Damage limitation

Four breakages in one session last week and none in any others. Coincidence? The children were not unruly and in each case the damage could be put down to 'fair wear and tear'.

This session was different in that, because the materials had not arrived for the instrument-making session I had intended, I implemented a Plan B. The session was one that is familiar to music teachers across the land. In fact I'd walked in on one earlier in the week. Every child held some kind of percussion instrument and was ostensibly composing a piece of music. The teacher was sitting at a desk in the corner, beyond numb. It was impossible to hear what any of the groups (each of three or four children) was playing and I doubt the participants had any real sense of what they had created until they premiered it for the rest of the class at the end of the lesson.

The casualties in my session were an mbira (key detached), a dulcimer (broken string), a stick tambourine (jingles fell off) and my beloved kokiriko, pictured (the string snapped). The first three are easily mended but the kokiriko was assembled by the hands of someone who knew their craft. Restringing it will be a project in itself.

So why the damage? It's no coincidence that when teenagers form bands they usually do it in groups of three or four and don't practise in the same room as all the other bands. When you can't hear the instrument you are playing it's natural to play it a bit louder. If you still can't hear it you play it louder still.

The fact is that good instruments, of the kind that inspire children, are often delicate and expensive and need close supervision. You need instruments built like tanks for the kind of session described above.

So why do we teach music in this way? If you learn an instrument you are usually taught one-to-one or occasionally in small groups. It is accepted that you need to hear what you are doing. There are lots of useful things we could teach children but choose not to either because we lack the facilities (astronomy, skiing, bricklaying) or because we simply choose not to (typing, cycle maintenance). So why do we persevere with classroom music when we lack the space and staff to make it worthwhile? It has reputation amongst children as being a 'doss' subject. Unfortunate, perhaps, but fully deserved under the circumstances.

My childhood experience of classroom music involved a genial old bloke chatting to us about everything under the sun, including, but only occasionally and in passing, music. (I didn't really get what we were doing until I studied philosophy at university some years later.) There was a piano in the room but he never played it, perhaps because he didn't think we would appreciate it or perhaps because he knew better than to turn his back on us. Or maybe he couldn't bear the fact that it remained untuned from one year to the next. I wonder what he would have made of the National Curriculum? It's contents may be workable in a school with excellent facilities and well-disciplined, bright and motivated children. In many places even trying to implement it smacks of appeasement and I'm sure the old chap would have had none of it.

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.

A mission for the new intake

Are you a teacher looking for ideas for the new intake? Does your school have any of those hand-held USB sound recorders such as the Easi-Speak? Then this may be for you.

I moved house recently and was struck by all the different sounds that contributed my new environment. Your new students may not have articulated it but I imagine the new sounds they have encountered since joining the school must have made an impression. I have described the Easi-Speak recording microphones in earlier blogs but any similar recording device would do for this exercise and many mobile phones will record sound in adequate quality. Form teams of three, one team for each recording device. That gives you one ‘leader’, one to operate the device and one to log the recorded sounds on paper. The leader is the least necessary of the three but can keep their ears open and suggest new sounds to record, freeing up the others to concentrate on their tasks. You could also make them responsible for ensuring the written record tallies with the clips on the recorder.

If possible, issue the recorders at the start of the day and collect them at the end. In the next lesson you can ask each group to play back the clips and invite the other children to identify the sounds they hear. The quality of the results will depend on many factors, not least the ability of the children to handle the technology. Don’t stint on the training here; and that means familiarising yourself with whatever technology you’re issuing. In my experience most children know their own mobile phones inside out so you needn’t worry in that regard. You will also need to reproduce the sound at sufficient volume. The Easi-Speak and most mobile phones have headphone sockets for a standard sized mini-jack so this should not pose a problem.

So what are the benefits of this exercise? Well, they are manifold. It

• builds confidence in using the technology.
• improves presentation skills.
• promotes independent learning.
• encourages co-operation.
• develops powers of aural observation.
• familiarises children with their new environment.
• provides an opportunity to repay trust.

A word to the wise: If you are using Easi-Speaks make sure they are charged up, set to record in whichever format you prefer (WAV or mp3) and the memories are clean before you begin. My informal road test may also be worth a read.

