Music Teacher July 20161

KS5KS3/4/5

David Ashworth is a freelance education consultant, specialising in music technology. He is project leader for www.teachingmusic.org.uk and he has been involved at a national level in most of the major music initiatives in recent years.

Making music during the holidays

by David Ashworth

INTRODUCTION

Setting work for students during holidays can be challenging. They will typically not have access to the school’s

musical resources or the support, guidance and encouragement from their teachers. But they often will have

plenty of something else, which is such a precious commodity in all schools – time.

In this resource, we consider some possible activities that can be used by students working away from school

and can easily be adapted and edited to make them appropriate for a wide range of ages and stages.

We begin our resource by asking students to report back on what they did on their holidays – through the

medium of musical sounds. We then move onto ways in which they can tap into their local community through

music making and related activity.

Next, we consider ways in which the internet can be harnessed for music education purposes – from online

tuition courses through to flipped learning strategies in which student becomes teacher. This is followed by an

important set of activities that encourage students to think more deeply about music – an area that is easy to

overlook in our crowded curriculum. Finally, we look at some strategies for preparing for composition.

All these activities can relate to school work that has been covered before the holiday break, or might be

picked up during the course of the next term.

WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAYS

Or rather, what we heard on our holidays…

A typical holiday activity, especially for primary schools, is to ask students to write about or describe for the

class an interesting holiday experience. With ready access to mobile technologies, some students will use

photographs or short video clips in a presentation, which can be projected onto a screen to share with the

class in a more multimedia fashion.

Students share recollections and images of a holiday experience, but they rarely share the sounds. Why is

this the case? Most will now have ready access to a sound recorder, typically via an app on their phones, but

it has probably never occurred to most students that they can capture some of the distinctive sounds of a

holiday environment and use simple audio editing software to build up sonic collages that can make a musical

statement about a time and place.

Sonic Postcards was a project devised about ten years ago by Sonic Arts Network. Specialist practitioners

would visit schools armed with good-quality microphones and mp3 recorders to help children record the

sounds of their environment and then use the audio editing programme Audacity to make collages of sound.

These musique concrète-style pieces were then uploaded to a website and shared with other schools across

the UK. Visit the Sonic Postcards website for more details.

Ten years later, the technology has moved on, and schools and students will typically have the technology

required on mobile devices running relevant apps. However, most students will still require some guidance into

how to use their collections of sound recordings to make coherent musical statements.

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Activity

First of all, signpost students to some appropriate listening material. This could include the early recordings

of Pierre Schaeffer, Delia Derbyshire’s BBC Radiophonic Workshop recordings, or more recent works by

composers such as Matthew Herbert, whose ground-breaking recording The Mechanics of Destruction is well

worth seeking out. On this recording, recording under the alias of Radio Boy, Herbert sampled sounds in well-

known stores such as McDonald’s, Starbucks and Gap, and turned them into audio statements as protests

against corporate globalisation. So students should be aiming to assemble pieces that capture the mood or

ambience, or make statements about a selected environment.

First they will need to think about a location. Here are a few possibilities to consider:

� Shopping arcade

� Railway station

� Park

� Historical building

� Rural setting

Before visiting the location for the purpose of recording, some planning can be carried out. Students could

make a list of target sounds they might want to record. They also need to be thinking about what it is they

want to ‘say’ about this location. Is the railway station a place of excitement, with the prospect of interesting

journeys, or is it a noisy, crowded, damp, dirty, unwelcoming place?

A typical list of seaside sounds might include:

� Gulls with high swooping, shrieking sounds

� Waves for regular deep, slow-moving ostinato patterns that are rising/falling

� Feet crunching through shingle – makes for good percussion patterns that can also reinforce the pulse

� Funfair or amusement arcade sounds

Of course, when they visit their chosen location, various other sounds may suggest themselves.

