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This Audio Scav­enger Hunt involves find­ing sounds from a list, report­ing on them, and dis­cussing what the sounds mean to you. Sounds are searched out and checked off a list. Then to report back, par­tic­i­pants use their own voice or body to repli­cate the sound. For a slight­ly tech heav­ier expe­ri­ence, sound cap­ture can be done on a phone or voice recorder, edit­ed, shared and discussed.

Exten­sion: Upload sounds to an edit­ing appli­ca­tion like Garage­band or Reaper and edit to make an archival piece cap­tur­ing your sound scav­enger hunt. Adapt­able up to sec­ondary school students.

Mate­ri­als: Audio Scav­enger Hunt Work­sheet, pen­cil 

(option­al mate­ri­als for audio edit­ing option: iPhone with Voice Memo or sim­i­lar, Garage­Band app, com­put­er, Reaper audio edit­ing software)

Tar­get Audi­ence: 5 years old +

Group Size: indi­vid­ual or pairs

~

Intro­duc­tion (15 min.)

• Begin with a sim­ple lis­ten­ing exercise

  • Close your eyes and lis­ten for 1 minute with­out talking

  • Share what you heard (e.g. my heart­beat, a fan, foot­steps, cars)

• Watch R. Mur­ray Schafer’s short film “Lis­ten”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOlxuXHWfHw

• Dis­cus­sion:

  • How can lis­ten­ing care­ful­ly to the world make us feel? (e.g. you might feel calm, notice some­thing new, or notice a sound you don’t like and would like to change)

Step 1: Audio Scav­enger Hunt (30 – 60 min.) (for ages 5+)

• Read the Audio Scav­enger Hunt Worksheet

• Walk around your house, school and/or out­doors and try to locate the sounds on the checklist.

• When you find a sound, lis­ten for a few min­utes and then use your voice or body to copy the sound. Prac­tice a few times so you remem­ber how to do it lat­er when you report back.

• If you are using a phone or voice recorder, record the sound. For more info on that, watch this video.

Step 2: Report Back (30 – 60 min.)  (for ages 5+)

• Take turns pre­sent­ing your found sounds using your voice and body. Talk about what they made you think of and how they made you feel.

• Here is an exam­ple of par­tic­i­pants shar­ing their sounds.

• If you have record­ed sounds on a device, you can take turns play­ing them back.

• If you wish to edit your record­ings using Garage­band for ios, or a DAW (record­ing soft­ware) on a com­put­er, keep reading.

Tak­ing it Further

Editing/Mixing the Audio in Garage­band for ios devices (60 – 90 min.)  (for ages 10+, slight­ly advanced)

• For more infor­ma­tion on this, vis­it the Audio-Visu­al Mis­match les­son, anoth­er project on this site designed by me or refer to this video from 1:46 to 4:38

Editing/Mixing the Audio in Reaper on your com­put­er (60 – 90 min.)  (for ages 13+, advanced)

• This video shows how to install Reaper. Note that Reaper is free to use until you decide you would like to pur­chase a mem­ber­ship. You can use the free ver­sion for as long as you like.

• Now you will have to get your files off your phone and onto your com­put­er. There are many ways to do this. Here are a few:

  • Trans­fer files from your phone to the com­put­er using a USB cable.

  • Email your files to your­self, open the email on your com­put­er and save the files to a fold­er that you will remember.

  • Use Air Drop (for Apple Users) to send the files direct­ly to your computer.

• The fol­low­ing steps are illus­trat­ed in this video.

• Wear ear buds, air pods or head­phones and use your ears to edit the track until you are happy.

• Open Reaper.

• Drag your files into Reaper and begin editing.

• Trim your track to get rid of extra noise.

• Use fades at the begin­ning and the end to make it sound smoother.

• Use Pan­ning to send your audio sig­nal to the left or right.

• Use the Equal­iza­tion (EQ FX) to bring out the high, mid­dle and low fre­quen­cies of your audio track.

• Use Reverb to enhance your track.

• Once you are hap­py with your track, click File > Ren­der > Next to File name, rename your project to some­thing that makes sense (e.g. Guillaume-AudioScavengerHunt-2021).Then, next to Out­put For­mat, Choose MP3 (encoder by LAME project). Final­ly, click Ren­der 1 File.

• Then you can send the file in an email, save it to Google Dri­ve or sim­ply play it from your computer.

• To learn more about Reaper and fol­low their excel­lent video tuto­ri­als, click here.

Below are some exam­ples of pieces made by high school stu­dents dur­ing a sim­i­lar project

• Sounds only

• Audio Sto­ry­telling and Sound Art Project (ArtistsIn­spire Grants)

Hap­py sound hunt­ing and have fun!

More Son­ic Enjoyment

audio pieces made from repli­cat­ing sounds using voices:

• Once on a Windy Night by R. Mur­ray Schaeffer

• Bur­ble by Juli­et Palmer

audio pieces made from record­ed sounds:

• Mes­sage in a Bot­tle an ArtistsIn­spire Grants project designed by Louise Camp­bell, Jes­si­ca Hous­ton, Guil­laume Jab­bour and Paula Knowles

• Stuck in a Hail­storm Sec­ondary 4 high school stu­dents reflect on the pan­dem­ic, by Guil­laume Jabbour

ACTIVATE: Young Com­pos­er Pro­gram is an adju­di­cat­ed com­po­si­tion pro­gram pre­sent­ed by The Alliance for Cana­di­an New Music Projects (ACNMP) and Cana­di­an Music Cen­tre (CMC).

ACTIVATE is an ear­ly entry point for young artists (25 years of age or younger) explor­ing com­po­si­tion and sound: in par­tic­u­lar those who are not working/studying in a pro­fes­sion­al con­text, and would there­fore want to access dif­fer­ent forms of men­tor­ship and oppor­tu­ni­ties to hear their music per­formed by pro­fes­sion­al musi­cians. ACTIVATE par­tic­i­pants will gain new skills, and have oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with a peer group from across Canada.

The 2020 edi­tion fea­tured adju­di­ca­tor and com­pos­er men­tor Anna Höst­man as well as vio­lin­ist and com­pos­er Aline Homzy.

Sub­mis­sion Criteria:

• All appli­ca­tions were sub­mit­ted through an online form (along with the score and sound file of the sub­mit­ted work)
• Adju­di­cat­ed pieces could be in any medi­um (for any instru­men­ta­tion, includ­ing elec­tron­ics), and have a dura­tion from 2 to 10 minutes
• To be con­sid­ered for the read­ing ses­sion, com­posers were required to sub­mit solo or duo works, or fixed elec­tron­ic pieces for stereo play­back, that meet the dura­tion cri­te­ria. If a piece is writ­ten for solo or duo instru­ments with fixed elec­tron­ics (stereo play­back) it will be con­sid­ered for the reading.

