Cat

Workshop progress

Am four weeks into trying out my new "noise sound music" program. The school has 80-odd children all up. Things haven't been as easy as I thought, but there have been some successes.

Week 1 "Our Space" - lying on the floor, listening to all ambient noise, copying what we heard, recording everyone's name, sending them home with the task of listening out for interesting sounds.

Week 2 "Dream Orchestra" - finding all sorts of playable objects, classifying into categories of volume - pitch - length, following my hands to perform and record a (non rhythmical) piece.

Week 3 "Hymn" - singing clusters, copying all sorts of vocal samples (Ligeti, Kenyan, Bulgarian, Tibetan, Indian etc), thinking of words and singing them in a particular way, recording results.

Week 4 "Rhythm Machine" - what is rhythm?, copying patterns (I know I said no clapping games but...), keeping time, counting in groups doing threes fours fives simultaneously, marching and chanting, and dancing to my sampled drum grooves.

These children have had no music lessons, and 25% have not previously been to schools. I was not prepared for the "problem" children - behaviour that demands attention but then meek and shy when it is given. The staff are fixated with "developing strategies" for dealing with this, and I appreciate their help!

The singing exercise was the most difficult of all - one girl out of 80 managed to sing her word ("cat") in a way that was imaginative and interesting. The rhythm stuff went off beautifully - nothing like a march...!?

The material that I record is then listened to, cleaned up, and talked about etc with a smaller "target group" the following week. The names have been arranged in alphabetical order - like a sort of group audio photo. The Dream Orch stuff was dismissed as unusable rubbish until I took random slices and looped them - the collective jaws dropped and suddenly we were back in business.

I have to say this is some of the hardest work I've ever done - but they are wonderful little musicians and I'm eager to see how we go together for the next little while.