Next they will need to think about how they are going to combine these sounds musically. So for a railway

station scene, for instance, the following table suggest some possibilities:

Sound source Musical function

Announcements Sample/splice and layer to make ‘choral section’

Ticket barriers Section markers

Trains arriving/leaving Intro/ending

Trolley suitcases Ostinato rhythm pattern

Doors opening closing Intro/ending

Guards whistle Transpose to make melody motif

Once the sounds have been gathered, they can begin the process of building their sound collages. Any audio

editing programme or sequencer programme can be used for these purposes. Here is an extract from an

audio piece about a visit to a train station. The top track depicts short, piercing whistle blasts, which have been

duplicated. The middle track is a long crescendo – the sound of train approaching from a distance. The bottom

track is from an announcement over a tannoy. Some reverb has been added to this sound.

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WHAT WE DID DURING OUR HOLIDAYS

Of course, students do not have to go away on holiday to find stimuli for making music. This is also a time to

explore and connect with their local communities beyond the school gates. Here are some suggestions.

1. Exploring local heritage through music composition. The stimulus for this might be a local story or legend,

whose narrative could provide a basis for reinterpretation through sound. Each community will have their

own stories, or students might want to consult the website Mysterious Britain for some possible starting

points. This excellent website is packed with weird and wonderful tales from across the UK and has a fully

comprehensive search function. Here is an example of how the tale of Bomere Pool, near Shrewsbury,

might be used as a basis for composition. Refer to the full story here.

Section Detail Some music ideas

Section A– mocking the holy man

Priest’s urgent warnings

Mocking villagers

Pelting with mud and stones

Rivulet flowing down hillside

Thin violin sound

Harsh woodwind

Various percussion

Gentle piano arpeggios

Section B – the rain falls

The falling rain

Creaking of the flood defences

Priest urges villagers to help andvillagers’ derision

Steady repeated sounds, getting louder as more sounds fill the space

Screeching string sounds

As for Section A, but stronger

Section C – the village Floods

Stormy night

Villagers feasting

The sombre church scene

Rising waters and final bell sounds

Dark, brooding, ominous sounds contrasting with –Merriment and dancing village band

Quieter, hymn-like music

Water sounds crescendo as bell sounds fade

Some students might want to look at more contemporary culture as a source of inspiration. So students

in Cumbria might want to explore the effects of flooding in their communities over recent years; Hull’s

development as our new City of Culture might suggest an angle; while in Sheffield a multicultural approach

working in sounds and music associated with the growing Roma communities in the east of the city are

just a few possibilities.

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2. Further composing opportunities: many local arts organisations, including music hubs, are now offering

composition workshops for young people during holiday time. Teachers could help make students aware

of the possibilities and encourage them to attend. Alternatively, teachers might want to create some

original online tutorial support materials, which students can access during holiday time. This need not be

necessarily onerous. Screen capture and simple video editing software is quick and easy to use and can

be uploaded to YouTube (or similar) for students to access remotely.

3. Organising performance opportunities: holidays are times for festivals of all kinds, and there are more

springing up all over the country, year on year. This is an idea that a group of older students might want

to work on collaboratively: organising a local arts festival. This is not an undertaking students can take

on alone. In these days of budgeting, risk assessments, health and safety, public liability and so on, it

would make sense for them to work with a local established organisation such as a charity, church or arts

organisation that can take responsibility for these important areas of administration. The students are then

free to focus on planning the content for the festival. Questions they need to consider include: �When, where, how long – church hall, weekend, afternoon, evening?

�What is the musical focus for the festival – rock, classical, something else, a mixture?

�Who will perform – emphasis should be on providing performing opportunities for local students from

schools and colleges.

� Is there a local celebrity who could headline?

� Publicity and promotion

The main educational benefit is that a festival can provide exciting performing opportunities outside of

school for composers, singer songwriters, bands, folk groups and school ensembles. There are also

opportunities to gain some experience in important areas of arts administration, which students will find

useful if they are thinking about pursuing a portfolio career in music.

