Monday 27th June 2011
As you’re probably aware from reading the blogs so far we have the pleasure of working (from time to time) with Gary Hammond a freelance artist with the trust. After our first session with Gary on the 17th June we were asked to look at the national curriculum for music key-stage one and two and this morning Gary was in the office alongside Liam to discuss our findings and how to incorporate a cross curricular element to our workshops and the importance of providing more than just musical education. This chat gave both Pete and I many great ideas to work with and ways to get more mileage and worth out of our workshops, elements including; basic arithmetic, rhyming words and memorisation to mention but a few.
The second half of our morning with Gary and Liam focused on the children’s story book “Going on a Bear Hunt”. Gary is a big fan of this book and after going through it with him we could see why! The story is based around the theme of adventure and takes in various obstacles along a journey to find a bear in a cave, these obstacle, including; tall grass, a river, a snow storm and a forest provide a fantastic basis for soundscaping. Soundscapes are a great format for workshops with the young or musically inexperienced as they allow the participants to produce a lush sonic landscape without needing any musical experience. The task for us was to read the story and spend half an hour thinking about how we’d go about turning it into a soundscape workshop; having had bad experience when using a mass of instruments with young people we went back to the body and mouth sound idea. The advantage with body and mouth sounds is that the participant’s interpretation of the story and the sound they produce are not bound by the limitations of an instrument or object and allow them to fully express themselves. Self-expression is a big thing for us, the bones of what we want to do is to get people expressing themselves with as little limitation as possible, providing them with a sense that partaking in the process of making music and sound isn’t exclusive to those who’ve trained. After we explained our way of doing things we listened to Gary’s method or delivering the workshop, in many ways an opposite to ours; utilising different instruments and different sounds but in a very user friendly way. With that we rounded off the session and came away with more fantastic ideas as usual.
Tuesday 28th June 2011
Gamelan! Yes, a return to some Javanese goodness.
Today Simon hosted a training session for teaching professionals and freelance musicians as part of the training work that the trust does. Rather than participating in this session in a musical way I chose to sit back, observe and make notes. For the previous two sessions both Pete and I utilised the opportunity to learn basic technique on each instrument in the Gamelan and have gradually looked more in depth at the set, although this has been useful for getting to know how to do play it hasn’t fully allowed us to get a handle on the teaching method. Not being a participant in the actual music making made a huge difference, it’s said that music is in the listening, and this is certainly true, sitting back and taking in the performance from an outside perspective allowed to hear how the individual parts built up to create the whole and it’s an incredibly powerful form of music.
The other advantage of sitting back was that it allowed me to study in depth the teaching method used and gain a better understanding on how the instrument(s) is taught. These note culminated in an analysis session and the eventual output of a workshop format that both Pete and I feel confident we could deliver with the amount of experience we’ve had, this provides us for another avenue of work, something that the FJF programme is designed to do and there’s no doubt in my mind that working at the trust thus far has created opportunities that will allow us to successfully work after the programme has finished.
Wednesday 29th June
Off t’ ‘Ull!
No that’s not a typo I assure you, today we had a very pleasant day in Hull, more specifically ‘Tilbury Primary School’ as lovely school in Hessle. You’ll be hearing a lot more about this school over the next three weeks as we shadow Liam and Gary, as well as conducting our own workshops with years one and two. Today we observed Liam who did workshops based on English folk music; the premise of the workshop was to get the children thinking what people in their very own community were doing a hundred years ago and how they made their music.
The first section of Liam’s workshop focused on a demonstration of instruments; accordion, spoons, bones, mouth harp and harmonica. The focus of this section was to teach the children that music can be made with instruments you make or find in the household and that people who around a hundred years ago often couldn’t afford to by instruments so made music with the objects that surrounded them in their daily lives.
The second section of the workshop consisted on some good ol’ sing song. The first song was entitled “The Trees in the Valley" and focused on repeating themes and memorisation of words and actions. The second song was entitled “The Herring Song” an old sea-shanty, again this song was built around memorisation of words and actions but added the extra element of rhyming words upped the level slightly and required an extra level of thinking for the children. These examples demonstrated effectively the cross curricular aspect of workshops that was discussed on Monday and engaged the children in thinking about more than just the music and song but required thinking in terms of language and patterns. Both year groups were very well behaved, made active participation in the workshop activities and most importantly enjoyed and learned something from the experience. Peter and I also learned a lot from the experience; having been tutored by Liam we’ve become accustomed to his way of teaching, but it was nice to get the opportunity to see Liam at work and get a grasp on the psychology and character he used with the age group participating, the most important element that stood out being that you shouldn’t be afraid to let your character out and be yourself.
Summary
As usual a fantastic week here at the trust, not only have Pete and I made steps towards expanding our future horizons but have gained more “real world” experience of the work that a community musician does, we’ve also discovered more about the depth of learning working as a community musician can provide to people.
The Firebird Trust
The Stables, Wellingore Hall
Wellingore
Lincoln
England
LN5 0HX
The Stables, Wellingore Hall
Wellingore
Lincoln
England
LN5 0HX
01522 811229
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