Week 1

Week 1

Mon 4th November Whitstable Community College (preliminary staff meeting )

Met the art department and discussed the project and Creative Partnerships with them. I encouraged them to think of my input as a resource to be tapped rather than as an outsider to be tolerated. I also asked them to think about how they could have an input into the project. Tom Jarrett explained that for each of my weekly visits a different member of the arts staff would sit in on my session. This was because the school cannot afford for one member of staff to be taken off the school timetable for seven days, and also because they want as many staff as possible to be able to experience the project first hand. I plugged the Ken Robinson 'Out of Our Minds' book. One member of staff had already started reading it, and this inspired the others to want to read it as well. I said I would try to obtain a copy for each of them. There were about thirteen present.

Wed 6th November Hartsdown Technology College (session one )

Working with eighteen students. I introduced myself and the project to the students. Although I had requested that they all arrive with their instruments, in fact only one (saxophonist) had done so. So, for my next visit, I asked them to make sure that they arrive with their instruments and be set up and be ready to play by the time the lesson is due to begin.

We brainstormed the Creative Partnerships theme of "Home, Away and Journeys". We defined what home was, and the responses included the following: somewhere to relax; a place where you could be on your own; a living space with parents, brothers and sisters; a place where you were wanted, and in the case of one student, a place where he felt he was not wanted (but wanted to be); a place where you could watch television, make music or listen to CDs. I asked them about what sounds they heard in their homes. Their answers included the following: radio, television, appliances, music being played behind closed doors, babies crying, arguing. I asked them what a piece of music about home might sound like. Their answers included: friendly; something recognisable; happy; bubbly; calm, repeated motifs, long unchanging or slowly changing notes.

I asked them how a piece of music that was about 'Away' might differ from one that was about 'Home'. Their answers included: sounds that were different, strange; louder; notes that changed more quickly. Similarly, I asked them about music for a journey. One student replied that the music should begin slowly (as journeys often began slowly) and then there should be a boring bit (as journeys get boring very quickly, before an exciting end. I responded by saying that it was interesting then that journeys could be said to have a narrative (a beginning, middle and an end) whilst perhaps "home" just continued staying the same. I asked how we could musically show the aspect of travelling on a journey. One student replied by the introducing of new background sounds (like birds) to show that the journey was moving through different landscapes on the way to arriving somewhere new.

After all this I introduced some percussion instruments and we improvised musical scenarios taken from the above. The students were shy but OK and some of the work was good. After each improvisation we passed the instruments round, introduced another instrument and made the task in hand a little more complicated.

Present for the entire session was Mr David Morris, a music inspector. He hadn't heard of Creative Partnerships nor Ken Robinson. I said that I would send him a copy of the completed final work with the students.

Thu 6th November Brockhill Park School (session one )

Working with fifteen students, two of which play musical instruments. Began by brainstorming HAJ. Their definitions of 'Home' included the following: warm, friendly, routine, free, where you spend most of your time, relax, sleep, comfy, where you were brought up, where you are always wanted, where your parents blackmail you, eat. Sounds that they associated with home included screaming, fighting, barks and cries, moaning, washing machine, TVs, running water, crackle of wood, baby crying, alarm clock. They said that home had a routine and therefore there were repeated sounds, such as cupboards, talking, alarm, eating.

For 'Away' their definitions included the following: impersonal, different, sleeping in a different bed, different feelings, more exciting - not familiar, different experiences, more random. "Away is one TV, and that isn't good!"

I asked the students how a piece of music could change from a 'home' piece to an 'away' piece. One student suggested the smashing of glass to show a break of routine. I said that I would try and get some glass.

We thought about the idea of routine as a part of home life and how we could represent this in a piece of music. Hayley had the idea to choose five sounds and order and repeat them to represent the routine of 'home'. We also thought that we could choose a number of sounds for 'away', but this time they would be ordered in a more random way, with surprises.

We made a list of four home-sounds, just to begin with. We chose sleep, radio & television, relaxation and moaning. We then divided up into three groups to begin work on creating short compositions. We started with 'moaning'. I gave the students five minutes to create something, and then they played their compositions back to each other before working on them again. We repeated this process a few times with each time me making comment and questioning their compositions before finally recording each group. When the pieces were recorded I showed how some of the sounds could be altered by means of various electronic effects. We experimented with different effects for different groups.

