic Primary School) and divides their 2nd and 3rd years into two groups so that half of the Holy Family kids trek over to Bygrove to work on music and half of the Bygrove kids trek over to Holy Family to work on the dance half of the project. There are three musicians leading the Bygrove half of the kids. They are Lucy Forde: a flautist who is actually on our GSMD tutor list but whom I met for the first time at Bygrove; Alison (another flautist); Tony (trumpet); and Jon (percussion). My flatmate Meredith is another one of the music volunteers along with a cellist named (I think) Kate who is studying at another school doing a program similar to the one I am on.
Kate played her cello and had the kids try to figure out what instrument it was. My favorite part of that interaction was when the group had figured out that it was similar to violin and one of the kids shot up his hand and said, in a totally confident ‘of course I am correct’ sort of way “It’s a trombone!”
Lucy had prepared a melody and rhythmic accompaniment to it that is going to be the basis of the kids' piece. She started the process by having them imagine a land that no one had ever been to, that hadn’t been discovered yet and asked them what it would look like, like what temperature would it be? They started off a little shakily saying it would be really warm, freezing, hot, very cold and any other variation of an extreme temperature that they could think of. Eventually Lucy was able to get them to move away from temperature (not even weather, just the temperature) so that now the mystery land is pink and white, has lollypops growing on trees, and all the animals are people. Once we had an idea of what the land looked like Lucy suggested that we should think about what it sounded like, at which point the musician leaders played the melody and accompaniment that Lucy had written.
We then divided the kids into three groups and gave everyone hand percussion so that the kids could get involved both in playing and in helping to figure out what the world was going to sound like. One group ended up making a rhythmic pattern based on the names of the kids in the circle, our group ended up with a lot of metal and shaker instruments and based most of our stuff on a rain stick, I’m not sure what process the third group used but it involved wooden xylophones.
We were just finishing up the first session getting the kids to write words about the mysterious land (I think it ended up being named ‘Dream World’ ) to set to the melody Lucy had written when one of the kids suddenly started vomiting all over the floor. We then had to figure out how to distract the rest of the seven year olds so that they would keep writing the words and let the poor sick kid alone. It was sort of like waving a birdie and saying “look kids, look at that!” while physically blocking their view of the little boy who continued to vomit as he was being led away. Aren’t kids fun?
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Offical day #2
I just want to let you all know that it is a-okay with me if you comment. Really. Or write e-mails? Or whatever you want to do so that I get some outside contact? Super-peachy-keen. Don't be nervous or anything.
Right, so today: first day of the workshop! Did you know that in England, people with American accents are interesting? I was the coolest kid in town until the Icelandic kids showed up. It's a good group- about twenty people, 17 of whom are women. Or, at least, only 3 of whom are men. Whatever. It turns out the Great Britain has this whole culture of outreach programs and workshops, so that when they say that they are doing "creative workshops" or whatever- people actually know what they mean. (I have used "whatever" three times so far in this post, lets try to not use it again...) We started the day with little stretches and warm up exersises, and then we got in a circle and passed claps around, then little noises, then movements, then rhythms, etc. It was actually very dalcrozian, except not with the specific intent to teach a particular musical element. Which was a little weird for me. I felt like everything should have been to a specific pulse, and with eurhythmics you wouldn't *think* of doing something without concrete phrasing to go along with it. Anyhow, next we sang a song with various parts, had a tea break and came back and introduced ourselves. There are actually five Americans (and one Mexican, three Icelandic women (one of the leaders is Icelandic), and one Portugese guy). The other four Americans are all cellists from Cleveland Institute of Music. Two are already in the program, one is auitioning this week, and the fourth was visiting one of the first two and just managed to get roped in to coming to the weekend. People seem to be kind of amazed that I just found this program online and decided to treck all the way out here for it. The cellists found out about the program from Alison Wells- who is Peabody's new director Jeff Sharkey's wife. She went to guildhall I think is what the connection is. Anyhow, the program has been around for about twenty years, though has only been degree granting for the last three. Do you see what I mean about this whole culture around it? Julliard *just* started an outreach program this year (not a degree granting one), and the only reason Peabody has one is because a student started it. Anyhow, in America it is certainly the new, hip train to be jumping on, but no one really knows much about what they are talking about yet. Or at least, that has been my impression. I, at least, don't really know what I am talking about. After lunch we did a group composition, which was actually pretty interesting. I ended up working a lot with this girl named Jo who plays the tuba since we were the lowest instruments. During our next tea break (there were a lot of tea breaks) she and I, and this guy named Andrew from Scotland, got together and compared accents. (My internal monologue has switched to a London accent, it is irritating.) After a couple of days of not really talking to Americans it was hard to come up with a particularly American sounding sentence for them to imitate. Then we broke up in to smaller groups and each did another part of the composition. My group was bass, tuba, sax, guitar, and piano. Jo and I and the three guys. The guys sort of took over everything and I made some snotty comment about being included and Sam, the guitarist said "hey, lets not make this an us-against-them sort of thing" and I was embarrassed, but my attitude improved a lot and then we actually got some good work done and Jo and I actually participated, which was good. Apparently tomorrow we are bringing all of the elements that people created today to make a larger composition. It should be interesting.
