Paganel School “Home Week” Final Performance
It’s over and done with! The performances at the school were great, I was impressed with how well the classes did and the headteacher said the performances were fantastic! What really made our job easier was the support from the teachers, who had rehearsed the songs and staging during the week, how lovely!
We were able to add the finishing touches to the pieces, could offer year 4 a good hour and a half to refine their hard work, year 3 (in my opinion) were pretty much ready to go on stage before we arrived, they knew what we were doing and gave us advice!
Many thanks to teachers Mr. Harwood, Mrs. Wilson, Mr. Philp and the head! Also to the musicians for adding an extra dimension to the performances and of course to Chris for being ace and easy to work with.
100 Hour challenge: Second week
Day 9: Practiced for two hours, worked through 2-5-1s randomly. Tried to improvise over them, sounded pants!
Day 10: Went to Rachel’s after workshopping all day, got lost, took ages to get there so was tired and hungry, played through scales, and tried to improvise, felt a tad exposed and embarrassed playing knowing Ms. Carter was listening but got through it. Was rewarded with Rachel’s home grown cherries, yum!
Day 11: Nada, all day workshops, planning, emails, tired. Fail
Day 12: Nada. See above
Day 13: Fail. All day workshops.
Day 14: Fail. Read a bit about jazz theory but no playing.
I’m not worried, when I’m near a piano and not working, I’m practicing, as I’ve been working in Brum so much, there’ve been fewer chances to play.
Banded About – C’est Fini
It’s all over and done with! Today was the final concert date at Town Hall for the Banded About project, we made it! It was emotional, it was sad, it was tiring, fun and creative.
I was soo impressed with the young people at Watville, Wilkes Green and St. James primary schools over the year. This term, we (Steve and I repping Birmingham Jazz) were given such a tall order yet I feel we delivered the goods; I learnt that most of the other primary schools in the music hub (Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Sound It Out, CBSO, THSH) were able to give their schools weekly and some around 8 sessions per term, to develop ensemble and music making skills. In total I had 5 sessions in the spring term, and 3 in the summer, yes 3, which meant we had a mammoth job to do, devise, rehearse and perform at the Town Hall after 4.5 hours, minus ice-breakers, and packing away and you’re left with little time I tell thee, yet we managed to do it. I was proud of the fact the young people devised lyrics before the project, rehearsed outside of lessons, and after a scary sound check on the day after a week’s break, pulled it off!! Go gang!! There were tears, I got told off, necessary hugs were given and received.
In just 8 sessions I found that the young people’s time keeping, ability to improvise and create grooves improved exponentially, I was also impressed with how a teacher got stuck in the project and played recorder on stage with the kids!! How supportive is that!
Areas of improvement: I need to work more on varying my signalling, I wish I had the funds to go on a ensemble leading course, yes, another one, for intermediate workshoppers, I also need to think about using different time signatures, I’ve been using compound time more recently, but haven’t written many pieces in 3/4, I did use 5/4 with some secondary kids last term…. anyho! Onwards and upwards!
Highlights of the project for me were: working with amazing individuals at the aforementioned schools! Thanks young peeps, you rocked my world!
What would have made my life easier on this project: less emailing and more tete a tete (please), meetings with admins and the whole of the team so we could there could be greater consistency across the cluster, more efforts made to incorporate workshop leaders who don’t read music in CPD sessions too, some of my team felt a bit left out.
Here is some media for ya from our rehearsals,courtesy of my iPhone, you can hear me shouting, teachers getting stuck in lol! I think you can hear an improvement in each school’s pieces.
First piece St. James composed:
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Second piece by St. James, with some recorder playing by Ms. Hanson:
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Second piece by Watville (second rehearsal):
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Banded About ‘the first year’ from Mathew Beckett on Vimeo.
Find more photos like this on ‘Banded About’
Paganel Home Week Project Session 4
I am shattered! These all dayers have taken their toll on my ‘approaching end of summer term’ bones.
Today’s session was good, fast paced, pressurised and exceptionally creative. It was our last session and we invited musicians Steve (djembe) and Michael (sax/flute). With year 3 we were able to put the finishes touches on the performance, move it over to the stage (which was something we were hoping to avoid initially but can’t). The year 3s were really good at instructing the musicians to fill out the accompanying music. It was great to see their compositional skills begin to blossom.
Year 4′s session, for me was more stressful, not because the young people weren’t great, they were and always have been, but because I was disappointed I couldn’t recall the piano part for the dog song – should have written it down, and that we still have some finishing touches to add next week, I hoped that like the year 3 session we could make more headways, but alas was not meant to be. Last minute dot.com so it is! I also felt guilty that I wasn’t able to utilise the musicians enough in that session, as we spent most the time devising last bits and bobs.
