Castle Vale Library
21st March 2009
“Spitfire Island
Jon’s Shop
The Centre Park
Farnborough Road
Switch
Chivenor
Astral
Sanctuary
Topcliffe”
Chris, Bobbie and Stuart are spending the afternoon working on a section for a the main “Down Your Way” piece, with a rather smaller group of children than had been hoped for; I think we’ve come to the conclusion that this has more to do with the sun than the attraction of music making. The spring has certainly arrived (the last time I said that it started snowing).
Bobbie has started with a list of words that came out of session that I led with Chivenor Primary School when they last visited Switch Radio. The aim of that session was to produce names of places and things that belong to Castle Vale and to Castle Vale alone, and this afternoon we’re hoping we might end up with 16 or 32 bars to slot into our main musical piece.
Apparently Topcliffe is a middle-aged seller of Time-Travelling-T-Shirts. (two for a tenner)
We’ve set the date for the performance: June 4th at the Castle Vale residents’ centre with two full day get-togethers before hand, and we’ll be pulling performance elements together over Easter.
Saturday, 21 March 2009
Friday, 30 January 2009
Spring Is In The Air (0r maybe not).
I know it’s only January, and it has been known to snow in May, and beyond, but l I say there is Spring in the air. Mary at Switch Radio says I’m mistaken. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m awaiting the arrival of young and older people for the Sanctuary session in daylight that makes it feel as though things are brightening up.
So what have we been up to so far, on this bright, spring afternoon? (It’s practically warm out there I tell you) We decided to try a new format for our Switch Radio editing sessions today. Very structured. Very guided. Very fun. (I’m throwing grammar out of the window today, in favour of style). Jules (McCarthy), Neil (Hollins) and I split the group of year 5’s from Chivenor Primary School into three. One group spent the session searching through the interviews that they had already done during visits to Chivenor House, identifying small sections and saving them as new files onto Mary’s memory stick.
Neil took a group of three to the radio studio, where he worked with them copying those files from the memory stick into a fledgling master interview file, and I tool a group of four away to interview Down Your Way stalwart, Betty, who has been asked about the war so many times that she is beginning think she was more than a mere four years old when it ended.
The result of the session is the beginnings of the interview master file, and a newly recorded round table discussion. However that doesn’t really describe the full extent of the afternoon’s fun. Neil decided that the art of audio scrubbing was in fact invented as a comedy device with which to entertain 9 year olds. When one has been listening to audio being stretched, squished and reversed for over 20 years one forgets just how hilarious the sound of your best friend talking backwards actually is; who needs a whoopee cushion when we have Adobe Audition.
And talking of bottom noises, there seemed to be a fascination with bodily excretions in the other two groups. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the fact that , when conducting recorded interviews, wayward noises were not desirable. I loosened up my group’s creative muscles with a game of consequences; we now have a vision of what the future residents of Castle Vale may look like, and what their predilections might be; it’s not pretty.
So a highly productive afternoon, and a lot of giggling.
June and George have just arrived prior to our next session with The Sanctuary group. They say it’s very cold out there. It must still be winter.
So what have we been up to so far, on this bright, spring afternoon? (It’s practically warm out there I tell you) We decided to try a new format for our Switch Radio editing sessions today. Very structured. Very guided. Very fun. (I’m throwing grammar out of the window today, in favour of style). Jules (McCarthy), Neil (Hollins) and I split the group of year 5’s from Chivenor Primary School into three. One group spent the session searching through the interviews that they had already done during visits to Chivenor House, identifying small sections and saving them as new files onto Mary’s memory stick.
Neil took a group of three to the radio studio, where he worked with them copying those files from the memory stick into a fledgling master interview file, and I tool a group of four away to interview Down Your Way stalwart, Betty, who has been asked about the war so many times that she is beginning think she was more than a mere four years old when it ended.
The result of the session is the beginnings of the interview master file, and a newly recorded round table discussion. However that doesn’t really describe the full extent of the afternoon’s fun. Neil decided that the art of audio scrubbing was in fact invented as a comedy device with which to entertain 9 year olds. When one has been listening to audio being stretched, squished and reversed for over 20 years one forgets just how hilarious the sound of your best friend talking backwards actually is; who needs a whoopee cushion when we have Adobe Audition.
And talking of bottom noises, there seemed to be a fascination with bodily excretions in the other two groups. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the fact that , when conducting recorded interviews, wayward noises were not desirable. I loosened up my group’s creative muscles with a game of consequences; we now have a vision of what the future residents of Castle Vale may look like, and what their predilections might be; it’s not pretty.
So a highly productive afternoon, and a lot of giggling.
June and George have just arrived prior to our next session with The Sanctuary group. They say it’s very cold out there. It must still be winter.
Sunday, 21 December 2008
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, 20 November 2008
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
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
Wednesday, 12 November 2008
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.
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.
Thursday, 23 October 2008
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
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!
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
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