Pro­gram Experience:

Adju­di­cat­ed com­po­si­tion class:

• Each com­pos­er received a short writ­ten adju­di­ca­tion from Anna Höst­man or Aline Homzy in response to a sub­mit­ted piece of music (address­ing tech­ni­cal and artis­tic aspects of the work, with some rec­om­men­da­tions for fur­ther devel­op­ment in each young composer’s practice)
• Adju­di­ca­tor com­ments pro­vid­ed a bal­ance of encouraging/positive remarks, with con­struc­tive feed­back regard­ing tech­ni­cal and com­po­si­tion­al mat­ters. In par­tic­u­lar, adju­di­ca­tors were encour­aged to direct com­posers towards lis­ten­ing or score sam­ples from con­tem­po­rary com­posers active today.

Read­ing ses­sion with guest musicians:

• Anna Höst­man, along with ACNMP and CMC orga­niz­ers, will select up to six (6) of the adju­di­cat­ed works to be includ­ed in a pro­fes­sion­al read­ing ses­sion with guest musi­cians per­form­ing the works.
• Com­posers would access the read­ing ses­sion remote­ly using an unlist­ed livestream link, and a video con­fer­enc­ing appli­ca­tion to facil­i­tate real-time interaction.
• Com­posers select­ed for the read­ing ses­sion will receive a pro­fes­sion­al audio record­ing for per­son­al reference
• Every appli­cant from the adju­di­ca­tion stage will be invit­ed to audit the read­ing session.
• There will be an oppor­tu­ni­ty for par­tic­i­pat­ing com­posers and those audit­ing to dis­cuss their music

*If you are inter­est­ed in sub­mit­ting a com­po­si­tion to our next ACTIVATE pro­gram, here are a few tips from Anna on how to get started:

• begin in one scale and grad­u­al­ly move to a dif­fer­ent scale by the end of the piece
• cre­ate a piece through com­bin­ing two scales ‑one to be played in low reg­is­ter 1st octave, the sec­ond to be added above in the 2nd octave
• com­pose a canon
• com­pose using a sin­gle pitch
• cre­ate a rhythm com­po­si­tion where pitch is inde­ter­mi­nate (left up to the players)
• find any kind of noise-mak­er (or sev­er­al) and make a duet for noise-maker(s) and instru­ment (eg. egg beat­er & clarinet)
• ask an instru­men­tal­ist or singer to show you a few extend­ed tech­niques and include one or two in your piece

Songs that Con­nect Us is a com­mu­ni­ty-engaged project for col­lab­o­ra­tive and mean­ing­ful group singing using sto­ry­telling and song. It fos­ters open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and a respect for diversity.

The project was ini­ti­at­ed by choral direc­tor Dina Cin­drić and the RECAA Choir – a com­mu­ni­ty choir com­posed of elders from the eth­nic com­mu­ni­ties of Mon­tre­al, many of whom belong to the com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tion RECAA: Respect­ing Elders Com­mu­ni­ties Against Abuse.

Par­tic­i­pants are asked to think of a song that brings them a sense of con­nec­tion. At the next meet­ing, they are invit­ed to share their sto­ries and songs, which are record­ed. Over the course of the fol­low­ing ses­sions, par­tic­i­pants work togeth­er to learn the songs.

This project can be used to encour­age dia­logue on issues impor­tant to the com­mu­ni­ty, or it might inspire col­lab­o­ra­tions with oth­er com­mu­ni­ty or cul­tur­al groups. Sto­ries and songs can be pre­sent­ed in per­for­mance or use them as con­tent for dig­i­tal sto­ry­telling projects.

The project:

• Deep­ens relationships
• Facil­i­tates self-expres­sion and leadership
• Opens dia­logue
• Gath­ers stories
• Fos­ters team­work and collaboration
• Fos­ters a respect for diver­si­ty and inclusiveness
• Pro­vides a space in which par­tic­i­pants can safe­ly share their his­to­ries, cul­tur­al expres­sions and indi­vid­ual voices
• Pro­motes learning
• Encour­ages mind­ful listening
• Builds con­fi­dence

Down­load the project work­book in the side­bar for tips on how to:

• Inspire sto­ry­telling
• Cre­ate safe spaces
• Intro­duce and teach songs by rote
• Sing songs in oth­er languages

Words and Rhythm have a real­ly close rela­tion­ship since ancient times when poets sang the epic tales in iambic pen­tame­ters, both to bet­ter remem­ber and more eas­i­ly sing them. Words con­tain rhythm. We pro­duce rhythms every time we talk, although we do not real­ize. This activ­i­ty guides par­tic­i­pants to pay atten­tion to the rhythm under­pin­ning their words and uses their rhythm as build­ing blocks for a group com­po­si­tion. Such rhythms will be explored, var­ied and mod­u­lat­ed in order to build polyrhythms and poly­phon­ic melodies.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Often par­tic­i­pants do not per­ceive them­selves as capa­ble of impro­vi­sa­tion, sim­ply because they are not used to it. This per­cep­tion can become in itself an obstacle.

The exer­cise Words&Rhythm is designed in such a way to skip the prob­lem, ini­ti­at­ing peo­ple into a cre­ative process with­out them even real­iz­ing it. The process aims to guide their way of lis­ten­ing to rec­og­nize the respons­es that their body and mind pro­duces nat­u­ral­ly to music and then express them through the voice.

 In fact when lis­ten­ing, our minds and bod­ies always respond to music, through res­o­nance. We can see images in our imag­i­na­tion. We tap our feet on the floor. Far mem­o­ries are awok­en. I believe that such per­son­al respons­es are a mir­ror to our unique life expe­ri­ences, the root of our own voice. The goal of this exer­cise is to express and ampli­fy such responses.

 Each indi­vid­ual is guid­ed to use his or her own unique tool­box (the musi­cal skills and tech­niques that each indi­vid­ual already pos­sess­es) to give voice to what their bod­ies and minds already sing.

I believe that such activ­i­ty can con­tribute to a more musi­cal soci­ety: one where peo­ple can com­mu­ni­cate more per­son­al­ly and authen­ti­cal­ly because tuned to their bod­ies and their sin­gu­lar experiences.

Before start­ing the impro­vi­sa­tion work, the body first needs to be warmed up through stretch­ing and dancing.

MATERIALS NECESSARY TO CARRY OUT THE ACTIVITY

• A pen and a let­ter-size paper for each participant

• Music play­er with three sug­ges­tive songs of dif­fer­ent character

• Option­al: loop ped­al, micro­phone and speaker

STEPS

Prepa­ra­tion:

• Par­tic­i­pants gath­ers in groups of 4 (three singers and a wit­ness alter­nat­ing roles);

• The process of cre­ation begins with a free-writ­ing exercise:Three songs of dif­fer­ent and con­trast­ing char­ac­ters are played in suc­ces­sion (1–2 min for each). While lis­ten­ing to the music par­tic­i­pants are asked to pro­duce three brief texts in response to each of the songs. Each par­tic­i­pant is encour­aged to use his or her own moth­er tongue. The texts will pro­vide the rhyth­mic mate­ri­als for the group composition;

• NOTE: It has been cho­sen this free writ­ing activ­i­ty instead of, for instance, sim­ply pick­ing up words from a text to intro­duce par­tic­i­pants right away to a process of cre­ation as response. In fact, respond­ing to sound, respond­ing to the voice of the oth­er is one of the guid­ing prin­ci­ples of this activity.