What is an ocean drum?

Some years ago I helped to set up a 'music and movement' project with the grand ambition of bringing sessions to a 'culturally deprived' rural area. At least that's what it said on the funding application: one has to choose the language and buzz-phrases of the moment if one wants to get the gig. Our client base included adults with learning difficulties and Downs Syndrome and I wanted to get satisfyingly tactile and chunky instruments, both for them and for the other beneficiaries of the scheme. Amongst the kit I amassed was a 22" ocean drum made by Remo.

As a child did you ever roll marbles or pebbles around on a metal tray? There is something fascinating about the way in which the weight shifts as they roll or slide about the surface. And of course the sound. To be honest, and with apologies to Remo and other manufacturers and suppliers to the music stores of the western world, it never really said 'ocean' to me. Even now it's a name that rankles slightly - too literal and too leading.

The main problems with a tray of marbles from an educational point of view are firstly, it's not especially portable and secondly, there's a strong chance of spillage and all that entails. Enter the ocean drum, the shape of a bodhran but with a skin on both sides. There are dozens of ball bearings inside the drum and these roll around to make distinctive sound. They come in various sizes with 12", 16" and 22" being common, at least in the UK. although the 22" (About 55cm) never fails to impress primary aged children, by virtue of its size alone, they can find it rather unwieldy. Children also seem to like the ones with pictures of sea life visible inside. Personally I find them rather kitsch (Finding Nemo anyone?) and even more prejudicial to proper listening than the name.

Five interesting facts about ocean drums:

• They actually originated in Nepal, a land-locked country in the Himalaya and a long way from the sea. The intention was, however, to imitate the sound of water.
• You can hit them with a soft beater like the one in the picture. You cannot hit them hard with a drumstick without risking splitting the skin. Treading on them is also out.
  
• If you hold one in both hands and shake the ball bearings vigorously between the two skins it produces a loud sound like thunder or crashing waves.
• They can have a very calming affect on fidgety or agitated children and those with SEN (special educational needs). They have a mesmerising quality. Lying down and watching the ball bearings roll around from underneath is rather like being under water.
• Although they are given all sorts of aquatic associations, don't leave them in a cold damp place for any length of time. I did and the ball bearings went rusty. It still sounds as good but, if you lie underneath, it feels more North Sea than Mediterranean.

May's free game

Just a reminder that every month I post a (free) music or sound related game to play with other people. You can find it on my playwithsound.com website. This month it's a game called Hide and Listen and its purpose, besides fun, is to develop aural perception. An unexpected insight I've gained from playing this with groups of ten-year-olds recently is the extent of the gender divide at that age. Boys quickly indentified their male friends but were flummoxed when they had to distinguish between the voices of the girls. And vice versa. The only exceptions were when kids with very distinctive accents or adults took part.

Rare occasions when a male voice was mistaken for a female caused great hilarity. The rounds where funny voices were allowed were also popular and gave the foreign children more of a chance. Adults, however, never stand any chance in kids' games - at least not the adults I've played with.

A taster session

I've just finished a busy but rewarding week in which, with other artists, I accompanied a bunch of kids to Wells-next-the-Sea. Two groups, two consecutive days. The main thrust of the visit was to introduce the concept of land art, as made famous by Andy Goldsworthy, and provide a great location in which to try it out. While half the children were given a start on this in the pine woods, the other half were taken off to a sand dune for a short game of adjective charades, using the dune as their stage culminating in a descent in the manner of the adjective they had chosen for us to guess. The adjectives were along the lines of happy, angry, sad etc. After this they went back into the woods to learn all about land art.

Friday, back at school, was a taster day in which each of four artists gave a session to a quarter of the year group in turn so all the kids got to do some movement, some music, some book making and some kite making. Time was very short and of the two afternoon sessions, fifty minutes long in theory, the first was cut short by fifteen minutes because of registration. It felt a rush to get through to some meaningful work with instruments but I wanted to build on the adjective charades by adapting a game of Colour to five emotional states: excited, happy, sad, irritated and angry. We went through a round of names then played Hide and Listen (a big hit and May's Game of the Month) and a couple of games of Detective for familiarisation with the instruments I had provided.

