Update on Final Project Process

Last week I began my final creative process project with my music students. It was a beautiful, sunny day on Thursday so I allowed the choir to take twenty minutes at the end of rehearsal and "play" on the playground. My only stipulation was for them to be aware of the sounds they heard as the played. (I even learned a new playground game called "Box Ball" from my students this day!)
The following day in our musicianship class we began as usual with some folk song games and mapping out simple folk songs with "traditional" notation (aka. quarter notes, half notes ect.).
I then proceeded to explain how there can be music that is not "traditionally" notated. There can be music in situations that we normally do not consider to be very musical. I wrote on the dry erase board the title "Sounds of the Playground". My students suddenly perked up and said, "Oh yah! You asked us to listen as we played yesterday outside." This was absolutely true. My response was to begin a list on the board of sounds we heard/noticed on the playground. Everyone had 4 minutes to discuss and recall sounds that they heard the previous day. Then democratically each student wrote and idea on the board. I will show the pictures in class during my final presentation but the list looked something like this:
1. Balls Tapping
2. Kids Screaming (Tag)
3. Gossip
4. Birds chirping
5. Feet tapping
6. Kids Laughing
7. Wind Whooshing
8. Jump ropes clocking
After the ideas were listed we grouped off and began actually constructing these sounds with a partner. To this task I gave them about 10 minutes to really brainstorm and test out different sounds that might constitute "Balls Tapping" or "Jump ropes clocking". I also documented this process with photographs and sound recording.
We eventually regrouped in a circle and each team shared what they had come up with. I even had two students perform a hand game with lyrics. Actually to be honest many of the groups came up with lyrics whether they were actual games played on the playground or words that accompanied some sort of movement.
Once everyone had performed their sounds individually we began to string them together. Similarly to some of the situations that have been presented in our Creative Process classroom I cued the sounds in group by group and the outcome was fantastic. It truly sounded like a playground, made of voices!
We will continue this week with these notions and also begin thinking about how we might map our a "nontraditional" score to our composition "Sounds of the Playground".
I will update after this week!

Creative Final Project Idea

The movement and sound exercise that we did the other day sparked another idea for what I may want to do for my final project. In the musicianship classes that I teach we are currently learning beats and rhythms in triple time. The students use beat cards to map out songs and in doing so create a small "score" for the melody of a simple folk tune. What if I had my students create a score for sounds that they heard, lets say on the playground. Using the dry erase board we could map out a rough draft of symbols, pictures and standard note values that they would want to create certain sounds for certain durations. Of course I would break it down in the beginning by brainstorming the sounds you actually hear on the playground. We could list them on the dry erase board and then break up into groups to brainstorm how we are going to create these sounds. Perhaps once we have a rough draft of what our score would look like we could perform a run through of the progressive piece "Sounds of the Playground".
I would want to take video of this process to show during our final presentation however I would need to get permission from the school and parents to make sure they know this video would only be used for my presentation purposes and would not be published in any way shape or form!
In class this week I would like to use our video exercise to do a small draft of what I may attempt to do with my students. I will bring in beat cards and markers with paper because we do not have a dry erase board. From here my peers and I will create a non-traditional score for sounds of the park.
This is just my beginning idea. We shall see where to go next!

Earth Group

Last week's scavenging activity has been the subject of my thought process as we forge forward in the creative process. Tae and I noticed right away the effect of the wind in regards to movements in the flags around Washington Square park as well as the circular spinning motion of all of the wheels on cars passing by. The sound of the wind and the cars moving through the wind provided our soundtrack to the scavenger hunt. I must say it felt as though we were capturing little "snippets" of movement and sound as we filmed. I know each time I had the camera I felt like there were so many things to record and I was indecisive as to the "correct" choices to make. I originally thought our video was only random "snippets" of what we had seen, that we thought could be interpreted in class. However when I watched our movie on the website it really seemed as though these "snippets' were indeed an actual movie.
Something that has struck me through this activity is the idea of "scavenging". I always felt this word had a doom like connotation, like hawks circling their prey that is soon to die! However when looking at scavenging in a positive light, for example in terms of more of a collecting connotation this word has many possibilities for the creative process. I suppose we are constantly scavenging and looking for inspiration that will drive our next lessons, compositions and stimulate our minds.
The movement, sound and approach that our Earth group took has inspired an idea for a classroom activity. I would like to create an on the spot composition with my students called "Sounds of the Park". It would be really interesting to see what sounds my students have scavenged with the idea of a park in mind and then how their creative process works in order to re-create or interpret these sounds. For example perhaps a few children could be the wind, blowing the flags, perhaps some children could be the sound of a handball hitting against the playground wall and maybe a few students could be the sound of people milling about in the actual park. I feel this type of creativity and scavenging of the mind and memory would be a great exercise for my students.