Unit 59 - Music in the community

Thursday 26^th April

We were using this session to carry on experimenting with activities which I could use during the music workshop which will be taking place very soon.

We spent some of the session going over what we had come up with last week. This involved the introduction of rhythm along with you name, rapping and dynamics. After we had covered everything that we had come up with last week, we started to look at some new ideas. We thought about the idea of drumming a rhythm to a popular song which everyone will know in the group. The only problem with this is trying to find a song that everyone will know because we will have quite a large age range in the workshop and they may all have very different music tastes. Some of the songs that we thought of and found easy to drum a rhythm along to were ‘The lion sleeps tonight’, ‘Roar’, ‘Firework’, ‘Any dream will do’ and ‘Havana’. 

Another exercise that we looked at involved playing as part of a group and as a soloist. The exercise started by the group playing a rhythm together and then a name would be called out and whilst the rest of the group carries on playing the group rhythm, the individual can play a solo in time with the group rhythm. Here is a video of us trying out the exercise:

This is another good exercise which I can use during the workshop as it is nice and easy for everyone to get the hang of. 

Towards the end of the session, I had a discussion with my lecturer about what the next stages are going to be in order for the workshop to take place. I will be having a meeting with Kev from Reaction Music who is going to be helping me to prepare and run the workshop. The meeting will give me a chance to plan with him the activities that we are going to run with the group. The week after is when we will have a rehearsal of the material that we have discussed in the meeting. We also need to decide on a date for when the workshop is going to take place. My first meeting with Kev is to take place next week on Friday followed by the rehearsal the following Friday. Once I have had the meeting with Kev, I will then be able to get in contact with Ruth. Ruth works for the charity LOOK UK who we are hoping to run the workshop with. LOOK UK are a charity which support blind and partially sighted children, young people and their families. We will also hopefully meet with her to discuss any ideas that she has for the workshop and if she has any ideas on how many clients we may get for the workshop. I will contact Ruth by email to ask her a few things such as:

·     Making sure that the workshop is accessible – asking if the children have any other disabilities apart from their visual impairment and what their level of sight is

·     The structure of the workshop

·     The date of the workshop

·     Is it alright to film the workshop?