Finally I could split them into four groups of three or four children and flash them the name of an emotion written on a card. Then they could choose their instruments, compose their piece and finally perform to the others, who had to guess which emotion was being portrayed. As expected, one or two children had to play a particular instrument at all cost, even asking to change the emotion to make it easier to incorporate their vehicle of choice. (Imagine trying to convey anger on a delicate (non hammer-) dulcimer.) But in general I was impressed by how many children preferred a mundane instrument, like a stick tambourine or coconut shells, over something more exotic because it was better suited to the mood they were expressing.

I have mentioned the sweet shop syndrome in the past and I think that had all the children had better exposure to the instruments in the past all their choices would have been driven by the requirements of the sound they were trying to create. But that's the nature of a taster session - and a taste is no substitute for a full meal.

Game of the Month for May

Every month I post a new game on my website. May's game of the month is called Hide and Listen. As you may already have guessed, it's a sonic variation on Hide and Seek. It can be played indoors or outside and is suitable for all ages. It's a versatile and highly adaptable game so get playing. And please let me know all the adaptations you come up with to make it more challenging for more able groups.

Sensitivity

I have been involved in a couple of projects recently where the ability of children to listen has been an issue of growing concern within the school, not just with respect to music but right across the board. Both the schools are located in suburban areas where traffic noise is a constant. And there is anecdotal evidence that, for many pupils, little conversation takes place within the home but that they are filled with the noise of competing music, television and computer games. The verbal interaction is sparse and perfunctory.

I don't find this difficult to believe. My own children will happily spend hours at a stretch at the computer if allowed.

Recently I have been looking for a new house. When traffic noise is clearly audible the vendor always assures me that 'I really don't hear it anymore'. Are they telling me the truth? Well, sadly, yes they probably are. I've grumbled about my neighbour's fountain before. What I don't like about it is that I can no longer tell, just by listening, whether it's raining or not, whether it's windy outside or whether the birds have woken up. It blocks out these sounds and if I block out his fountain I block out all the other sounds with it. If you live in an environment where you have to block out traffic or the sounds of TVs, computers and stereos you're blocking out so much else as well. You must lose, through lack of use, the ability to distinguish sounds from noise. Is it then a surprise if you have problems listening?

Knock knock

When you were young did you ever ring doorbells just for a laugh? I confess I didn't. I was almost certainly too scared but, in my defence, I must point out that front paths are much longer in the suburbs where I lived than they are in town and city centres where terraced streets are the norm. If you did, did all the bells sound the same? Doorbells have certainly gone through changes in style over the years from manually pulled or cranked to electronic novelty ringtones. My own front door has a knocker instead of a bell. Both door and knocker are identical to those belonging to the flat upstairs. The doors are right next to each other and, even after ten years, I am occasionally confused.

Today I saw a beautiful old knocker, featuring a Madonna and child (presumably), on a door to a tiny cottage which now forms part of the Maddermarket Theatre in Norwich. I found myself wondering if the tykes of yesteryear took any pleasure in the range of sounds produced by their mischief as they ran from door to door. The lack of either standardisation or mass-production must have made for a greater number of variables – type and thickness of wood, weight and material of the knocker, size of door, dimensions of chamber within etc. I would even venture that the variety was broader in its extent than any number of digitally stored chimes. I mean we're hardly talking high fidelity sound reproduction unless you are a real enthusiast (and I've yet to meet one). So if anyone fancies sponsoring the sampling, photographing and cataloguing of the world's door knockers I would be very interested to know. I think it would generate all sorts of fascinating insights and social commentary. Does anyone else share this interest? Does this qualify as disappearing sound or will door knockers stage a come-back? Do you have a sound interest of your own?

The wind changes

Spring is about here in Norfolk and the soundscape in which I live is about to change. Already my neighbour, who thoughtfully placed a water feature outside by bedroom window two years ago or more, has activated his fountain. Maybe it's a matter of taste, or perhaps I'm just a Philistine, but one man's bucolic fantasy is another man's plumbing nightmare. To be fair, it doesn't really bother me in the day but at night it's like staying in a cheap hotel and getting the room next to the toilet.