As Chris and Michael pointed out, the year 4 session itself was successful for a number of reasons, the interminable enthusiasm from Mr. Harwood, who has volunteered to help us with the last drama part of the performance, the young people’s song writing, lyric writing skills getting stronger and the fact that everyone is committed to being a part of it all!
Michael, noted that the session had a huge emphasis on the young people’s creativity, which is great, because I’d rather more ideas from the young people and a slightly less polished performance, than me writing it all, and it appearing glossy, but less input from the children.
Fingers and toes crossed for our memory banks next week!
A groove we made up with year 4, it’s all about clouds:
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Steve and I singing the year 3 song, so they can have it memorised for next week, there’s a reason why Steve and I aren’t singers, obvious in the recording, but someone has to do it!!
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Here you go year 3!!
Paganel Home Week Project Session 3
Today was the third session at Paganel school, the pressure was on to move the sketches/ short vignettes into something more meaningful and framed. After a quick warmer and explaining to the groups the skills we needed from them to take this forward (concentration, imagination, sharing of ideas and an openness to them), we shared again the sketches and asked young people from both groups how they’d piece them together, fusing the drama and music. We had some fantastic suggestions, year 3 in the morning had bundles of ideas, year 4 shared some amazing ideas too!
I found a lonely looking metallophone in the store room, tuned it to a minor scale so we could create dream like sounds. Has a really sonorous sound, really mellow, perfect for our opening scene.
Both year 3 and 4 teachers said they enjoyed the sessions, Ms. Wilson said she liked seeing how we made headways and I sense more comfortable about what the performance will look like. I tried loads to get Mr. Harwood leading the musicians, but due to time limitations and the complexity of the kids ideas, had to take over leading. I am really keen to play piano as well as getting the young people playing, but the need a strong pulse, maybe with the addition of musicians on Thursday it will allow for this. Highlight was writing a chorus and verse in 15 mins, it went well, Chris has displayed some excellent lyric writing skills. (A published poet didn’t you know?).
In terms of working in partnership with Chris, I feel it’s going really well, both have similar tricks up the sleeve and give one another space to lead, as well as opportunities to jump in with suggestions.
Paganel Home Week Project Session 2
Chris and I returned to Paganel School to facilitate the second round of music and drama sessions. After today we have 2 sessions left to have material devised and rehearsed! The aim was to have local members of the community come in and be interviewed about their relationship with Weoley Castle and home. We got young people to devise questions about ‘home and identity’ and then to interview our guests.We had two dinner ‘people’ and students who arrived to the school at a later period be our interviewees. The young people asked some very interesting questions, moving from the geographical/’what can you see?’ questions, to more abstract; feelings about home.
The sessions were both successful, we were limited again in time as we had two assemblies that took off half an hour of time, but we got the backbone of devising drama and music performances; we always share at the end. I really enjoyed facilitating the dog song sketch; written in just 10 mins inspired by a tale of being unfortunate with pets (Chris and I became interviewees in the afternoon, I spoke about accidentally killing goldfish as a child, rottweilers etc). Props to Mr Harwood for the conducting and counting in! It’s great to see our year 4 teacher is gaining more confidence in leading, it would be great to work with staff and develop their ensemble leading, I think they are naturals!!
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100 Hour Challenge: Days 4 – 8
I spoke to my mum about my old piano (given to me at childhood); currently covered in cobwebs and black bags (don’t ask), but the easiest option was to use my fella’s MIDI controller attached to Garageband, couldn’t be bothered to pair up with Logic, wanted a less heavy DAW, a basic piano sound was desired.
Some of the notes didn’t work, but it still helped me to tinkle away. I feel loads more confident about modes, I over intellectualised something quite simple. I played through several modes in each key, mainly dorian and lydian, it helped a lot. Apparently every scale can be made into a series of chords.
Day 5: No practice, no excuse really, as the lovely Rachel said I could use her piano, but ran out of time to arrange this, however I spent some time learning about self-marketing. Still a fail!
Day 6: Friday, all day workshops with a 6am start, had a little time to jam on the piano with Chris Bishop (see Paganel project), but failed again as I jumped on a train straight after to London. I saw the amazing blues, ngoni maestro Bassekou Kouyate perform at the Barbican, the music was amazing, crowd were dull – hardly any dancing! Booo! Bassekou’s improvising is amazing, his music show’s the origins of blues music and has an amazing stage presence. His wife has a beautiful voice, such power and playfulness! Loved it.
Day 7: Spent 3 hours practicing which included a chat with composer Sid Peacock about jazz theory. I went through progressions, realised I got some chords wrong, went through 2-5-1s again. I realised I had been confusing myself with trying to work out which scales to use, and relying too much on the key signatures. I’m getting better at spotting 2-5-1s in pieces, which means I know what initial scale to use, although there are plenty more to explore; baby steps.
