Monday 1st August
Brand new shiny designs for the trusts branding were on the table today for us today and this along with marketing was the dominating theme of our day in the office. As you’ll be able to read on the main Firebird website, Ross Taylor is our resident graphic designer and since joining the trust has been working on logos and designs for our press and promotional materials. With all staff present we looked through and option of designs that Ross had produced for Firebird Flyers to give our opinions on what we liked and what we liked less (there wasn’t anything we didn’t like!). We all agreed that the new designs (some of which you can see below) will bring fresh new image to the organisation and something that will be easily identifiable as ‘The Firebird Trust’.
Tuesday 2nd August
Hack-saws, files and power drills! I know the thought of letting two musicians loose on power tools probably doesn’t do much to ease the mind, but that’s what was on the agenda for today. As part of our contribution to the Liam and Gary’s ‘Pebbles in Ponds’ project in Binbrook we’re building instruments with the children and then learning to play them, our first construction for the project is a ‘drain pipe xylophone’. The construction process went very smoothly, albeit in the blistering heat of an English summer’s day; by lunch time we had the majority of the frame constructed and marked out ready to place the for the mounts for the piping. After lunch we marked out, drilled and got our pipes mounted onto the frame, excited to hear the end result we grab a couple of different beaters and tried it out…
Even the best made plans can falter and after playing the instrument for the first time it was apparent that there was next to no resonance at all coming from the pipes. This was a big problem, if the instrument didn’t sound good then there was next to no point taking to Binbrook the next day. After experimenting with various methods of mounting we still came to no success and by the end of the day were very worried! To solve problem we arranged an emergency build session the for the next day, using our time over night to think about various ways we could get the resonance we needed.
Wednesday 3rd August
Battle stations! Our morning began with sense of heightened urgency; with three hours to get our xylophone working we busied away and during this time a light bulb went off in Pete’s head! Sound-holes. This seemed to work, and although it didn’t quite have the spectacular we expected but it did improve the resonance in a noticeable way, a work in progress.
A drum session was part of today’s fun and games too. Simon has recently been on a mission lately to get more content in the way of videos and imagery for the web-site and associated domains and rightly so. Pete and I have had the idea for a while to do a drum duet/creative exploration session with two drumset in one room. We’re two very different players stylistically and in terms of our approach to technique and playing, part of our session consisted of sharing ideas and concepts that we both use and it was a valuable learning tool for the both of us. The other half of our session entailed creating a collaborative drum piece and this proved to be a fascinating experience and eye opening experience. Gary once commented that Pete and I gel really well as percussionists, seeming to have an instinct for what the other is going to next and this seemed to be the case today. Using a seven movement’s format we created a piece that explored different grooves and styles, some improvisational and some pre-composed:
- Movement one: cymbal swells soundscape
- Movement two: call & response fills
- Movement three: common time rock groove (unison)
- Movement four: triplet feel rock groove duet
- Movement five: jazz shuffle
- Movement six: tribal duet
- Movement seven: ritenuto to end
To end our hectic day we met back at Liams and headed up onto the Wold to Binbrook. The instrument building was a big success, the children being thoroughly engaged in the whole process of seeing an instrument come together. On top of that success we had a rather good free-jam with the children, choosing just to ‘make noise’ rather than have a structured lesson per se. It’s surprising and rewarding to hear the development of the kids, whom we’ve been doing workshops with for a couple of months now, some rather nice rhythmic patterns emerging and a lot more initiative and confidence on their part. The session was cut short due to cricket but that’s sometimes the way at Binbrook, we don’t aim to impose rather let children come over and partake as when they feel like. The cricket break gave us some time to have a look at our homemade contraption with Gary and Liam discussing several ways in which we can get some more oomph out of it, something to be tried next week!
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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