First Phase: Just the Rhythm

• Each par­tic­i­pant will choose 4 words from their text. By repeat­ing one word after the oth­er in a loop, they will make appar­ent the rhyth­mic pat­tern under­pin­ning the words; order of the words, speed of exe­cu­tion, paus­es can be mod­i­fied to explore dif­fer­ent possibilities;

• The first singer of each group repeats his or her words in a rhyth­mic Phrase and loops it. The phrase should be repeat­ed with ease, leav­ing appro­pri­ate paus­es for breath­ing and main­tain­ing the loop with­out variations;

• The sec­ond singer will join in, super­im­pos­ing their words on top of the first singer, find­ing a way of inter­lock­ing them. The sec­ond singer starts his or her phrase simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the first singer (phas­ing phras­es could be explored in vari­a­tion of the activity);

• The third singer will join adding a third lay­er in the same way. The result is a poly-rhyth­mic pattern;

• The fourth par­tic­i­pant works as a wit­ness of the process, who can also record the result on a cell­phone to keep record of it. When the process is com­plet­ed, the par­tic­i­pants switch roles and start from the beginning;

Sec­ond Phase: Melodies

• The first singer will start from the begin­ning, this time adding tones to the words;

• The rhyth­mic phrase becomes a melod­ic phrase, repeat­ed in loop. If the singer is inex­pe­ri­enced, is invit­ed to sing the rhythm in a sin­gle tone. For some mag­i­cal rea­sons, after a cou­ple of rep­e­ti­tions, some mod­u­la­tion in the tone will nat­u­ral­ly appear, as if a melody were sug­gest­ed by the rhythm of the words itself;

NOTE: Even when the singer is a pro­fi­cient impro­vis­er, the first lay­er should be pur­pose­ful­ly easy, so to pro­vide a bal­anced mix of sup­port and inspi­ra­tion for the sec­ond singer;

• The sec­ond singer, draw­ing inspi­ra­tion by lis­ten­ing to the first, will pro­duce a sec­ond voice that grafts onto it. The phrase of the sec­ond singer starts at the same time as the one of the first singer. If the singer finds it chal­leng­ing to artic­u­late his or her phrase, the leader can sug­gest a pitch that the singer can use to sing the phrase. By repro­duc­ing the words in that tone, usu­al­ly a melody will be shaped by the rela­tion­ship with the one of the first singer;

• The third par­tic­i­pant is free to use his or her words more freely in a solo that enfolds on top of the basic loop. The third singer is also the con­duc­tor of the per­for­mance. He or she can raise or low­er the vol­ume of the oth­er singers and close down the improvisation;

FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS

• The form of the exer­cise is close, as the phras­es pro­vide a clear struc­ture to the com­po­si­tion. The per­for­mance could be enriched with a mid­dle sec­tion of free and more dis­or­ga­nized impro­vi­sa­tion on the words to then resume the orig­i­nal pattern;

• It is pos­si­ble also to extrap­o­late just the rhythms of the picked words and trans­form it with oth­er syllables;

• A real­ly enter­tain­ing tool that can be employed in the exer­cise is the loop ped­al. The loop would allow each par­tic­i­pant to record their own voice instead of repeat­ing it continuously.

CONTACTS

For more infor­ma­tion, con­tact Geremia at:

geremia.lorenzo@gmail.com

514 627 8875

Piece of Mind uses the per­form­ing arts to syn­the­size and trans­late knowl­edge about Parkinson’s dis­ease (PD) and demen­tia. Our par­tic­i­pa­to­ry research-cre­ation project brings togeth­er artists (cir­cus per­form­ers, dancers, musi­cians, visu­al artists), researchers, indi­vid­u­als liv­ing with PD or demen­tia, and care­givers to co-cre­ate artis­tic works based on sci­en­tif­ic research and lived expe­ri­ence. The over­all goals are:

1) to facil­i­tate knowl­edge cre­ation and exchange between the seem­ing­ly dis­parate com­mu­ni­ties par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cre­ative process ; and

2) to cre­ate per­for­mances that can engage a wide audi­ence on both an emo­tion­al and intel­lec­tu­al lev­el, and spark mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions around PD and dementia.

We use an emer­gent and iter­a­tive process to iden­ti­fy the key themes and mes­sages to com­mu­ni­cate in our per­for­mances, and to ensure that mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives are incor­po­rat­ed along the way. Our research process has includ­ed numer­ous vir­tu­al work­shops, facil­i­tat­ed dis­cus­sions, and movement/music ses­sions to build rela­tion­ships and explore both sci­en­tif­ic and lived expe­ri­ence knowl­edge through cre­ativ­i­ty and embod­i­ment. Rather than present a sum­ma­ry of the var­i­ous activ­i­ties we’ve under­tak­en, we’d like to share two exam­ples* that could eas­i­ly be applied in dif­fer­ent contexts.

*You can find our oth­er exam­ple here: https://www.newmusicnetwork.ca/projects/piece-of-mind-connecting-scientific-research-and-lived-experience-through-music/

ACTIVITY: cre­at­ing a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry sound­track to an art-sci­ence video.

GOAL: the pur­pose of this activ­i­ty is to facil­i­tate con­ver­sa­tion and under­stand­ing of PD research by hav­ing par­tic­i­pants inter­act direct­ly with an “art-sci­ence” video and one anoth­er. Specif­i­cal­ly, par­tic­i­pants cre­at­ed a sound­track togeth­er through col­lec­tive vocal impro­vi­sa­tion for a short video illus­trat­ing the impor­tance of com­mu­ni­ty sup­port and move­ment for peo­ple with Parkinson’s disease.

WHERE: via Zoom (or a sim­i­lar vir­tu­al plat­form) or in person

PARTICIPANTS: in our project, the par­tic­i­pants were researchers, per­form­ing artists and peo­ple liv­ing with Parkinson’s dis­ease. The process can eas­i­ly be adapt­ed to oth­er tar­get audiences.

GROUP SIZE: the more the mer­ri­er — but also the more chaot­ic your result­ing sound­track! We sug­gest a max­i­mum of 10 participants.

INSTRUCTIONS:

Step 1 – cre­ate a short video on your top­ic of inter­est, or use our linked video with the sound on mute.

In our case, two researchers study­ing Parkinson’s dis­ease (Rebec­ca Barn­sta­ple, Joe DeS­ouza) and a cir­cus per­former (Jérémie Robert) col­lab­o­rat­ed to cre­ate this silent video sketch based on the researcher’s find­ings about the ther­a­peu­tic poten­tial of com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, move­ment and music. While the ‘fin­ger acro­bat’ was very quick and easy to film (and con­veys a sur­pris­ing amount of emo­tion!), you could also film a dance, move­ment impro­vi­sa­tion, dra­mat­ic sce­nario, or what­ev­er else you wish!

Step 2 – Co-cre­ate a sound­track (30 min – 1 hr)

• Present the video to the par­tic­i­pants. You can choose whether to share the sci­en­tif­ic con­text behind the video right away, or let this come out in dis­cus­sion afterwards.