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USING THE INTERNET

A common problem experienced by many music departments is that if students are using music technology

in their work, they can only access it during school time. The software applications typically used by music

departments are often too expensive for students to purchase for use out of school. This has been alleviated,

to some extent, by software companies making available stripped-down student versions of their professional

software at more affordable prices.

But it still leaves the problem of storage/retrieval of work from more than one location. How can students

continue working at home – on a piece they began during lesson time?

To address these issues, many students and schools are now considering the use of cloud-based software. This

software is not downloaded to the user’s computer. Instead, it is accessed remotely via the internet. Single users

can often access these applications for free, and schools can buy subscriptions that will allow them to set up

virtual classrooms, where students’ work can be stored and accessed by teacher and students. Applications

worth investigating include Noteflight and MuseScore for notation, and SoundCloud or Soundtrap for sequencing.

During the holidays, students can easily continue working on their classroom music projects, or work

collaboratively with their peers on new projects. Many of these cloud-based applications allow for easy upload

to SoundCloud, which can be useful for peer review purposes.

Another approach to encouraging students to make productive use of the internet during holidays is to get them

to sign up for some online courses. These can be relatively informal, where students can access materials in a

fairly ad hoc manner, or more structured, where students are set specific assignments over a given time frame.

An example of the former would include conductor Michael Tilson Thomas’s Keeping Score website. Many

orchestras and music organisations are now making education resources available via the internet, and this

one, from the San Francisco Symphony, is one of the best. There are fully interactive multimedia resources

on works including Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Berlioz’s Symphonie

fantastique, Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Ives’s Holidays Symphony.

Coursera runs many excellent online courses provided by universities as MOOCs (Massive Open Online

Courses) – online courses aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web. Currently available

ones, which may be of interest to older students, include Yale University’s Introduction to Classical Music, and

Berklee’s Introduction to Guitar and Introduction to Ableton Live.

Another approach to online tutorials is to turn the concept on its head by asking students to become teachers.

Some schools have begun this process already, by asking their older students to produce online tutorials for

younger pupils, covering a musical area in which they have some expertise. For example, a Year 11 student

might write an Introduction to Ukulele course for Year 7 students. Or KS3 students could be encouraged to

produce something for KS1/2 students in their feeder primaries. (This can also be an excellent transition

strategy, giving younger children some insights into what to expect in their secondary school music lessons.)

Students might think they don’t know much about music, but they will probably know more than students

who are younger than them! We also know that students respond well to learning from those who are slightly

older than themselves. Many students are used to using video editing software for social activities. This is an

opportunity for them to use their skills in a more productive way. These video tutorials can range from screen

captures with annotations and commentary to a live video production. Here are some possible subjects they

might tackle:

� How to play a popular tune on a particular instrument.

� Learning scales – the fun way.

� Chord strumming techniques.

� How to change a guitar string.

� How to set up specific music software.

Students will have their own ideas as well. Once produced, students can upload their videos to a YouTube

account for sharing.

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THINKING ABOUT MUSIC

Many schools allocate only a limited amount of curriculum time for music lessons and, like many other

foundation subjects, we would all like to have more for our students.

Given that curriculum time is precious, we often have to make hard decisions. What aspects of music education

should we prioritise, and how can we best use our time? For many teachers, this will mean an emphasis on

practical music making in the classroom, where students have access to instruments, opportunities for playing

in ensembles, and also opportunities for general learning about music through doing it. In many ways, this

makes sense, but it also means that there can be little time left for reflection and discussion on a whole range

of music issues. Perhaps holidays could be the time to consider addressing these additional dimensions of a

rounded music education?

Here are some possible activities:

1. Odd One Out: students will often struggle to describe or analyse features of a piece of music, but find the

task much easier if they are asked to compare two or more pieces of music. Odd One Out is a good game-

type activity to play, because it encourages open-ended exploration.

