Week 3

Week 3

Tue 19th November Brockhill Park School (session three )

Arrived and unpacked only to find out that today I was to be given another room to work in as there was to be a drum lesson in an adjoining room that I might find distracting. (The previous week there had been a guitar tutor in the next room).

The room that I was put in had a fan heater that made quite a loud sound. It was so loud that I asked the students to turn it off. When they did the fan motor slowed down and the pitch of the heater also got lower. We agreed it was a good sound, so we turned the heater on again, and this time we were treated to the sound of the motor speeding up and accompanying rising pitch. One of the students thought we could use the sound for the 'journeys' part of our composition. We turned the heater off again and this time listened beyond the sound of the motor stopping. Now with the heater off we could hear a very quiet hum, and we discovered this to be the fluorescent lights. So we started the heater up again, listened, turned the heater off, listened, turned the lights off and listened. Now we could hear the classroom clock ticking. We listened to the clock and noticed that it made louder ticks when the second hand was falling (between 12 and 6) than when it was rising (between 6 and 12). I asked the students what else they could hear and they mentioned many quiet sounds from outside. I then asked the students what silence was. They said it was when there was no sound. I asked them if they really thought there could ever be no sound. One student said there was no sound in a vacuum. I told them the account of composer John Cage entering a soundproof room only to come out saying he could hear two continuous sounds: one high pitch and the other low pitch. When he asked the studio engineer what the sounds were he was told that the high pitch one was his nervous system in action and the low pitch one was the sound of his blood circulation.

I then asked the students to sit in a circle and we passed some very quiet sounds around to further concentrate our listening and also to highlight spatialisation. After that, since the class had mentioned 'journeys', I asked them to write up on the board words connected with this theme. They wrote: moving, travel, somewhere out there, where you go, vehicle, leave the country, go away from home, go somewhere else, to and from. I asked them what a piece of music with 'journeys' as its theme might sound like. They said it should be energetic and should start off in an excited manner before becoming boring and then becoming exciting again. Kai came up with a problem in that if the music became too boring then people would turn the CD off. We then had a group discussion about how to make the music appear boring whilst still keeping the music interesting.

I said that I thought that all journeys had something in common with how they sounded, and I asked the students what they thought I meant. They did not know. So, I asked them what types of journey could they think of, and then what they thought the simplest type of journey might be. Hannah replied, "walking". I then asked Hannah to get up and walk from one end of the room to the other whilst everybody else listened. I asked them what they heard. They said they heard the sound of her trousers rubbing together and the sounds of her footsteps. We drew the sound of her walking up on the board and agreed that her sounds were equally paced and could be seen as a series of patterns. We then thought of other modes of transport and realised that they all had this pattern idea in common. Therefore we came to the conclusion that our 'journeys' music should also be based on patterns. At this point someone had the idea that we could record the sound of a car in our music. I asked what patterns were connected with the sound of a car. Their replies included: engine sound, indicators and windscreen wipers. I said that we could record the sound of my car after lunch. Next we experimented by each making up our own musical patterns using percussion instruments and then improvised pieces based on patterns usually using a student as conductor/controller to help organise the playing.

After lunch, as promised we recorded my car. I took the students, together with microphone and minidisk to the car and let them decide what needed recording. They had a lot of fun with the wipers, electric windows, handbrake, the indicators, starting the engine and, of course, the horn. After the car we then recorded breaking glass (see session one notes) using a pane of glass I had brought in especially and also some test tubes and stuff from the science department. All the students had safety goggles and first received a talk on how to break glass safely from Tim. A lot of other pupils from other classes also came to watch this strange music class in action!