• Invite par­tic­i­pants to unmute them­selves (if done vir­tu­al­ly) and to make the sounds they feel should accom­pa­ny the fin­ger tightrope walk­er. This can be done using voice, snap­ping, clap­ping, using found objects, etc.

• To avoid a cacoph­o­ny (unless that’s what you’re going for!), encour­age par­tic­i­pants to lis­ten and respond to one anoth­er, or lim­it the num­ber of peo­ple mak­ing sounds at any one time.

• We sug­gest going through the video sev­er­al times, try­ing out dif­fer­ent ideas each time. For instance, in our video, we tried mak­ing sound effects that were the oppo­site of our first reac­tion to the fin­ger acro­bat, which was quite an inter­est­ing experience!

• If you plan to record and edit the results into a sound­track, con­sid­er hav­ing only one or two peo­ple par­tic­i­pate at once. This will make it eas­i­er to put every­thing togeth­er afterwards.

Step 3 – edit­ing (option­al)

If you would like to com­pile a sound­track for your video from the audio record­ings of your par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ses­sion, upload every­thing into your edit­ing soft­ware of choice. You can play around with how to com­bine the dif­fer­ent sound­tracks for the final piece — you could even do this part as a group.

DESCRIPTION OF THE ZOOM CLIP:
In this clip from our Zoom ses­sion, musi­cian Louise Camp­bell guides us through an exer­cise in which we pro­vide sound effects for the “fin­ger acro­bat”. We show two ver­sions, one in which we respond­ed with the sounds we attribute to the emo­tions expressed in the video, and the sec­ond one in which we played with the per­cep­tion of the video by chang­ing the sounds we pro­vid­ed for the fin­ger acrobat.

DESCRIPTION OF THE ART-SCI VIDEO:
Hand: Jere­mie Robert
Researchers: Rebec­ca Barn­sta­ple & Joe DeSouza
Sound: Mem­bers of the Piece of Mind Collective
Video Edit: Rebec­ca Barnstaple
Sound Edit: Louise Campbell

Accom­pa­ny­ing text by Rebecca:
Music and dance are increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar in pro­grams for peo­ple liv­ing with Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s dis­ease, pro­vid­ing sup­port for move­ment, social con­nec­tions, and a place to express and con­nect with oth­ers. Links between sound and music are ancient, and dance can be thought of as “sound-made-vis­i­ble”. Rhythm and melody inter­act with the audi­to­ry cor­tex and motor plan­ning areas of the brain, and music can inform and trig­ger how and when we move — lead­ing to flu­id­i­ty, syn­chrony, and greater range of motion. This piece express­es how the envi­ron­ment of a dance class, replete with music, imagery, and social con­nec­tions, can lead to the expe­ri­ence of mov­ing as a “dancer”, capa­ble of strong and grace­ful move­ments that tran­scend the ordinary.

* Please con­tact Naila at pieceofmind.montreal@gmail.com if you’d like to learn more about this project! *

Piece of Mind uses the per­form­ing arts to syn­the­size and trans­late knowl­edge about Parkinson’s dis­ease (PD) and demen­tia. Our par­tic­i­pa­to­ry research-cre­ation project brings togeth­er artists (cir­cus per­form­ers, dancers, musi­cians, visu­al artists), researchers, indi­vid­u­als liv­ing with PD or demen­tia, and care­givers to co-cre­ate artis­tic works based on sci­en­tif­ic research and lived expe­ri­ence. The over­all goals are to:

1) facil­i­tate knowl­edge cre­ation and exchange between the seem­ing­ly dis­parate com­mu­ni­ties par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cre­ative process and

2) cre­ate per­for­mances that can engage a wide audi­ence on both an emo­tion­al and intel­lec­tu­al lev­el, and spark mean­ing­ful con­ver­sa­tions around PD and dementia.

 We use an emer­gent and iter­a­tive process to iden­ti­fy the key themes and mes­sages to com­mu­ni­cate in our per­for­mances, and to ensure that mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives are incor­po­rat­ed along the way. Our research process has includ­ed numer­ous vir­tu­al work­shops, facil­i­tat­ed dis­cus­sions, and movement/music ses­sions to build rela­tion­ships and explore both sci­en­tif­ic and lived expe­ri­ence knowl­edge through cre­ativ­i­ty and embod­i­ment. Rather than present a sum­ma­ry of the var­i­ous activ­i­ties we’ve under­tak­en, we’d like to share two exam­ples* that could eas­i­ly be applied in dif­fer­ent contexts.

*You can find our oth­er exam­ple here:
https://www.newmusicnetwork.ca/projects/piece-of-mind-give-us-a-hand-participatory-art-sci-video/

ACTIVITY: impro­vi­sa­tion exer­cise from lived expe­ri­ence, to artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion, to sci­en­tif­ic interpretation

GOAL: the pur­pose of this activ­i­ty is to explore top­ics around Parkinson’s dis­ease (PD) through the lens of lived expe­ri­ence, artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and sci­en­tif­ic inter­pre­ta­tion, and to facil­i­tate mutu­al under­stand­ing between participants.

WHERE: via a vir­tu­al plat­form such as Zoom, or in person.

DURATION: 1–2 ses­sions ; each 1–2 hours.

PARTICIPANTS: in our project, the par­tic­i­pants were researchers, artists (includ­ing musi­cians, cir­cus per­form­ers and dancers) and peo­ple liv­ing with Parkinson’s dis­ease. The process can eas­i­ly be adapt­ed to oth­er tar­get audiences.

GROUP SIZE: 3 per group: one per­son liv­ing with PD, one artist, one researcher. If you are work­ing with mul­ti­ple artists (ex. a musi­cian and move­ment artist), you could increase the group size to 4.

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Intro­duce the top­ic or ques­tion of inter­est that you would like to explore in the ses­sion. In our case, top­ics were used that emerged in pre­vi­ous ses­sions, includ­ing motor lim­i­ta­tions, the invis­i­ble aspects of PD, and how PD changes one’s per­cep­tion of time.

2.  Process: Each per­son in the group has 1–2 min­utes to share or present some­thing based on the pro­posed top­ic. The per­son with PD begins by shar­ing their lived expe­ri­ence of the top­ic. The artist then responds to the expe­ri­ence, either direct­ly (e.g. with voice, an instru­ment, move­ment) or by explain­ing how it might be rep­re­sent­ed in an artis­tic medi­um. The researcher clos­es the loop by pro­vid­ing sci­en­tif­ic con­text to the expe­ri­ence, or new ques­tions that come to mind from the exchange. Repeat the cycle as many times as you wish.

3. Par­tic­i­pants are request­ed to keep their respons­es to 1–2 min­utes so as to allow sev­er­al cycles between lived expe­ri­ence, artis­tic rep­re­sen­ta­tion and sci­en­tif­ic inter­pre­ta­tion. As the cycles progress, the process can become less defined as par­tic­i­pants build on one another’s ideas. We use body lan­guage and impro­vi­sa­tion­al games to help bridge the con­nec­tion between the 3 per­spec­tives — you can check out some exam­ples in the attached videos.

4. If work­ing vir­tu­al­ly, group par­tic­i­pants into break­out rooms. You can choose how long to make the break­out ses­sions; we rec­om­mend at least 15 min­utes per top­ic. If you would like to revis­it the exchanges after­wards, don’t for­get to record!

