End Of Term Sharing

December 12th saw the end of the first phase of the Down Your Way delivery with Chivenor Primary School, and Castle Vale Performing Arts College. We thought it would be a good idea to bring the two groups together for a sharing of what they've done, and also to give them a chance to make some music together.

Chris and Ian led the joint school group in an atonal singing exercise, and in a Phrase Choir exercise. You can see and hear the latter on out Sound & Vision page.

We've really enjoyed working with what makes up the first half of the Down Your Way performance team, and we're looking forward to seeing them again when it comes to rehearsal time. In January 2009 we'll be starting with new year 7 and year 5 groups.

Thursday 20th November 2008

Boys aren't keen on singing. Apparently.
You wouldn't have guessed it from the speed with which the male half of Paul Jones' year 5 class, sprang to turn a solo rendition of their vocal piece into an ensemble performance by 18; not just singing but swaying together too.

We're preparing for a small end of term sharing at which we'll bring year 7s and year 5s to show each other what they've been working on. Today Bobbie led a session at Chivenor School in which the children combined four of the melodies that they created a couple of weeks ago. The melodies were created from the speech patterns of excerpts from interviews that the children had done with older people some weeks before. A really good session that we'll build on over the next couple of weeks before sharing it in mid December.

The late afternoon session at Astral Youth Centre built on work we'd done over the previous couple of weeks. In the last session both older and younger people collected sounds from around the building that can be used as sounds in beat construction. Today we used conversation about "Christmas" (very topical) and "Tomorrow" to produce words that can accompany those sounds as percussive elements. We also tried a random rhythm creation exercise in which everyone chose two beats on which they'd place one of the sounds we'd sampled. I'll be using a combination of these to create rhythm loops to go along with the one produced in Chris's session a couple of weeks ago.

Dave

Chivenor House, October 2nd.

After a couple of weeks delivering sessions at the primary school, our Thursday afternoon sessions moved back to their proper home at Chivenor House last week; I’d like to say I noticed the ceiling repairs but I didn’t. I spent the first half of the session leading the group, all together, counting up to eight; not as easy as it may sound. The exercise centred on each person picking their choice of beats one to eight, and either clapping, playing or speaking on that beat. Musically this ticks a lot of boxes for children; all participants have to be able to keep the pulse together, all the counting happens silently, and the beat that they choose has to be ‘hit’ with some precision.

We experimented with clapping, clicking fingers, playing percussion, and finally saying a single word. I asked them to think of one thing that they’d seen on their way to school, or on their way to the session. All of this worked well, although taking things to the next step, where we only spoke those words that fell on even or odd beats was a step too far, this time.

For the second half of the session I asked the children to interview the older people about a particular theme; in this case ‘food’. We’ll have a proper listen to the results when we get to the next editing session.

Chivenor Primary

Well we had a really good session today! Yippe yay yay! :-)

I was really impressed with the creative skills and imagination of both primary students and older participants.

We came up with 4 really strong melodic ideas taken from sound bites - and hopefully we can sew them together and turn them into a chorus that can be embedded into the final performance.

I was impressed by everybody's commitment and there was some lovely drum playing from Mr.Jones - form tutor of year 5.

Older participants - Alex, Betty Evelyn and Connie did extremely well to take the ideas I gave them and pass them onto the primary school students!!


Stay tuned for further developments and pics!

Bobbie

Melody Making

It's Thursday 23rd October and I'm sitting in the IT suite at Astral Youth Centre as we come to an end of a day's melody making. This is the first time we've tried not only turning some of the phrases we've collected from older and younger participants into rhythms, but also into melodies. Children and young people have been getting used to repeating excerpts taken from interviews, and turning them into rhythms, either by clapping them or by playing them on percussion instruments. We've heard the words "nineteen-thirty-one", and "two children, two daughters" turned into catchy grooves, but today we've gone one step further.

During Bobbie's session at Chivenor Primary School, four groups of children, each joined by a resident of Chivenor House, interpreted phrases melodically, and performed them to each other. We even tried combining the four melodies that we came up with, layering them one over the other, which showed the potential for what may follow.

This evening, as I sit writing this, Chris is leading a small group that has mapped a small exerpt taken from a conversation amongst young people at the youth club, onto notes, and is now recording an improvisation that uses the resulting melody.

We still have quite a way to with combining these techniques but I think we're showing the potential of the concept.

More soon!

Dave

Welcome

Welcome to the Down Your Way blog. Down Your Way is a Sound It Out project which seeks to explore and celebrate the history of Castle Vale, part of the Tyburn Ward of Birmingham. Follow this blog to keep up with the latest news from Down Your Way.