When recording the third group I left the recorder on whilst they rearranged themselves between takes. This captured their talking and chair scraping. On playback the group really liked this part of the recording, especially with the addition of reverse gate reverb as it made their voices seem like memories, so we decided to do something similar with the whole student group. For this they all sat in a bunch and talked about home whilst being recorded.

From this came the idea of recording short sketches acting out home scenarios and so we recorded a few of those as well. They then wanted to try some singing and so Hayley organised the group into a choir. They began by choosing words connected with home and then experimented with different ways of singing them. Eventually this mutated into a rap style piece and this was recorded. From this the students wanted to say their own phrases or thoughts about home into the microphone individually and so we recorded those.

Finally we performed an improvisation drawing from our three group pieces to visiting teachers and then visiting pupils. Jackie asked for a recording so she could use it with her dance pupils.

Where you're always wanted
Friendly, comfort, warm
Where your mum and dad are
That's where you were born
Give me an H
Give me an O
Give me an M
Give me an E
HOME!

Fri 8th November Whitstable Community College (session one )

Arrived at 8:40am and waited for fifteen minutes for Tom Jarrett (my school contact) to appear. I was told we would be working in the hall but that I would have to wait until assembly was over. I agreed with Tom that I would talk with the students first and then we would get the instruments later on, and whilst we were waiting for assembly to finish we went to see what instruments there were to choose from. It finally finished at 9:30am but then we were told by the caretaker that he would have to clear all the chairs away. I suggested that this happened during the first part of the morning whilst I was talking to the students.

I began (as usual) by introducing myself and the project and then working with them to brainstorm what 'Home' means. For them 'home' was secure, comfortable, relaxing, warm, family, annoying, where you like being....Not!, boring, a place where you can get food anytime you want it, and where you unwind. I then asked them what sounds they associated with home, and their offerings included the following: - animals, dripping of water, sizzling of stove, muffled and distorted loud musics, kettle boiling, mum & dad shouting, arguing, dad snoring, creaking floors, boiler filling up, radiators, toilets flushing, clock ticking and phones. It took quite a lot to get this out of them as they couldn't think of any sounds, and so I had asked them what they might hear at specific times of the day. I asked them to think very carefully about each of the sounds they had given me and to describe the quality of the sounds. I then asked them to graphically represent their sounds on the board. April, for example, said that the first sound she heard every day was her mother shouting "Get up April !". I asked her if she got up as soon as she heard her mother call. She said she didn't. I asked her how many times her mother would have to say the words "Get up April !" before she actually got up. She said about twenty. I asked her how the quality of her mother's voice changed from call to call. She said that it started relaxed and then got louder. I asked her how long this process lasted. She replied about forty-five minutes. When I asked her to graphically represent this she drew: -

gua gua gua gua gua gua gua GUA!

On the board I then marked out the hours for a twenty-four hour day and invited the students to graphically represent their suggestions for sounds in the appropriate places on the board. April's sound, for example, happened between 7:00am and 7:45am. As soon as everyone had placed their sounds we went to get all the instruments. I then let them experiment on the instruments and encouraged them to try and replicate their suggested sounds by using the instruments. In fact, this did not work so well as they are not used to being left to their own devices and being asked to think for themselves, and so I asked everyone to sit in a group, in order to work on the exercise together.

Some of the students were struggling to see how what I was asking them to do was music and so I asked them what they thought what music was. This brought about no response, so I asked them what a sound was. Again nobody knew, the only response being that they knew when something was a sound but that it was indefinable. So, with the help of some of the percussion instruments in front of me I showed them how sound was linked to vibration and then spoke a little bit about the ear. From there we were then able to come up with a simple definition of music, namely, the control of sound.

After this we were then able to pick from our list of sounds and work out together how we would replicate them on the instruments we had chosen. The students worked well as a group and all the sounds we made were recorded. There wasn't enough time to work on all the sounds, and so this is something we will pick up from next week. At the beginning of the day the mixture of GCSE and A-level students didn't really feel like one group; however by the afternoon they began to work together a bit better.