For example, let’s take these three composers as the focus for an Odd One Out activity:

� Shostakovich

� Kodály

� Bartók

There are various ways in which each of them might be considered the odd one out.

Shostakovich is the odd one out because he was Russian. The other two were Hungarian. Kodály is the

odd one out because he was the only one to write a ‘method’ for music education. Bartók is the odd one

out because he emigrated to America. And so on.

Others might focus on more musical rather than contextual considerations. For example, ask students to

justify why each of these versions of the folksong Matty Groves might be the odd one out:

� Joan Baez

� Fairport Convention

� Doc Watson

2. Desert Island Discs: many of us reflect, in idle moments, on which tracks we would like to take on our

Desert Island. It’s a fun activity, and one that we can use with our students. Ideally, for this activity, they

should work in pairs, so students will need to get together with a friend or family member.

The activity takes the form of a recorded interview, where the interviewee has had some time to think

about the questions in advance. In many Desert Island Discs programmes, participants usually justify their

music choices by referring to a particular time, place or memory. This is fine, but students should also

be encouraged to provide some musical reasons for their choices. For instance, do they like a particular

track because of its catchy rhythmic hooks, or its sudden contrasts in dynamics or some unusual vocal

harmonies? Ask for musical responses using musical terms and vocabulary.

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For this activity, students will need an mp3 recorder (or any mobile device capable of making audio

recordings) and a script based on the following template.

These recordings can be edited and uploaded to a shared space where fellow students can access

and possibly comment. A private SoundCloud account or the music department’s intranet space are two

possibilities.

3. Music journalism: this activity is possibly not for everyone, but it should certainly appeal to certain

students. The idea is that they should write a review of a recent album or gig, with a view to getting it

published in an established local magazine or fanzine.

They will first need to think about a forthcoming local gig or recent album they might wish to review. Then

they need to contact a range of local publications to see who might be interested in publishing. Once they

have found a publication who might be interested, they need to refer to back copies to get an idea of the

‘house style’, or ask the publication editor for a style sheet.

A typical album review might use the following as an adaptable template:

� Intro (50-70 words): include some background information, possibly who produced it, where the band

were before this release, and, if they’re unknown, where they’re from and a couple of influences. This

part of the review should mostly include facts.

� Details (70-120 words): the interesting bit – what’s on it? What does it sound like? How does it compare

to similar recordings? Have the band evolved or are they pretty much the same? Rate and slate as much

as you like – remember: this is supposed to be entertaining. Use exaggerated comparisons, inventive

analogies and metaphor to get your point across.

� Conclusion (50-100 words): wrap it up. Never finish a review abruptly. Instead, aim to fade it out with

some light comments about whether it’s worth listening to or not.

It might not be possible to source a publication, or in some cases this might not be considered appropriate.

In these instances, students could submit their reviews to an editor (maybe an older student with an interest

in journalism?) who would undertake to produce an online publication, perhaps working with a fellow

student with an interest in graphic design. For any students who really do not like expressing themselves

in writing, why not consider producing a podcast as an alternative?

Student A: Hello, my name is .................. and I’m here to talk to .................. about their favourite music. Can you introduce your first piece?

Student B: My first piece is .................. by ..................

(Play a short 30-second extract.)

Student A: Can you tell us why you chose this piece of music, and what it is you like about it?

Student B: I chose that piece because ..................

(Repeat this process for the other pieces.)

Student A: Finally, can you tell us which of those pieces is your absolute favourite, and why?

Student B: My favourite is .................. by .................. because ..................

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MUSIC THEORY

We all know that music theory is important, but getting the balance right between making music and learning

about how it works can be a difficult balancing act. Again, this is an area that might be more important for some

students than others, although making that decision can be difficult to gauge! Much music theory can be learnt

through doing music, but to get a coherent understanding of how the system works, it is sometimes necessary

to put the instrument down and pick up a pencil and paper.

