Playing outdoors

So much to write about. A new piece of kit, a malfunctioning microphone, selecting tin whistles and, in respect of the whistles, the start of the R&D (research and development) week for The Pied Piper tomorrow.

But all that in good time.  Today I drove across to a piece of woodland south-west of Cambridge where I'll playing for a weekend of expressive dance over the first weekend in May.  It takes place in beautiful woodland with a dance floor in the trees, roofed but not walled, and involves the participants camping in clearings.  Most importantly, the site has a spacious and very effective sauna.


Today's meeting was primarily to connect with the space.  Much as I enjoy playing jazz in gardens for weddings, there is nothing quite like improvising in response to the environment and the moving human body. The Romans used to leave offerings to the genii loci, meaning the spirits of the place.  It is curious that the music I play on this site is completely different from that which comes to me at other sites.  Everywhere has a different  vibe.

Jabberwocky

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Last Wednesday all the museums in Cambridge stayed open late for an event called Twilight at the Museums. The lights were switched off and children issued with torches in order to see the exhibits in a new light. All except at the Fitzwilliam where torches were distributed but the lights remained resolutely on. The institution remains nervous after the high profile shattering of two Qing dynasty vases by a hapless visitor a few years ago.

The brightness of the lights made the recital of Jabberwocky a challenge. Indefinite Articles had opted to illustrate the Lewis Carol poem with projected sand drawings and shadow play. My role was to set the scene with music and provide an illustrative, and entirely improvised, soundscape between the verses.

The six performances were very well received and no one commented on the reduced impact caused by light falling on the screen. As is often the case with live theatre, I imagine that everyone assumed this was how it was meant to be. And many people watched the show more than once. Having seen it from inside the gallery they came round to the staircase to see it from the other side. Here they could observe Steve, Sally and our vorpal swordsman and 'beamish boy' achieve the effects.

The screen was hung in the doorway at the top of the stairs that lead up from the grand entrance. The landing provided our 'back-stage' area while I soaked up the limelight in the gallery where I could respond to the images.

Divided We Fall - Arranging children into groups

There are several ways of dividing a class of children into smaller groups. It is fun, but time consuming, to have them arrange themselves in alphabetical or age order. If you believe in star signs, and opt for the age thing, you may wish to mix them up a bit afterwards to avoid having all the leading Leos in one group and the recalcitrant Capricorns in another.

My own favourite, because wherever possible I begin work in a circle, is to give each child a number. If I want five groups, the person on my left is number 1, next to them is number 2 and so on round. The child next to number 5 is number 1 again. Once numbered, all the ones gather together in their group, as do the twos, threes and so on. I like this because it's fast, transparently arbitrary, breaks up subversive cliques and mixes boys with girls.

The other day I found myself working with eleven Year 5 children (aged 9/10). It was my first time in the school and we had 45 minutes to produce some music for a performance based on Creation myths. They nearly all had formal instrumental lessons and most were obviously very bright. Being young enough to 'play' they took to improvising very well. I would give each sub-group a title and they would play a convincing 'Sprinkling Stars' or 'Building a Mountain'.

Twice I split them into groups, using the method described above. The third time, when we chose groups for the imminent performance, they asked if they could choose their own groups. I was dubious about this but they had worked very well so, after a brief discussion about the potential pitfalls, I let them get on with it. This gave me a strong group of three and an able and reasonably cohesive group of four. It also left four less able and apparently low status children who were not a group. None of the others wanted to work with them and they didn't especially want to work with each other. Fortunately this was a selective school (albeit on religious grounds) in a well-to-do area and the 'less able' students would be shining beacons in many other establishments. The four remaining children accepted the result of the process to which they had agreed and coalesced into a functioning group. Each group produced wonderful music in the final showing to their peers and younger children, much to my relief.

Most of the schools I work in tend to be in less favoured areas and the proportion of socially able, high achieving children is lower. I am not in a hurry to repeat the 'sort yourself into groups' experiment in any of them. The fact is that able children, and I mean able both academically and socially, want to work with each other. They are usually capable of cooperating in ways less able children simply can't. But they are also capable of leading and inspiring the less able and can derive benefit from this. If there is a small amount of dumbing down from their perspective it is greatly outweighed by the overall rise in quality. And ultimately, in music at least, the session has to work for the whole class for it to work at all.

Each month I post a free music game on the Play With Sound website. This is in addition to the other free music games on the site that have proved so useful in schools, drama workshops. December's Game of the Month is suitable for adults and children over nine.

Called Telephone it has a communication theme but is really about developing fluency with three simple rhythmic motifs. The fun bit is using these to contact other players. In order to do that one must develop the skill of of hearing and reproducing the motifs accurately.