Some great pointers from Sid were, practice with a metronome accenting beats 2 and 4, play 2-5-1s in a random order, get a teacher, check the improvisation primer and not get to bogged down with theory to start with, noodle. Thank you Sid!
Day 8: Using the advice from Sid, created 12 scraps of paper for each key, picked one randomly and practiced 2-5-1s.
Played through “Tune Up”, chords mainly and worked out how to play chords and melody. Tried to improvise, it sounded okay, but a bit dry. Need me some licks! Then played through some other pieces including yesterdays. All good, the louder I play the more confidence I get, but that’s the problem, I’m worried about disturbing my neighbours, so am quite timid. “Headphones”! I hear you exclaim, yes, I will use ‘em next time. Wounded that I’ll be away from my keys for another week! I must get better at finding a piano in Brum!
Paganel Home Week Project
Today was the first of our “home week” sessions at Paganel school, and it was the first time I worked with Chris Bishop from BXL, who is a drama practitioner. This morning we worked with year 3, a lovely bunch of young people, with great ideas. We started with some icebreakers, bonding exercises, trying to learn names, although both Chris and I have confessed we are awful at this so name badges next week are a must!
As part of a reflection for the project we have to blog about our experiences, I normally reflect during certain milestones of a project,; (beginning, middle, end) so this process is new, but should be fine.
In retrospect, both Chris and I felt the session went well, we were able to create a buzz about the ‘home’ themed project, demonstrating the theme by bringing in realia; my items from home were; a Sainsbury’s shopping bag, photo of my family, and headphones. It was cool to get the young people guessing their significance, especially the shopping bag. We were concerned about the year 3s ability to think in more abstract terms about what ‘home’ signified, but some were able to do this, rather than just getting geographical and literal interpretations, some delved into the emotional side, and some the plain weird; dinosaurs!?! Chris brought in some of his late grandfather’s war medals which was really great for the participants to see, they had lots of curious questions.
We had limited time to get young people making drama and music performances, but in ten mins our 2 groups shared a performance based on their ideas of what home was. My group, explored the sounds of sisters, which included moaning, and chatting, fused with body percussion. I was impressed at how readily my group were to share their work and the feedback both groups gave was good; (initially one word answers), but I reckon once they get used to the process, we’ll get more specifics in their answers.
Chris’ group did freeze frames based on a story one of the young people shared about a dog that nearly got run over.
I think it was a successful start, the theme of the project and aims are known, although we had less time to work on devising performance work/ideas, we were able to produce something.
Year 4s session went really well too! Great answers, energy and was impressed with form tutor Dave leading the musical performance with some excellent conducting skills. He rose to the challenge, although nervous. Feedback was good, looking forward to next week!
100 Hour challenge: Days 1-3
I started on Sunday learning 2-5-1 chord progressions, just about got the right hand down, left hand is easier, I revised my knowledge of modes. I then worked out how to transpose them into different tonal centres. I am learning a standard called “Here’s that Rainy Day” by Jimmy Van Heusen, it has lots of 2-5-1 chords in it:
I’ve worked out the chords, can play the melody alongside them, it just needs polishing. I tried improvising over the chord progression, but realised I didn’t know what I wanted to say, musically that is, also what style am I to play the scales? So many questions. I stopped asking questions and kept on playing.
Day 2: Monday, woke up and practiced, I tried to transcribe some of Alice Coltrane’s Jaja Jaja Rama, read up on scale theory in my jazz book, played through the scales and modes and had enough time to go through the Van Hausen tune again.
Day 3: Not so good,back in Brum town, had back to back workshops, 9-4, then from 6:30 – 9:30 practitioner ensemble, so was playing music, mainly improvised music with fellow workshoppers, but not on piano, instead on the fantastic Güiro and tambourine…. I would have rather done my challenge in the time but… By the time I got home and ate dinner, I was asleep. I reckon I’ve done more than an hour for days 1 and 2, so kind of excuses day 3.
Day 4: Today, I am in hunt of keys. Will find a way!
So far the experience has been fun, the self-discipline part is hardest, so many distractions, humans, chocolate, sunshine, who wants to be locked indoors practicing when the sun is out?
100 Hour Challenge – I’ve Picked up the Gauntlet
Alright then, I’m doing it. It’s been on my mind for a while.
This is how I’m going to tackle the not being at home barrier to improvisation learning; finding pianos in Brum, asking some local residential homes if I can pop in, practice and play to the elderly, asking my old church, friends who don’t mind me popping round. I’ll also read up on scales/theory or transcribe jazz solos for the hour too! I’ll also arrange a few lessons with people. Who shall I ask? Any jazzers wanna give me some pointers?
So improvisation it is, I might even do something really scary! Sign myself up for some jams, none of those scary jazz ones, where everyone has studied standards at uni, but more obscure ones. Gulp! I’ll need a drink or two or three!!
An hour a day, an hour for play!