I met up with Kateri finally after the workshop had ended for the day. She is not having the best of time out here in London, it sounds like it has been difficult for a bunch of different reasons. Anyhow, both of us have our American accents back now that we have been talking to each other. I am now a little nervous now about how easy it would be to get lost and lonely next year if I end up living here. It sounds like the early music department is kind of apathetic (something that I don't think is true of the Leadership program) and disinclined to go out and try to create opportunities for themselves. Which is really unfortunate. So I am a wee bit depressed right now, but last night I was reading through the DK guide book and discovered that there is a design museum! And how neat is that?! And the V&A had a surrealist furniture exhibit on now and the clothing/fashion exhibit is actually up now unlike in 2004 where you could see in to where they were setting things up and it looked so cool but you couldn't go in. So I'm excited about that. I haven't started going to the museums yet. That'll be good.
So I think that is all for today, love you all muchly- and seriously- think about that whole commenting thing, yeah?
Right, so today: first day of the workshop! Did you know that in England, people with American accents are interesting? I was the coolest kid in town until the Icelandic kids showed up. It's a good group- about twenty people, 17 of whom are women. Or, at least, only 3 of whom are men. Whatever. It turns out the Great Britain has this whole culture of outreach programs and workshops, so that when they say that they are doing "creative workshops" or whatever- people actually know what they mean. (I have used "whatever" three times so far in this post, lets try to not use it again...) We started the day with little stretches and warm up exersises, and then we got in a circle and passed claps around, then little noises, then movements, then rhythms, etc. It was actually very dalcrozian, except not with the specific intent to teach a particular musical element. Which was a little weird for me. I felt like everything should have been to a specific pulse, and with eurhythmics you wouldn't *think* of doing something without concrete phrasing to go along with it. Anyhow, next we sang a song with various parts, had a tea break and came back and introduced ourselves. There are actually five Americans (and one Mexican, three Icelandic women (one of the leaders is Icelandic), and one Portugese guy). The other four Americans are all cellists from Cleveland Institute of Music. Two are already in the program, one is auitioning this week, and the fourth was visiting one of the first two and just managed to get roped in to coming to the weekend. People seem to be kind of amazed that I just found this program online and decided to treck all the way out here for it. The cellists found out about the program from Alison Wells- who is Peabody's new director Jeff Sharkey's wife. She went to guildhall I think is what the connection is. Anyhow, the program has been around for about twenty years, though has only been degree granting for the last three. Do you see what I mean about this whole culture around it? Julliard *just* started an outreach program this year (not a degree granting one), and the only reason Peabody has one is because a student started it. Anyhow, in America it is certainly the new, hip train to be jumping on, but no one really knows much about what they are talking about yet. Or at least, that has been my impression. I, at least, don't really know what I am talking about. After lunch we did a group composition, which was actually pretty interesting. I ended up working a lot with this girl named Jo who plays the tuba since we were the lowest instruments. During our next tea break (there were a lot of tea breaks) she and I, and this guy named Andrew from Scotland, got together and compared accents. (My internal monologue has switched to a London accent, it is irritating.) After a couple of days of not really talking to Americans it was hard to come up with a particularly American sounding sentence for them to imitate. Then we broke up in to smaller groups and each did another part of the composition. My group was bass, tuba, sax, guitar, and piano. Jo and I and the three guys. The guys sort of took over everything and I made some snotty comment about being included and Sam, the guitarist said "hey, lets not make this an us-against-them sort of thing" and I was embarrassed, but my attitude improved a lot and then we actually got some good work done and Jo and I actually participated, which was good. Apparently tomorrow we are bringing all of the elements that people created today to make a larger composition. It should be interesting.
I met up with Kateri finally after the workshop had ended for the day. She is not having the best of time out here in London, it sounds like it has been difficult for a bunch of different reasons. Anyhow, both of us have our American accents back now that we have been talking to each other. I am now a little nervous now about how easy it would be to get lost and lonely next year if I end up living here. It sounds like the early music department is kind of apathetic (something that I don't think is true of the Leadership program) and disinclined to go out and try to create opportunities for themselves. Which is really unfortunate. So I am a wee bit depressed right now, but last night I was reading through the DK guide book and discovered that there is a design museum! And how neat is that?! And the V&A had a surrealist furniture exhibit on now and the clothing/fashion exhibit is actually up now unlike in 2004 where you could see in to where they were setting things up and it looked so cool but you couldn't go in. So I'm excited about that. I haven't started going to the museums yet. That'll be good.
So I think that is all for today, love you all muchly- and seriously- think about that whole commenting thing, yeah?
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