Telephone will develop rhythmic, listening, communication and improvising skills. The rhythms can be clapped or played on instruments. Let me know how you get on.

MIDI files for improvisation Part 2

Last week I posted some midi files for improvising in one key. It is possible to improvise against those chord sequences with the notes of one scale only. It's like cycling with stabilizers; completely safe, fun at first but quickly limiting.

This week I want to take it a bit further with the following sequence:

l:C / / / lC / / / lD / / / lD / / / l
l F / / / lF / / / lC / / / lC / / / :l 8 Bar in C midi file

This sequence is in the key of C major but visits the neighbouring key of G major. The D chord in bars 3 and 4 is acting as the dominant chord in G major and you should play an F# against it rather than an F natural. Note that it is not acting as the tonic of D major so don't play C#. If you don't know what I mean by tonic and dominant, don't worry at this stage; the exercise will still work.

Listen to the sequence and you will hear the chords changing. Now play along in C major, changing to G major (the key with F# in) for the bars with the D chord, and back to C major for the F and C chords. When you have mastered this try the same exercise in the other keys (below) and try breaking the rules to see what happens. For instance, play a C# against the D chord and see if you like it. Music is in the ear of the beholder.

The same sequence in F:

l:F / / / lF / / / lG / / / lG / / / l
lBb / / / lBb / / / lF / / / lF / / / :l 8 Bar in F midi file

Play in F major except over the G chord where you play in C major (so no Bb for those two bars).

and the same sequence in G:

l:G / / / lG / / / lA / / / lA / / / l
l C / / / lC / / / lG / / / lG / / / :l 8 Bar in G midi file

Play in G major except over the A chord where you play in D major (so add C# to the F# you already play).

And finally, if none of these symbols mean anything to you and you play entirely by ear then good for you. Feel the changes and let your ears/fingers find the notes that go best.

Improvise? I don't know what to play

Jazz can be very daunting to play: all those chords coming thick and fast. But there are sequences that are easy to play over, providing you keep within the same key. For instance, if you are soloing in C major against the chords C, F and G (the 'primary' chords in C) then anything you play will sound OK. Incidentally, this goes for the 'secondary' chords Am, Dm and Em too. Just play the notes of the C major scale and let the chords make you sound good.

Easy? Well you might think so but it can still be hard to play anything. This is like writer's block. Asking a musician to play up and down a scale is a lot like asking an author to type the alphabet on their blank sheet of paper. It's writing but it's not very creative!

But writing gives us a clue. Imagine the instrument you are playing is your voice and use it to say "Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall". Try it again with some different notes. Now you have a musical phrase. Only you know you are really playing Humpty Dumpty.

Now try some other lines you know. Something from Shakespeare perhaps? It doesn't have to rhyme; anything will do. You can tell your own story or describe how you felt on your way to wherever you are playing: "I burnt the toast so I had to make some more and that made me miss my bus and now I'm grumpy." Too long? Probably. So just take one part of it and play that: "I burnt the toast, I burnt the toast." Use another section for an answering phrase: "Now I'm grumpy".

Telling your own story in this way can make it easier to connect emotionally with the music you are playing. As you become practised at this technique you can react spontaneously to events as you play. Whether your audience is the Albert Hall or the rest of your class you can express annoyance with someone who came in late or proclaim your love for the attractive person in the front row. And they'll never know (at least until you tell them).

Having got started with improvising in this way you may find you have an incentive to tackle the esoteric arts of modulation and key change. But that's for a future post.

July's Free Game - Limelight

The summer term is almost over. I have the last school concert to attend this evening and have already fired up my last examination entrant for her Grade 5 flute exam on Monday. A strange time, therefore, to remind you of July's Game of the Month? The last thing anyone involved in classroom teaching will be thinking about right now is September's restart but it will only take you a moment to cut and paste it into your games folder. (You don't have a games folder? Shame on you!)

For those of us workshopping in the summer break this is a good game for a new and disparate group of varying ages and abilities. It is sufficiently robust to withstand a little anarchy. Just make sure you are holding the loudest, beatiest instrument and lead from the front. Enjoy!

Five Rhythms

I have just returned from a week-long camp held annually as a celebration of the midsummer solstice. It takes place in a beautiful meadow full of clover, buttercups and a variety of grasses as well as some wonderful mature trees including oak, beech, hawthorn and pine. There is also a tall conifer I am told is a Wellingtonia.

There were about seventy people in total and we camped in three circles, each with a fire pit in the middle for communal cooking and social focus. It was a closed camp (no visitors) increasing the sense of a shared experience. The beautiful setting and perfect weather made for an idyllic few days.