5. After the activ­i­ty, have a group dis­cus­sion (with all par­tic­i­pants) to share ideas and get par­tic­i­pant feed­back. If you have time, switch groups and repeat the activ­i­ty based on new ques­tions that emerge!

DESCRIPTION OF INCLUDED VIDEOS:
1. Anne, Louise, Anusha (Eng­lish)
In this video, the par­tic­i­pants dis­cuss how Parkinson’s dis­ease shapes one’s per­cep­tion of time, and how the rhythm of life is con­trolled by med­ica­tion. Anne, a woman liv­ing with Parkinson’s dis­ease, begins by explain­ing her expe­ri­ence of how time fluc­tu­ates dur­ing the day. Musi­cian Louise Camp­bell invites her to par­tic­i­pate in a musi­cal sim­u­la­tion of the expe­ri­ence, by “con­duct­ing” her clar­inet play­ing through hand ges­tures. Anne rais­es her hands to indi­cate when to play faster, low­ers them to indi­cate slow­er, and Louise adds tex­ture to the music based on Anne’s oth­er move­ments. After the exchange, neu­ro­sci­en­tist Anusha reflects upon the exter­nal cues that reg­u­late our sense of time, and how med­ica­tion might affect peo­ple differently.

Trans­lat­ed quote from Anne (in the group dis­cus­sion after­wards): “[…] it was incred­i­ble – it was as though my brain was singing. It was real­ly, real­ly beautiful.”

2. Serge, Car­o­line, Naila (French)
In this video, Serge, a man liv­ing with Parkinson’s dis­ease, begins by explain­ing the motor symp­toms he expe­ri­ences, and how these feel in his body. Car­o­line, a musi­cian, sug­gests an idea as to how the symp­toms Serge described could be rep­re­sent­ed on vio­lin, and impro­vis­es a short piece. Naila, who stud­ied the brain cir­cuit­ry affect­ed by Parkinson’s dis­ease, ends by draw­ing a par­al­lel between these motor symp­toms and how PD changes the com­mu­ni­ca­tion between neurons.

Trans­lat­ed quote from Serge (in group dis­cus­sion): “[…] she start­ed play­ing the vio­lin, and at first I had a lot of tremors, but her music calmed me […] I man­aged to con­trol my body.”

3. Serge, Car­o­line, Rebec­ca, Sher­i­lyn (French)
This video depicts a sec­ond round of the impro­vi­sa­tion­al activ­i­ty, in which Serge (who has Parkinson’s dis­ease) shares how the Piece of Mind project has affect­ed him emo­tion­al­ly. The musi­cian Car­o­line inter­prets his tes­ti­mo­ni­al through rhythm and voice, while Rebec­ca, dancer and researcher, accom­pa­nies her with a move­ment impro­vi­sa­tion. Sher­i­lyn, a PhD stu­dent study­ing Parkinson’s dis­ease, explains the emo­tion­al aspects of the dis­ease and the cor­re­spond­ing brain regions that are affected.

Trans­lat­ed quote from Serge (fol­low­ing an expla­na­tion from Sher­i­lyn): “You just described me as though you’ve known me for a long time.”

4. Anne, Louise, Claire, Anusha (Eng­lish)
This video depicts a sec­ond round of impro­vi­sa­tion between Anne, Louise, and Anusha, a few weeks fol­low­ing the first one (exam­ple 1). This time they are also joined by Claire, a researcher and tap dancer. In this clip, Anne, who has Parkinson’s dis­ease, con­ducts Louise’s clar­inet play­ing, using hand ges­tures to demon­strate how she is feel­ing that day. After the impro­vi­sa­tion, Anne pro­vides con­text as to how this com­pared to the pre­vi­ous session.

*Please con­tact Naila at pieceofmind.montreal@gmail.com if you’d like to know more about the project.*

Young Com­pos­er Pro­gram – Con­tem­po­rary Show­case Edmonton

The Young Com­pos­er Pro­gram orga­nized by the Con­tem­po­rary Show­case Edmon­ton Soci­ety intro­duces stu­dents ages 12 and up to com­po­si­tion and assists stu­dents to devel­op their com­po­si­tion­al techniques.

This annu­al pro­gram is held in 4 sessions:

Ses­sion #1 (Group ses­sion of 2 hours)

The composer/clinician speaks about com­po­si­tion in the first hour.  These lec­tures have includ­ed anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion about how the clin­i­cian became inter­est­ed in com­po­si­tion them­selves, how they approach start­ing a piece, where they get their ideas, etc.  These ses­sions have also includ­ed dis­cus­sions of ele­ments of new music includ­ing analy­sis of scores, pre­sen­ta­tion of non-dia­ton­ic scales, and even sound walks.

The 2^nd hour, held in a piano lab, gives the stu­dents a chance to start sketch­ing ideas or doing assign­ments giv­en by their clin­i­cian with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss these ideas with the clin­i­cian as they begin to take shape.  Clin­i­cians have giv­en a vari­ety of start­ing assign­ments.  These include:

• Intro­duc­ing a vari­ety of non-dia­ton­ic scales (includ­ing whole tone and octatonic)
• Exper­i­ment­ing with 12-tone rows
• Writ­ing a vari­a­tion on an orig­i­nal theme
• Cre­at­ing one unit for an aleatoric box work to be per­formed collectively.
• Cre­at­ing two dif­fer­ent tri­ads (avoid­ing the stan­dard tri­adic for­mu­la of stacked thirds) and devel­op­ing a vari­ety of ways to use the notes in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters and groupings.
• Cre­at­ing an over­all sketch for a piece by first map­ping out tonal char­ac­ter, dynam­ics, reg­is­ters, etc. and the approx­i­mate num­ber of bars for each section.

Ses­sion #2, 3 & 4 (Indi­vid­ual lessons for 30 min­utes each)

After a 2 week peri­od, the next 3 ses­sions are held week­ly.  Each stu­dent receives a half hour les­son with the clin­i­cian to dis­cuss how to devel­op their ideas into a full piece.  Stu­dents are encour­aged to attend oth­er stu­dents’ lessons for max­i­mum benefit.

After the 4^th ses­sion, the pieces are most­ly fin­ished. Stu­dents then have 1 to 2 weeks to pol­ish their score and sub­mit it to the clin­i­cian for final comments.

Final Con­cert

A final con­cert is held about 3 weeks after the last class for the stu­dents to per­form their own compositions.

Stu­dents, espe­cial­ly at begin­ning stages, are encour­aged to do hand­writ­ten scores to gain prac­tice using their rudi­ments training.

Cre­at­ed Pieces from pre­vi­ous Young Com­pos­er Programs

Sam­ples below include Cat and Mouse (inspired by Brid­get the cat) and Evening Storm both by Jonathan Urschel – age 12; Waltz of the Wild by Ash­ley Kang – age 14; and MASS EXTINCTION! by Soin­tu Aal­to, age 16.