One way to address this issue is to ‘subcontract’ it to a virtual external provider. In this example, the external

provider is an online facility: musictheory.net. Many music teachers will be aware of this website, which provides

an engaging, step-by-step overview of our music theory system, complete with tests for self assessment. The

site’s producers have now taken this one step further by designing a couple of low-cost apps for mobile

devices. This is a great way for students to learn, as we know the ‘little and often’ approach to learning music

theory works well. Theory lessons is an enhanced offline version of their animated lessons, and Tenuto is an

offline version of the associated tests.

FIRING THE IMAGINATION

It is well known that many composers, like writers and artists, keep notebooks of ideas that they can collect

on the hoof for use at a later date. So when the time comes to compose, rather than staring at a blank sheet of

paper, they have some ideas they can start to work on.

Compiling a few imaginary pages from a composer’s notebook can be a great source of stimulus for your

students’ holiday composing assignments. There is also an element of puzzle-solving to this approach, which

may well appeal to students. Devise a few ideas from scratch, or compile them from existing pieces.

Here are two ideas to get you started. The first features some extracts and ideas from the second movement of

Vaughan Williams’s Sea Symphony. It includes an evocative picture, some lines of relevant poetry (also used

in the original), some listening suggestions and a musical extract.

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The second is a series of purely musical ideas for a jazz-inspired piece, drawn from Tutu by Miles Davis.

WHAT IF…?

Not all students will be comfortable with working with standard notation-based briefs, so another line of

approach is to devise some MIDI file versions that can be used to supplement the written examples given

above.

MIDI files are a great starting point for students to start asking some ‘what if’ questions, as a way of generating

more musical material from given themes. Here is a ‘piano roll’ display of one of the melodic ideas given above:

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Students could ask questions similar to those given below, and edit the file accordingly to create a collection

of clips as a way of extending and developing the composition.

� What If I add some more notes?

� What If a take some notes away?

� What If I alter some notes?

� What If I transpose the phrase higher or lower?

� What if I reverse/invert the phrase?

� What If I augment/diminish the phrase?

� What if I alter the key or rhythm?

� What if I change the instrument?

� What if I try to make a bassline out of this?

A final approach is to suggest a well-known song to students, with a challenge to them to make it their own. This

could involve changing the tempo and/or instruments, altering the style, twisting the harmony, and perhaps

customising the words to make it more personally relevant. Refer back to the Matty Groves example earlier in

this resource for a good example of this process.

MUSIC… AND MIND READING

In this activity, students listen carefully, in a focused, directed way, to try to work out how a particular musician

came to make a piece of music and how they judged when certain things would happen in the music. Much of

this will, of course, be conjecture and guesswork, but it will help young composers when they make their own

aural decisions about when and how to organise sounds in their own compositions.

This is a particularly suitable activity for holiday work since it allows for students to work on different pieces at

their own pace, free from the distractions and time constraints of the typical classroom lesson.

Here is an example that illustrates the process:

Mike Oldfield’s In dulce jubilo

In this piece of music there is no written score to refer to. Far from being a disadvantage, this directs the

student into having to work purely with the sounds they hear, free from the distractions of visual notation.

Students should be encouraged to listen as often as necessary and find out as much as they can about the

way it was composed from the things they hear. Ask questions that are designed to elicit understanding about:

� the musical materials or sound sources used in the piece. Which traditional instruments can you hear? Are

there also any vocal sounds, electronically sampled sounds, found sounds?

� the musical ideas – how does the composer use the sounds functionally during the piece?

� how are the sounds put together to create a structure for the piece?

� the musical actions. Students should make a chart of the musical actions as they occur, plotting the

progression of ideas as accurately as possible.

Add further questions to this list that might relate to any particular chosen piece:

� Is there a steady pulse to this piece?

� If so, what is the approximate bpm?

� Does the tempo change during the course of the piece, either a sudden change or more gradually?

� What key is the piece in?

� Is this an original song or an arrangement of a well-known piece of music?

� How would you describe the structure?