After our recording we then worked again as a group on a series of pattern pieces. Slowly but surely the group began to work well together and I let them try out their different ideas. I stressed the need for them to listen carefully to the other musicians in the group and make sure that their patterns fitted with the other people playing. As sometimes they would play in time and sometimes they wouldn't, I told them that it wasn't that I wanted them to play at the same time as each other but reaffirmed that I wanted them to try to fit what they were doing in with whatever was being played. I said that I thought that this could probably only be done if they listened to not only what everybody else was playing but also to what they were playing as well. For the final piece one student had the idea of using the structure of the morning's spatialisation exercise but using their patterns instead. This was our final piece and it was the most successful. It was nearly five minutes in length and the students held their concentration completely for the entire piece. It finished in silence with a 'wow' moment before spontaneous cheering and applause from the group.

Over lunch I had a chat with Tim and Jackie about the students behaviour. They were very impressed with my control of the students and said that the class was not an easy group to work with. I said that I was actually more interested in the students being in control as I want them to take charge of their learning. I said that the group changed quite radically when Tim or another teacher was present in the sense that they were much better behaved, and I thought that this was a good thing as I believed it would help achieve this aim a lot faster. I said that was unable to discipline the children as I did not know the students well enough to contextualise their behaviour. As a result, Tim was there with the class for the whole of the afternoon session.

After school Tim and I went to find the science teachers to talk with them about whether they could become involved in our project or whether I could be any use to them. One of them was about to start teaching about sound and seemed interested in me bringing in some fancy gear and talking to their students.

Thu 21st November Hartsdown Technology College (session three )

Began morning by playing the students the recordings of last week. They thought the music was good. One of asked them what boring meant. They said "uninteresting". I asked them how the music could be both interesting and uninteresting at the same time. They said it was just opinions. I said that maybe their descriptions said more about themselves than about the music. We remembered that, in fact, our composition was about sleeping and relaxing and so it wasn't meant to be full of energy. As a result we settled on the opinion that the piece actually achieved its objective and so was OK.

I had bought along my multitrack recorder and so was able to record their piece a bit better this time. We ran through it a few times and recorded it twice. I then asked the students what they wanted to do next. One student said "something energetic" and another said she wanted to finish off Justin's argument piece of last week. As Justin's piece was energetic it covered both options and so that's what we did. For the rest of the day we worked on the three main ideas in Justin's composition. It took a while for the students to relearn their parts and then we worked on simplifying them in order that the overall sound was a musical one. We worked for about an hour on each section with the students finding it inevitably difficult to remember each section and then being able to travel from one part to the next. We persevered and by the end of the day we could just about play the whole piece through. Throughout the process the students all had good ideas about how to improve the composition and these all were integrated into the piece. At lunchtime, and again after school, two of the girls came up to me to ask if they could do some singing. I said that I thought that would be a good idea and encouraged them to come next week with some words and ideas based on journeys and seeing something new.

The students all really enjoyed today. They all thought that their new composition was really good and many of them went away obviously feeling a sense of achievement. Justin, in particular, had enjoyed witnessing his piece come together.

Jermaine had prepared a special effect for his guitar for my visit. We recorded it thinking it would be good for the radio idea for home. He also improvised another piece using a reverse gate effect.

Fri 22nd November Whitstable Community College (session three )

Met Sonia Connell, my appointed teacher for the day. (She was the only one from my meeting with the art teachers (on 4/11/02) that had a copy of Robinson's "Out Of Our Minds". She hasn't finished reading the book.) I gave her copies of OOOM for all the other art staff and she said she should give them out. Later on in the day I also told Sue Merrells and Tom Jarrett that I had given them out, and that I would be testing them next week!)

I was to be in the hall this morning. As there had been a talent competition the night before the hall was very smelly, so I opened the fire door to get some fresh air in so that it was workable by the time the students arrived.

When all the students were present, I asked them what they would like to do today. Jazz said, "Go home". I said that unfortunately that wasn't an option and so I asked the question again. This time he replied, "Go to sleep?" Jazz has quite a strong influence on the group as a whole and so with him feeling like this it was difficult to raise a collective enthusiasm.