Jonathan’s clin­i­cian had the stu­dents exper­i­ment with 12 tone writ­ing as an exer­cise.  Jonathan’s Evening Storm was his com­plet­ed exer­cise and he chose to use 12 tone ele­ments in his main project, Cat and Mouse, also.  Jonathan did not have any pre­vi­ous writ­ing experience.

Ash­ley also had very lit­tle writ­ing expe­ri­ence and Waltz of the Wild was writ­ten in her first year of the program.

Soin­tu has been involved in the pro­gram for at least 3 years and has cho­sen to study com­po­si­tion seri­ous­ly through­out the year. The com­po­si­tion below, writ­ten dur­ing the 2020 pro­gram is the win­ner of the 2020 Louise MacPher­son Memo­r­i­al Ward. It embod­ies her rage at the num­ber of species present­ly becom­ing extinct and the silent tam-tam rep­re­sents those who stand by doing noth­ing to change the problem.

Have you ever want­ed to cre­ate your own music/multimedia art­work, but couldn’t fig­ure out where to begin? While cre­ation can seem intim­i­dat­ing, it can actu­al­ly be sur­pris­ing­ly acces­si­ble, and more impor­tant­ly, FUN!

The Paramorph Col­lec­tive (Kim Far­ris-Man­ning and An-Lau­rence Hig­gins) has put togeth­er a series of five exer­cis­es to guide you through vocal and sound impro­vi­sa­tion, home­made video cre­ation and cre­ative writ­ing. You can use one or many of these exer­cis­es in order to help guide the cre­ation of your own orig­i­nal art­work. The series also con­tains one brief overview on sound and video edit­ing.

This series of exer­cis­es was orig­i­nal­ly cre­at­ed by com­posers and mul­ti­me­dia artists Kim and An-Lau­rence for a com­mis­sioned project with the vir­tu­al com­mu­ni­ty choir SING THE NORTH, lead­ing to the cre­ation of “sud­den­ly I was alone/d’un trat­to ero sola” (2021) with 49 singers from high-school age to retirees based in Cana­da, the USA, the UK, Aus­tralia and Italy. Watch the final video below.

This series of exer­cis­es is meant to be used by self-direct­ed indi­vid­u­als or groups. Exer­cise mate­r­i­al can be used by facil­i­ta­tors upon request. If you wish to col­lab­o­rate with Kim and An-Lau­rence, or hope to orga­nize a sim­i­lar project as a facil­i­ta­tor, please get in touch at kfm.alh@gmail.com.

Remem­ber that the true val­ue of impro­vi­sa­tion lies in the process, not in the end result.

✧･ﾟEXERCISES ･ﾟ✧

Links to all audio exam­ples are list­ed at the bot­tom of this page. You will find pdfs of each exer­cise in the score sec­tion below.

Exer­cise 1: Drone, Mag­net Tone | Vocal impro­vi­sa­tion

Ex.1: Cre­ate a drone online!

Exer­cise 2: Sound Tex­tures | Instru­ment- or object-based improvisation

Exer­cise 3: Har­mo­ny | Vocal impro­vi­sa­tion

Exer­cise 4: Video | Record­ing a home-made video

Ex.4a: Cam­era frames and angles!

Ex.4b: Cam­era movements!

Exer­cise 5: Spo­ken Word | Cre­ative writ­ing and spo­ken words

Ex.5: Spo­ken word example!

Sound and Video Edit­ing: Overview

These Lis­ten­ing & Sound­ing Games are fun and easy games for two or more peo­ple and will active­ly engage par­tic­i­pants in a process of deep­er lis­ten­ing and play­ful sound­ing with the voice.

They are inspired by and adapt­ed from the­atre games, vocal improv exer­cis­es and my work in tra­di­tion­al Balkan singing. Like many folk singing tra­di­tions from around the world, tra­di­tion­al Balkan folk singing is an oral tra­di­tion; the songs, their sto­ries and the ways in which they are sung were passed down from one gen­er­a­tion to the next, learned much in the same way that one first learns to speak: by lis­ten­ing, imi­tat­ing and repeat­ing.

I dis­cov­ered that these three ele­ments were essen­tial to the devel­op­ment of musi­cal­i­ty and pres­ence in my singers and so it is I began imple­ment­ing these games, draw­ing from three forms of singing found in many oral singing tra­di­tions: uni­son singing, the drone, and call-and-response.

These games be used in any set­ting – from the class­room, to the com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, to the choir rehearsal. I have most­ly used them as warm-ups, but they can eas­i­ly be used as stand-alone exer­cis­es, incor­po­rat­ed into pri­ma­ry or sec­ondary school les­son plans, or even used as spring­boards to new pos­si­bil­i­ties for inter­pre­ta­tion, impro­vi­sa­tion and performance.

The games are an excel­lent tool to get non-singers to sound, but they are also very effec­tive for expe­ri­enced singers who might oth­er­wise be more accus­tomed to singing from notat­ed music or lyric sheets, to go beyond the page and into their sens­ing bod­ies result­ing in a more deeply felt and embod­ied sound­ing that can be car­ried over into their oth­er music-makings.

Out­comes:

• deep­er listening
• whole-body par­tic­i­pa­tion
• height­ened senses
• increased aware­ness
• ease, con­fi­dence and joy in sound­ing with the voice
• increased musi­cal­i­ty and presence
• deep­ened rela­tion­ships amongst group members
• a greater sense of con­nec­tion and ensemble

You’ll find down­load­able colour­ing-page instruc­tions to each game below.
Print them out, colour them, and share them with your groups!

UNISON
This game real­ly gets peo­ple lis­ten­ing – beyond the ears. Encour­age par­tic­i­pants to use their eyes to see, their ears to hear, and their bod­ies to feel.

CALL AND RESPONSE
This game encour­ages peo­ple to lis­ten, imi­tate, explore the voice and gain con­fi­dence in their singing. By incor­po­rat­ing ges­ture, this game is very play­ful and fun for young and old alike. Vari­a­tion: Use it as an ice-break­er! Have indi­vid­u­als sing their name with an accom­pa­ny­ing ges­ture, which the group sing and ges­ture back! Up for a chal­lenge: Have one indi­vid­ual sing the call, and anoth­er sing a dif­fer­ent response. This game can eas­i­ly turn into an impro­vised song!

SOUND WHEEL
No time to think! This game will get peo­ple out their heads and into their bodies.

HUM
There are so many pos­si­bil­i­ties with this game! Some ideas: incor­po­rate it into a per­for­mance; give direc­tions for dif­fer­ent tem­pi or dynam­ics in the walking/sounding; have par­tic­i­pants walk silent­ly and hum when still; try it with­out walk­ing, sit­ting with eyes closed…

DRONE DUET
This game is great to begin work on tim­bre, into­na­tion, and lis­ten­ing and sound­ing with the whole body,

MIRROR
This the­atre game lends itself well to sound­ing with the voice. Devel­ops lis­ten­ing, pres­ence, whole-body aware­ness and a sense of con­nec­tion. Vari­a­tion: Instead of fac­ing one anoth­er, try it with two singers seat­ed with backs togeth­er touch­ing. Begin by breath­ing togeth­er. Turn the breath into voiced sighs then into sounding.