And last weekend I heard my first electric lawnmower of the year. In case you have ever wondered, 'Flymo' has nothing to do with hovering, or flight of any kind, unless you include those nasty winged insects with the annoying buzz. Peaceful Sunday afternoons in the garden? Don't get your hopes up.

Seriously though, and human noise aside, the sound of the wind is about to change here in England. It is made by the action of air on solid matter and for some months now this matter has mostly consisted of denuded trees and man-made structures. In a week or two, depending on the weather, millions of new leaves will be added to the mix. Softer, warmer, richer? Less lonesome? I'm not even going to try to describe it. Much better just to keep my ears attuned and enjoy the transition.

The sounds of the thaw

I realise that for many this may be a little premature or even irrelevant. If so then bear with me because this post is really about ephemeral sounds. This morning, walking with my daughter to school, I heard sounds that only happen when snow is melting. The sounds of slush: feet in slush, wheels of bicycles and cars in slush. There's a wet but slightly crunchy quality to that.

The sounds of water dripping without it raining at the same time. Water dripping or running onto surfaces and objects. These sounds are audible with a clarity that doesn't exist if they are accompanied by the patter of rain. My favourite was water dripping from gutters two stories up onto the new blue wheelie bins we have in this part of town for our recyclable waste. They must have been emptied very recently and had a hollow, tubby sound to them that only they could make.

So what could have been a pretty miserable journey, with my inadequate shoes letting in water (to remind me to polish them), became something in which I could take pleasure. Enough, at least, to take my mind of the coldness of my feet. And the moral in case you haven't already guessed? Enjoy the sounds around you, especially those you don't hear often. Listen hard enough and there's nearly always something to reward you.

Leader Follower

I have just posted this month's free game at playwithsound.com It's an exercise called Leader Follower that I've played at many workshops, my own and other people's and its enduring popularity is testament to its usefulness. It's very good for building trust between the members of a group as well as being an effective bridge to games involving blindfolds. It involves a group of 'leaders' each of whom guides a temporarily sightless 'follower' around a space At the end of the exercise the followers almost always feel disorientated when they open their eyes. I thought it would be fun to explore this feeling so I've given the game a sonic twist, making it more of a listening experience. This, in turn, may help players relax into their sightless state.

Learning to listen

Ah, the joys of self-employment! When there's no work I should be resting, basking in the warm glow of past success and spending my well-earned fees. Instead I'm mooching around, fretting that I'll never get any work again and seriously considering applying for unsuitable employment, positions I mean here, that would drive me insane. So when the offers finally come in I want to say yes to everything in case nothing else ever comes. I overload and get stressed by impossible and incompatible commitments and deadlines. But this is the kind of stress I love.

Just at the moment there is very little happening besides my regular woodwind teaching and occasional gigs. But suddenly I have had a variety of offers of work after Christmas, all of it exciting. Would I play clarinet and tenor sax in a production of The Threepenny Opera? Well of course. Am I interested in helping primary school children explore their concerns around death, pollution and the environment through sound? Yes, absolutely. Would I like to work with a performance poet on a project aiming to improve listening and communication skills in eight year olds, taking food as a theme? Count me in. And the icing on the cake: write some music for a video about heroes and villains. What fun!

Of course another thing about being a self-employed artist is that things rarely happen on the timescale that's been given at the outset and sometimes they never happen at all. Apart from 'Threepenny' these are all to be confirmed, but it's very exciting all the same and what fate can't take away is that I've been asked. And that's enormously flattering.

The projects involving schoolchildren will both require them to develop their listening skills and become sensitive and discerning with regard to sound. My years spent teaching woodwind have shown me that it is only when students learn to hear themselves that they become musicians whose playing might please others. This faculty arrives at different ages in different people. Like self-awareness generally it can be encouraged and facilitated but can't really be taught. This month's featured game, Copycat, is ideal for developing listening skills, especially in children, and has applications far beyond the teaching of music. Try it; it's free and without obligation. You will find that many other games in Adventures in Sound add value in a far wider context. We could all be better at listening - to ourselves and to others.