A prominent feature of the camp is Five Rhythms dancing. This is a new age dance form devised by Gabrielle Roth. Imagine good old fashioned 'freaking out' (for those of us who danced to prog rock in the 70s) combined with little bits of Chinese five element theory and a smattering of other ideas. Some describe it as a spiritual journey, others as a dance form for people who can't dance.

Playing music for it is surprisingly demanding. Each of the five movements can last fifteen minutes or longer, depending on the whim of the teacher. Our ensemble comprised three musicians playing, between them, djembes, balafon, assorted percussion and guitar. I dabbled in most of these, except the guitar, and added clarinet, alto saxophone and both bamboo and orchestral flute.

The music was entirely improvised but we agreed on keys and time signatures before hand. Although the dances took place in a marquee, our rehearsals were held in a mud structure based on an iron age round house which had a wonderfully warm acoustic. Each movement presents its own challenges. The first movement, Flowing, is usually played in 5:4 or 7:4 and this can take some getting used to when playing a melody instrument. The third movement, Chaos, is far more ordered than its name suggests and needs to build to a crescendo. however, building to this over several minutes requires both concentration and strong communication between the musicians.

I am pleased to say that we played for a total of five waves (each dance through the five rhythms is called a wave) and played something different each time, even when the teacher sprang a second one on us in the last session. Our three part singing on one rendition of Lyrical (the fourth movement) went down particularly well.

Afterwards the wonderful sauna on the field, built in the shape of an icosahedron, beckoned.

Norwich Puppet Theatre

I've just visited one of my favourite venues, Norwich Puppet Theatre, to play for Indefinite Articles' Pinocchio. Steve Tiplady is a fine performer whom I've worked with many times. His shows always give the impression of barely managed chaos, Pinocchio being no exception, and this alarmed me at first. Now I realise that it's just his way and he can bring the audience back in the blink of an eye.

For this show I play as the audience enters the auditorium and is seated. This can take ten minutes or so. I used to use soprano or alto saxophone for this but now I favour the clarinet. It can cut through a din if it needs to but can also play right on the edge of audibility. This is a great opportunity to play whatever I'm feeling; whatever the space suggests. For young children I usually start of in a major pentatonic - calm and unthreatening - but by the end I might be running through a klezmer tune or two. The show itself also features Tibetan temple bells and, for the first time today, a rather strange instrument that I used to use when touring with Baobab Theatre. Always a favourite with children it's very good for making the sound of frogs, crickets and squeaky doors. However, if you hold the stick and twirl the little drum (really just an amplifier) on the end of the length of fishing line it roars like a hurricane or strange beast. I wish I could remember its name.
The wonderful thing about the Norwich Puppet Theatre is that it also acts as a puppet museum with puppets from the last thirty years of shows displayed and hung from every available piece of wall. A truly magical place to visit, although the thought of staying in there on my own for a night gives me the shivers. It is hired for seances from time to time, if that's the right word, and is popular with ghost hunters too. Some very brave souls work there.

Practising scales and technique. A waste of your time?

I confess to being a terrible student when I was a teenager. And among the things I hated most were practising scales, arpeggios and finger exercises. I could never see the point and somehow the assurance that it would make the boring classical music I was forced to play easier to execute gave scant solace.

As an improvising musician, in both jazz and non-jazz contexts, I usually need to know what sound I am going to make next. I am not belittling the use of chance and surprise both in improvisation and as a compositional tool. But if I am trying to support the actions of an actor, who is in turn responding to a live audience, then I need to know exactly how to create the sound I want. And this is where knowing my instrument becomes so important. And, fortunately or otherwise, one of the best ways to get to know an instrument is by practising scales and technical exercises.

However, beware believing them an end in themselves. Jazz, Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold is the apt title of a song by The Bonzos. When playing a jazz solo, nothing disappoints me more than lifelessly running up and down perfectly executed scales. It's bland, lifeless and says, 'Hey! Listen to me, I have absolutely nothing to say!' It's jazz, disgusting cold. A great jazz solo is made by an inspired blend of imagination and technique. A wide vocabulary alone doesn't make an author but it can help to express meaning with accuracy. Similarly, mastery of an instrument doesn't guarantee a compelling performance but it does allow the performer to play whatever comes into their head. Not for nothing did John Coltrane practise constantly back-stage. You may not like what he played but you have to admire him for striving to express himself with integrity.

I find it far easier to convince my jazz students of the value of scales and arpeggios than I do my classical students. This probably says more about me than either group. But improvisation is composition on the fly and to compose you really need to know the instrument for which you write. Even at the most basic jam session, the better we know our instruments the happier we feel about the music we make.