A com­mu­ni­ty-based col­lab­o­ra­tion fea­tur­ing orig­i­nal local music paired with the sto­ries and sounds of seniors resid­ing in an assist­ed liv­ing centre

Over the course of mul­ti­ple work­shops, get to know par­tic­i­pants so a bond can be formed and par­tic­i­pants will feel open to shar­ing. Dur­ing the workshops:

1. Using a hand held dig­i­tal recorder, record and cat­a­logue sound as much as pos­si­ble, which will allow for many ran­dom moments that may sur­pris­ing­ly lead to song titles, or themes. Cap­ture sounds unique to the indi­vid­u­als engaged. These sounds can be looped or pitched and used to make beats or rhythms spe­cif­ic to the locale, and be used to teach that ordi­nary sounds can be musical.

2. Let par­tic­i­pants try instru­ments and/or music apps on devices. See Sheila and Steve sit down to cre­ate ‘Hope’ as an exam­ple of intro­duc­ing some­one to an instru­ment for the first time. For try­ing music apps, see Ger­maine steps up to the iPad for the first time. Tell par­tic­i­pants there is “no wrong way” to touch the screen and make a sound, and that often­times being naive is an advan­tage because they will do some­thing new. Put them at ease by casu­al­ly try­ing it in front of them and show­ing them that it’s easy to do. Record these to use as seg­ways, intros, or full tracks.

3. Dur­ing the record­ing of voic­es for work­shops, encour­age con­ver­sa­tions on themes. This will give a sense of play to the project and process and bring mean­ing to par­tic­i­pants. Some exam­ples include: “Where were you born?” “Have you ever had a nick­name?” What was your favourite toy as a child?” “What’s your biggest fear?”

4. Be open and present to rec­og­nize a mag­ic moment – be it group laugh­ter or a seri­ous sto­ry, and use that to anchor the song/piece.

5. Gath­er musi­cians to play a score that has been cre­at­ed (a num­ber of short instru­men­tals or songs) or impro­vise music and edit pieces or moments into short clips of music (2–5 mins) that will fit well with the length of a short sto­ry. Use orig­i­nal record­ings from par­tic­i­pant engage­ment with apps in work­shops to include as back­drop pieces of music. Exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of instru­ments: drums and voice, gui­tar and bass, full band, etc. Use the “keep­ing turn­ing left” mod­el of doing some­thing oppo­site of what was just impro­vised: change keys, change tem­po, change instruments.

6. Lis­ten to the record­ings of the sto­ries and choose which musi­cal piece would fit well, based on theme, lan­guage, mood, and length, or ran­dom­ly com­bine work­shop record­ings with music.

7. Edit the sto­ries if nec­es­sary, cre­at­ing space between words, and treat the mate­r­i­al as son­ic or musi­cal moments, or leave the cho­sen sto­ry in it’s orig­i­nal state and let the music and sto­ry be inde­pen­dent of each oth­er, all the while being combined.

8. A strong idea to cre­ate mean­ing and flow is to edit a word or sec­tion and repeat it as you would a cho­rus of a song. Many times you will find sen­tences that have their own rhythm work well when com­bined with music of a dif­fer­ent tem­po and/or rhythm.

Sound Sto­ries from the Land

okâwîmâw askiy is Moth­er Earth (nêhiyawêwin/Plains Cree lan­guage), always pro­vid­ing for us in ways beyond our wildest imag­i­na­tions. This work­shop pro­vides an open­ing for us to strength­en our con­nec­tion to earth while acti­vat­ing our voic­es and bod­ies through sound and movement.

As we move through prompts based on teach­ings from the med­i­cine wheel, we deep­en our pres­ence with our four bod­ies (men­tal, phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, spir­i­tu­al) and the four ele­ments (earth, fire, wind, water) and we acti­vate our sens­es. We work in a cir­cle, whether actu­al or per­ceived, in an on-going acknowl­edge­ment of our rela­tion­ship to the many earth and sky rel­a­tives that are beyond our two-legged (human) realm.

Look­ing at concepts:

med­i­cine wheel: in an nêhiyaw/Plains Cree per­spec­tive we all have four bod­ies; phys­i­cal, men­tal, emo­tion­al, spir­i­tu­al. When we con­sid­er all four bod­ies in the way we vocal­ize and respond to the world with­in and around us, we can find bal­ance through sound. We also acknowl­edge the four ele­ments and the four direc­tions as inte­gral aspects of this balancing.

miskâ­sowin: find­ing one’s sense of belong­ing, locat­ing one­self with­in the cir­cle (of life). We con­tin­u­al­ly work in rela­tion­ship to one anoth­er where all voic­es matter.

wâhkôh­towin: kin­ships beyond our imme­di­ate fam­i­ly; an acknowl­edg­ment of all of earth’s cre­ation as mem­bers of our extend­ed fam­i­ly, as relatives.

nikamotan: let us sing togeth­er as cre­ative med­i­cine to help us grow and strength­en our capac­i­ties for lis­ten­ing, mir­ror­ing and liv­ing a good life together.

nanâsko­mowin: grat­i­tude. We give thanks through music and singing. In a sim­ple way, we say “hay hay” as a way of acknowl­edg­ing all the rela­tion­ships that uplift, inspire and help us grow.

What place or land­scape is home for you? How do you acknowl­edge your body as home?

1. Com­ing home through breath:

Fol­low­ing a sim­ple count in a cir­cu­lar pat­tern, we explore the cycles of birth, growth, death and release. We inhale and take in the air around us, this air ignites the fire inside, warm­ing us and fill­ing our bod­ies with ener­gy. We hold this air inside in awe, feel­ing into where space is being made with new breath. We release this air and we calm the waters in our bel­lies. We feel the empti­ness of release. We repeat. Each time we cycle through breath, we engage with dif­fer­ent images, think­ing about the ele­ments, the cycles of life, of sun­rise and sun­set. We use our body as a map to con­nect with land­scapes and remem­ber that our body is our ter­ri­to­ry. Once you are fin­ished cycling through this breath­ing exer­cise a few times, take a minute to sit qui­et­ly and notice if there are sub­tle changes in your inner world. Then ask, what has shift­ed in your per­cep­tion of your rela­tion­ship to the world around you?

2. CALL + RESPONSE. Lis­ten, Rec­i­p­ro­cate, Respond:

What sounds, sights, smells, feel­ings, tastes inspire you to sing and to call into exis­tence the sounds alive inside and around you? We explore how our voic­es blend, echo and mir­ror the world around us and invite new sounds and lan­guages for con­nec­tion. You can work with images, sounds from nature and oth­er found objects or mem­o­ries to cre­ate the acti­va­tion for call and response.

3. GRATITUDE song:

Through song we give thanks to all the beings, peo­ple, places and gifts that sup­port our exis­tence. Look­ing around and with­in you, we sing out, name and cel­e­brate these gifts together.

What does it mean to “Know Music”?