� Does the piece have a recognisable climax? If so, how and when is it made?

� What instruments can you hear?

� Are there any repeated riffs or ostinatos – can you describe, notate or play them by ear?

� Which are the important ideas musically?

� Does the piece contain any unexpected surprises or moments of contrast?

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Answers to questions such as these will inform the drawing of a timeline, which might begin as follows:

0:00 Recorder plays main tune with keyboard accompaniment (with echo effect)

0:18 Tune repeats – second recorder adds harmony line

0:27 Third wind instrument joins in last line of verse and takes lead during verse 3 – recorders add descant parts

0:48 Verse 4 rhythm guitar joins in. Recorders play slow, steady countermelody

Teachers will of course want to compile their own listening examples, based on what they think to be

appropriate for a given set of students. However, here are some suggestions that give an indication of the

range of possibilities:

� Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works

� Kraftwerk: The Model

� De La Soul: Pain

� John Adams: Harmonielehre

� David Bedford: Twelve Hours of Sunset

� Sonic Youth: Dirty Boots

� Techno Time: Ease Your Mind

� Fujiya & Miyagi: Serotonin Rushes

This is also a good way to help students broaden their musical horizons. We are not asking students to

necessarily enjoy all these pieces. We are asking them to investigate how they work. During the course of this

activity there is a good chance that students will come to appreciate the merits of unfamiliar music even if they

don’t feel they make a connection with it.

TIME FRAMES FOR COMPOSING

Composers, especially those working on commissions or in the commercial sector, will often have to work to

tight deadlines. This can sometimes be a spur to creativity. There is no room for procrastination – you simply

have to get to it and start writing! In schools, we nearly always expect our students to work in this way. The

deadline is the 50-minute lesson or a time-limited assignment with its own internal or external deadlines.

However, some pieces require more time than this, where we need time and space to think out the initial ideas.

And time to try ideas out, revise and start again when we encounter blind alleys. We may need space and time

to allow ideas to develop at their own pace in the subconscious. To set aside a work for a few hours or days

and revisit it when the time seems right might well be the most sensible way to proceed in these instances.

Holidays give us this freedom. A really productive morning might be followed by a gap of a few days to let the

ideas settle, a few short 20-minute sessions working on aspects of detail, and so on.

This approach is particularly suited to more open-ended composition tasks, where there is little by way of

prescriptive instruction. For example, a composition task where students are told to use a visual stimulus for

creating a piece of music. They may choose one of their own – a favourite painting, photograph or design for

example. Or they may wish to photograph a favourite location and use that as a basis for inspiration.

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Here is one example of working in this way over a period of time.

This is a photograph of some tiles on the floor of a church in Siena. Although this is a flat surface, the pattern

suggests a three-dimensional quality, giving the illusion of a series of ascending steps. How might we use

these shapes and patterns and colour to suggest musical activity?

Here are some initial ideas.

Then, next session, we might begin sketching out some ideas based on the above notes. These can be done

in graphic tablature or standard notation.

Reading the picture from left to right there is a sense of climbing or ascending.

Working from top left to bottom right of the photo, we can see a series of two steps, four steps, six steps and three steps. Perhaps these could suggest certain melodic fragments, rhythm patterns or chordal possibilities?

The colouring on the facing of the steps is uneven. For example, consider the brown rectangles, which range from a bright orangey shade to a deep brown. Some tiles have variegated patterns which might suggest variation.

What about the colours themselves? Do they suggest any particular timbres? For example the cream-coloured panels might suggest a light, airy sound – perhaps a flute; the black panels a clarinet, and the brown panels a guitar.

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This first idea is a series of four ascending phrases based on the two-, four-, six-, three-step idea outlined

above

The second idea uses the two-, four-, six-, three-step idea for the number of notes in a series of chords:

Finally, you could devise a rhythmic pattern based on the same number sequence. And during the next

session, you might look at ways of bringing some of these ideas together.