December's Game of the Month

December's free music game has just been uploaded. Called Seven of Eight, it's one for the whole group or class. Versatile as they come, this exercise can be made simple enough for five year olds or sufficiently challenging to stretch accomplished adults. Go ahead and assimilate it.

Descant recorders - health scare

It's not often my friend Hugh and I meet young girls who tell us we're gorgeous. And if you saw us you would instantly know why. So when I went with Hugh and a couple of others to demonstrate musical instruments on a travellers' site last week I had a pleasant surprise. The boost to my self esteem was short lived, however, as the word used was actually 'gadjos' (pronounced gorgeous). Gadjo means non-gypsy, literally 'outsider'. I found the outsider tag mildly amusing as I live inside a house whereas travellers...

Anyway, when we arrived at a small Portakabin on the site we found a box of percussion had been provided by a school teacher. This contained no fewer than three descant recorders. Some twenty years ago I had the misfortune to teach recorder to a six-year-old boy who took great pleasure in pointing the thing in my face and blowing as loudly as he could for half an hour. This only lasted for two lessons. A third lesson and I'm sure I would have done something I would still be regretting at Her Majesty's pleasure.

My ears are less sensitive after two decades of teaching woodwind but a recorder in the wrong hands still feels like someone drawing on my eardrums with a marker pen. Following this workshop my ears rang the way they used to after a Hawkwind gig. You should know, if you don't already, that if you subject your ears to noise that leaves them ringing you have caused them permanent damage. So the moral is, never give a recorder to a child unless you really know what you expect him or her to do with it. Never casually include one, never mind three, in a box of percussion instruments. In fact, if I ruled the world I would place recorders in the same category as alcohol and cigarettes with hefty fines for anyone supplying them to minors.

February's Game of the Month

Regular readers will know I post a free music game at the beginning of every month on the PlayWithSound website.

This month's is called Supercar and is a rhythm and speaking game, equally suited to both music classes and drama workshops.

It requires neither instruments nor any specialist knowledge but will nevertheless give your students and colleagues something to get their teeth into.

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.

More free music games

October's free music Game of the Month, Phasing Out, is now on the website. The site is undergoing some changes and they are all for the better. It will soon feature more free music games suitable for workshop leaders, drama teachers and classroom teachers at both primary and secondary levels. And if you play in a band you could even cause a stir by playing then with your fellow musicians.

Aeolian Roof Box

If you've been following this blog you'll know I went to see some musical theatre last week rather than go and look at a roof box. In fact I went the next morning, prior to a weekend's camping and jamming in the woods near historic Bury St Edmunds.

I duly bought the box and headed for home. I was about to turn on the radio, my chosen CD having been refused by the in-car entertainment system, when I was treated to the song of the roof box. Sweeter even than those ancient sirens who charmed Odysseus. Mind you, they had to compete for attention with the Aegean Sea: the A140 is easier to upstage.

Factors including wind direction and speed of travel made for an enjoyable ride back listening to the roof-bars and box run through the harmonic series. And in case you're wondering if I've lost the plot, others have enthused unbidden. It was my best motoring experience since Classic FM used birdsong as a test signal back in the 1990s. Had I known the roof-box vendor was throwing in an aeolian harp I may have forced another tenner on him.

Well it's nearly time for a new game. August's Game of the Month will have a seaside flavour, although it can be played anywhere. Look out for it from Saturday. Meanwhile it's not too late to check out the July offering at http://www.playwithsound.com/music-game.html Called Limelight you may find it useful if you are faced with a disparate band of would-be musicians at a workshop or play-scheme this summer.

June's Game of the Month

Every month I post a new, and absolutely free, music game at www.playwithsound.com where clicking on 'this month's free game' will take you right to it.

June's free music game is called Echo Me and is highly adaptable. It can be played with voices or instruments, can be made harder or easier and can be played educationally, but enjoyably, with children from five to one hundred and five. So versatile is this game that it can be played in a few odd moments as a filler or can be stretched for as long as your group has an appetite for it. And this can be a long time if you build it up in steps, as suggested, and add instruments to the mix. Have a go and let me know what you think.

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.

Touchy feely

Some years ago I was involved in developing a project in a 'culturally deprived' rural area. The object was to provide an opportunity to explore the relationship between sound and movement. It was to be implemented by a group of local musicians and dance teachers.

One thing we were keen to do was free participants from their preconceptions about dance and music. On a movement level this meant exploring responses to sound other than the usual disco clichés. On a sound level we wanted participants, mostly with very limited previous exposure to music-making, to feel they could create a valid soundscape. There was no point giving them instruments like violins, flutes or guitars. These come with large amounts of cultural baggage about how, and how not, to play them; about the sort of sounds they should make. They are intimidating and can stifle creativity. Instead it was decided that we would present them with instruments that would allow for genuine exploration. Odd instruments from around the world that participants were unlikely to have seen played before; that had no obvious right or wrong way of playing; that may even inspire dance and movement just by their appearance and tactile qualities. And, most importantly, provide a level playing field for all.

It fell to me to choose the instruments. This all happened just before the turn of the millennium and the dissemination of information was not what it is now. However, a catalogue duly arrived from Knock On Wood in Harrogate http://www.knockonwood.co.uk/ full of exciting looking items from all corners of the globe. Our budget was tight but we managed to procure an enormous ocean drum, a kokiriko, a couple of tongue drums and one or two other things the names of which I've forgotten. Perhaps the biggest hit was the Indonesian angklung (pictured) which took ages to set up but was so different from anything anyone had seen before that it was always worth it. Also popular were the mbira (East African thumb pianos), large and small, that I tuned to a Japanese scale, one an octave higher than the other. A cursory glance at Knock On Wood's online catalogue shows that, while not everything we bought is currently available, there is plenty of new stock to browse.

The workshops were, in my opinion, a great success and justified their funding. Of course it's hard to be objective about these things (and there were fewer self-assessment forms to fill in then). What pleased me most about the project was that it encouraged a sonic exploration of objects, from violins to milk bottles, objectively and without prejudice or fear. This is an approach that a classical education encourages all too rarely. My book, Adventures in Sound, contains a number of games devised with just this purpose in mind and December's free game, Copycat, at playwithsound.com is an example.