So far, every school I have delivered workshops to has tried to get me on their Graduate Training Programme- a course that turns you into a teacher, but more hands on than a PGCE. Obviously there is a real shortage of music teachers, but, I did not realise it was this bad!! To date, 3 [...]
March, 2007
Music Igniter Day 3 @ The Custard Factory Birmingham 27.03.07
Phil Mullen took us through workshop techniques which explored different approaches from visual and other stimuli to create new music pieces. We also performed to friends and family the pieces we had made based on new techniques we had learned. We looked at random pictures and had to create pieces in regard to the themes [...]
Waverley School Chinese Music Workshop 29.03.07
I did my first secondary school workshop since passing my Flying Start course. It was interesting, challenging and good fun!! I did a lot of things that I shouldn’t have: not given enough ground rules about using instruments etc. I did manage to get quite a few things right. I learned about classroom management, how [...]
The Music Igniter- Course Kick Off!
Day 1 Tuesday 20 March Birmingham – Custard Factory Music Intensive 1: participants will work together to devise music pieces from basic ideas involving pulse, rhythm, harmony and melody. Phill Mullen knows his stuff! He basically got 20 musicians to create effective, beautiful, varied musical explorations out of 2 pentatonic scales. He also used simplistic/mathematical [...]
Ice-breaker DJing Workshop West Bromwich
DSCN1574 Originally uploaded by Bobbalinhot. Today I worked for DynamicsArts for the first time! It was a great experience working with young mothers, trying to build self-esteem and have fun with the decks! I managed to get some ladies to have a mess around with the technics and it was lovely to see big happy [...]
The pitch
Today has been a great day!! I got 2 music workshop leader jobs!! The first involves doing some ongoing projects with Archbishop Ilsley Secondary School whose members of staff are lovely; such enthusiastic, warm people!! The other is tomorrow, a bit of a rush job but it’s at a Young Parent’s Conference (mostly female) aged [...]
The Beginning
This blog is going to be a documentation of my life as a community musician. Just to give you a background of my professional history; I studied classical music to degree level and grew dissatisfied with the classical music industry- becoming increasingly intimidated by the snobbery and obsession with class; especially since I grew up [...]