I began today's session by playing back to the students the recordings that they had made the previous week. We gave marks out of ten for each piece, with I think Hannah's classical piece getting the top mark, and then I played them their compositions with the sound of Jermaine (from Hartsdown)'s 'radio' improvisation in the background to give the impression of the radio tuning in and out of the stations. We noticed that when we did this it didn't sound quite right. I showed the students that this was because, when compared to the radio piece, their recordings were of a cleaner quality. The remedy was simple: we just had to lessen the quality of their recordings so that they sounded more like they would on the radio. After this we agreed that the sounds married much better. Next I showed them how I had put both their recordings and Jermaine's 'radio' into their car-journey composition. They recommended a few changes, but on the whole thought it was on the right lines.

As there were some students who still wanted to record some pieces for this part of the composition I let them do this. Ainsleigh, Som and Hayley had a rap-style piece, Hannah had a weather forecast and Kallum had a skateboard rap, which he later confessed was from a computer game and so, as it wasn't original, we discarded it.

This took us up to break as the rap-style piece was very unrehearsed. (In fact, a complete mess!)

After break I said to the students that today I wanted to begin thinking about 'Away' music. I asked them if they could remember what they had said concerning the quality of 'Away' sounds, from the first session. They remembered quite a lot, remembering the lack of routine and also that the sounds would very possibly be new sounds. I talked about how as a composer I felt that I had to always consider my listening audience. I said that I often found this quite difficult as often I would be working on a composition for months and yet needed to know that it would work with an audience at their first listening. If they were going to work on a piece of music creating new sounds for their audience, to represent the feeling of away, then they maybe should also think about what new sounds sounded like. I asked them if every sound was going to be new to them how far would they have to come from. Matthew replied, "space". I said that we were going to go for a walk and they were to listen to the sounds, but not as humans, but as aliens. They were to hear sounds, listen to them and then describe them in writing. Since they were aliens they would not be able to name the sounds but would have to resort to other methods to remember them. I then gave them a few examples (some bird impressions) and asked them how we could describe the sounds. They distinguished between the pitch, the volume, the quality of the sound, how often it occurred, and also graphically representing it. When I was sure the group had grasped the concept I gave them a sheet of paper each and asked them to write down their classifications. I then told them that not only were they now aliens but that they were aliens who could not speak and I forbade any talking of any kind for the whole of the planned trip. They were to follow Tim Vinall, stop when he stopped, and simply listen and note down what they heard.

To begin with not every student was happy with the idea of going outside, or walking, or not talking, and gave excuses of various illnesses, but I told them that they didn't have an option. We were going!

To begin with the group divided themselves between those that were keen(ish) and those who most definitely were not keen and thought that the whole exercise was unnecessary. Some of the unconvinced students included, Zack, Louise, and Hayley (who was in a right mood about the whole idea). Very interestingly, I saw all these students transform into listeners on the journey when they got used to the discipline of being quiet. Our route was around the back of the school, the school farm and also around the lake of Brockhill Park. I think it was about ten minutes or so into the Brockhill Park that I noticed that all the students were now into the idea. At various points in the journey, when the students were stopped, I asked them questions about what they could hear and also suggested ways for them to listen in particular spots. My most common question was what was the loudest sound they could hear as in most cases this was the traffic from the road (about half a mile away) and I wanted them to notice this with regard to what I had planned for the afternoon. We must have been out for an hour and a half in total as when we returned it was time for lunch, and Fiona had arrived (to video the afternoon session).

After lunch I asked the students what they had thought about their walk. The feedback was good, and this lead to a discussion about the difference between hearing and listening. We decided that the difference was that listening was a more focused activity that required the listener to "pay attention". I said that, for me, whenever I just heard sounds I heard them horizontally, and then went to the board to explain what I meant. I asked them to tell me some of the sounds that they had heard in the park. They mentioned, duck, moorhen, river and leaves. I said that when I just heard these sounds I would notice them one at a time and sequentially. I then said that whenever I listened to the sounds, however, I no longer heard sounds horizontally (or sequentially) but vertically, i.e., I heard them in relationship to each other. Using the four sounds I then asked the students to tell me how the sounds related to each other in terms of length, pitch, volume and so on.

At a certain part on our walk around the park I got the students to write down everything they heard whilst congregated together between two fixed points of time. At this point in the afternoon I now asked them to count up how many sounds they had written between this time. Kallum had the most, and so we wrote up his sounds on the board. Then others chipped in with their own records to supplement the list. I drew special attention to Hayley and Som's list. They had mentioned many sounds actually made by the group themselves, whereas Kallum's didn't mention any of the student derived sounds. I said that I found this very interesting as I got the impression that most people do not consider their own sound contributions (only others). To make the point I asked them what were the loudest sounds that they heard. They replied, traffic, airplanes, helicopter and train. I said that it was perhaps interestingly that these were also human-made sounds. I also asked the students to tell me which were the loudest sounds and which were the continuous sounds. Again, traffic, trains, airplanes and helicopter came up. I then drew a time chart on the board and asked the students which sounds would have been there 500 years ago (which was everything except the list above) and then asked them to tell me when these other sounds became introduced into our sound environment. We found that they had come on the scene within the last 120 or so years. I said that I thought it was interesting that almost all the natural sounds were short, quiet sounds and interspersed with long silent gaps, whereas our modern human-made sounds were noisy and continuous.

After all this it was the end of the day. For the last half hour one of the dance tutors came into the room to listen. Afterwards Callum told Tim that although it was not his first time in the park it was the first time that he had noticed the park and for him it had been like a first experience. Jackie Mortimer also told me that after school Zack had popped into her room and exclaimed that there was no silence to be heard anywhere, not in the park, and certainly not in the school! Tim was greatly impressed with how the students had transformed during the afternoon session.

Before going I told Tim and Jackie that I wanted them to write up their thoughts on the project, what they had thought about the project, whether they thought it had had any educational value and if so what, whether they think the students had got anything out of it and if so what, how they intended to move on from here and what in the project had been useful for them, if anything.

Tim was much better today at being around.