As the students had no definite ideas about what they wanted to do I gave them two options: to sequence their musical ideas of the previous two weeks into a multitracked composition using the computer or to begin something new and compose a composition on the 'journeys' theme. They chose the latter. I asked them how they thought the piece might sound. Owen replied "busy", and somebody else "exciting". Other suggestions were that the speed or the busyness of the piece would have to change to represent the different speeds of a journey. For example, walking to the car has a different speed to actually driving in the car itself, and then depending on where you were driving in the car the speed would be different. I played them part of a composition by Steve Reich entitled "Different Trains". They noticed that the composer made his piece busy by layering different patterns and also that his piece changed speeds all the time. I remarked that I thought it was interesting that the students had had the same idea. We then went to collect the percussion instruments. (The instrument cupboard is actually more like a junk room than a collection of instruments as most of the instruments seem to be broken. All of the metalophones and xylophones, for example, are in pieces. This is a real shame as they are an excellent sound source for music composition.)

When we brought the instruments back to the hall I passed them around the group for the students to play on them, improvising little pieces, duos and trios. Eventually the A-level students overcame their reticence to join in. It was hard work but by break time I felt that we were beginning to work towards the task in hand.

After break Rachel came to see me to ask was it OK if she went to drama until midday, as there was work that she felt that she had to catch up on. I said it was. I asked her if she knew where Jazz was. She said he was up in drama as well.

With Rachel and Jazz absent the GCSE students were a different group and now progress was much faster. More interestingly, perhaps, I found it easier to give a more balanced attention to each student and to notice their different needs. We began by creating some busy patterns. One of the students would suggest a beginning pattern and then each student would work out their own pattern to fit on top. This was a good exercise in listening as the only way their music would work was if they fitted exactly with each other. They found this quite difficult at first but gradually got the hang of it, and as they became more skilled at playing with each other their confidence grew. By lunchtime we had two short pieces of this nature and as Mr Jarrett just happened to be walking by we took the opportunity to perform our pieces to him. He seemed suitably impressed.

At lunchtime Sonia and Tom remarked that they were particularly impressed with Drew, who had chosen to play the piano. (He was the student who had been in 'Oasis' the week before and was apparently close to being expelled.)

In the afternoon we worked on getting a good recording on our two short pieces and then made up a third one. Finally we ended with an improvisation in which good ideas came out for continuation next week.

At the end of the session I asked Drew to please keep out of trouble for the week as I didn't want him to be in Oasis for my next session as he was needed in the music. He agreed to stay out of trouble.

After the session I spoke with Sonia. She said that she had enjoyed the day and commented that she was amazed that so much could come out of such simple beginnings. I encouraged her to write down her thoughts to help with the final evaluation. I also spoke with John, the music computer specialist and in-house drum tutor. He said that there were in fact some better quality instruments in the school that hadn't been given to us. I remembered that Tom had said that he did keep some instruments locked away for "special occasions". John seemed to think that they hadn't been given out to me on the first week as they weren't sure exactly what the project might entail. I had certainly noticed that we didn't have as many instruments, even than the first week, but more important was that the choice they had was very limiting and it was difficult perhaps for some of the students to be inspired by the collection of what was on offer. Earlier on in the day I had made comment to Tom Jarrett when collecting the instruments about the particular choice of instruments that were available, but he didn't say anything about the other instruments, just agreed with me about the school's poor resources.

Finally, I spoke with Tom at the end of the day. He was really happy with the work with the GCSE students and especially with how Drew had been. He was however concerned about the A-Level students and asked my opinion as to the best way of dealing with the situation. He said that normally his approach would be to be heavy-handed with them and to force them to go. I said that it was, of course, up to him how he dealt with them but in my opinion that method wouldn't actually solve whatever the problem was, although it might appear to. I said that in my opinion Jazz's attitude was having a negative influence on the group, and that somehow we would have to create a situation whereby that could change. I said that ideally I would like it if he was part of the group but also that I was aware that when Jazz had left the dynamic of the group was noticeably different with the result that Drew had benefited greatly. Instead I suggested that the two A-level students in question be given an option to come back but they must be made aware of the effect of their behaviour on the rest of the group and behave a little more responsibly.