The impor­tant thing, as one can­not repeat too often, if that the child should learn to feel music, to absorb it, to give his whole body and soul to it; to lis­ten to it not mere­ly with his ear but with his whole being. ~ Emile Jaques Dalcroze

Goals:

• Embod­ied under­stand­ing and engage­ment 
• To encour­age “know­ing-in-action”.
• To accept and nur­ture move­ment impuls­es and emo­tion­al reac­tions to music.
• To engage with the sens­ing, feel­ing, expe­ri­enc­ing body through musi­cal sounds and activities.
• To cul­ti­vate per­for­mance, lis­ten­ing, reflec­tion and creation.
• To exam­ine the body as a con­scious and explic­it mode of transformation.
• To invite the wealth of infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge that the sen­su­al body holds and invite it into the edu­ca­tion­al musi­cal expe­ri­ence. 
• To active­ly engage in imag­i­na­tive, music cre­ation at all ages and levels.
• To devel­op musi­cal poten­tial through infor­mal guid­ance that con­nects the lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence with sound exploration.
• To cre­ate a lis­ten­ing and respon­sive musi­cal community.

By uti­liz­ing the mood meter, par­tic­i­pants explore their inner emo­tion­al world and how that emo­tion­al world can be explained in terms of pleas­ant and unpleas­ant feel­ings and high­er or low­er ener­gy.

These con­cepts are explored using the lan­guage of emo­tion.  By tun­ing into this emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence, doc­u­ment­ing it, and then relat­ing it to music, par­tic­i­pants can explore their own sound art poten­tial. 

Any instru­ments can be used, includ­ing found objects, the voice and/or body per­cus­sion. The music ensem­ble of any size and/or instru­men­ta­tion is the framework.

The music cre­at­ed will reflect the four colours found on the mood meter (see attached photo).

Par­tic­i­pants will cre­ate an impro­vised work – a col­lec­tion of 4 pieces. 

The facil­i­ta­tors par­tic­i­pate as much or as lit­tle as nec­es­sary, based on the stu­dents brain­storm­ing and impro­vi­sa­tions. 

The final per­for­mance con­sists of the stu­dents using the lan­guage of emo­tion and col­or to cre­ate an impro­vised musi­cal work.

Step by Step Instructions:

• Look at the Mood Meter and explain how it works.
• Divide the group up into 4 ensembles.
• Using large pieces of paper and coloured mark­ers, have each group brain­storm “feel­ing words” around the 4 colours on the mood meter:
  1. Blue: low ener­gy, unpleasant
  2. Green: low ener­gy, pleasant
  3. Yel­low: high ener­gy, pleasant
  4. Red: high ener­gy, unpleasant
• Once the group has brain­stormed lan­guage of emo­tions, they can explore “impro­vis­ing emo­tions” on their instru­ments. 
• The group cre­ates a suite of 4 impro­vised pieces based on the four colours dis­played on the mood meter.

Exten­sions:

• Brain­storm con­trast­ing musi­cal terms that coin­cide with emo­tions and cor­re­spond­ing musi­cal respons­es (ex. stac­ca­to, lega­to, forte, piano, dis­so­nance, con­so­nance, tim­bre, etc.)
• Use pho­tog­ra­phy, video or visu­al art found through online research to mir­ror the emo­tion as a way to fur­ther enhance the sen­su­al explo­ration. 
• The visu­al art work or poet­ic respons­es could be cre­at­ed by the students.
• Lis­ten to instru­men­tal music from a vari­ety of styles and have the stu­dents iden­ti­fy the “colours” or “moods.” The stu­dents can think in terms of high or low vibra­tion, pleas­ant or unpleas­ant feel­ings, and the lan­guage of emo­tion. 
• Use music nota­tion, lead sheet con­struc­tion and/or graph­ic scores to doc­u­ment the composition.

My Per­son­al Reflection: 

I first taught this unit when I was the artist-in-res­i­dence at my son’s Reg­gio Emil­ia based ele­men­tary school in Coquit­lam, B.C.

As a school, they were respond­ing to the Mood Meter as a dai­ly check in. Over the weeks, I watched my son learn about how to describe his mood. His vocab­u­lary expand­ed and he became very com­fort­able artic­u­lat­ing his feel­ings at a very young age. I was excit­ed to see this work hap­pen­ing with young chil­dren and I quick­ly real­ized that this vocab­u­lary was a won­der­ful gate­way into aes­thet­ics in music. I  looked to devel­op a musi­cal activ­i­ty that would draw from the socio-emo­tion­al learn­ing that was already hap­pen­ing in the class­room . 

Music is the lan­guage of emo­tion and when young chil­dren devel­op the lan­guage to describe their inner worlds, they also devel­op the lan­guage to describe music and then, in turn, cre­ate musi­cal work in response to those con­cepts. 

Over the years I have used this activ­i­ty with groups of all ages and abil­i­ties.  I am always amazed at the unique ways the par­tic­i­pants were able to engage with the mood meter, relate their find­ings to describ­ing record­ed music and then cre­ate beau­ti­ful, impro­vised music com­po­si­tions. 

Lis­ten­ing Games for Reduc­ing Noise Lev­els in a School Cafeteria

Pic­ture a large room: con­crete floor, low tile ceil­ing, bare plas­ter walls, tables lined with stools, a wall of indus­tri­al fridges and an attached com­mer­cial kitchen. Imag­ine the accom­pa­ny­ing sounds: hums, buzzes and the metal­lic clanks of a busy kitchen. Now imag­ine the same room filled with 100 or so kids eat­ing lunch, antic­i­pat­ing going out­side to play. The enthu­si­asm and effi­cien­cy of this room are laud­able; the sound lev­els impres­sive. I had the plea­sure of being an Artist in Res­i­dence for Sound Bites, a School Hosts an Artist project aimed at reduc­ing the noise lev­el in this room, Coro­na­tion Ele­men­tary School’s cafeteria.

A school cafe­te­ria is sim­i­lar to a restau­rant or a bar – there are a lot of peo­ple in an enclosed space, usu­al­ly with a fair amount of back­ground music and/or noise. Peo­ple talk loud­ly so they can be heard by their friends, which means oth­er peo­ple talk loud­er in turn. In brain­storm­ing with sci­ence teacher and visu­al artist Shelly Sharp, we came up with the fol­low­ing focus questions:

“How does sound affect our well-being? What can we do as artists, stu­dents and adults to under­stand and pos­i­tive­ly impact sound qual­i­ty and vol­ume in the Coro­na­tion Ele­men­tary lunchroom?”

In order to have an effect on noise lev­els in any space, you start by lis­ten­ing. So if the project Sound Bites aims to reduce the noise lev­els in the Coro­na­tion Ele­men­tary School cafe­te­ria, we need­ed to make lis­ten­ing fun and engag­ing for the stu­dents. The fol­low­ing games aimed to do just that.

Ready… set… listen!

Sound Trea­sure Hunt

1. Before play­ing the sound trea­sure hunt, ask stu­dents to name any sound they hear (e.g. a sneeze, a car horn honk­ing, shuf­fling feet).
2. Ask stu­dents to iden­ti­fy a sound they hear fre­quent­ly in this room, and not say it out loud. Pick one stu­dent to ‘play’ the sound while every­one else cov­ers their eyes (e.g. eras­er on white­board, chair scrap­ing, per­cus­sion mal­lets clack­ing against each oth­er). Ask for vol­un­teers to guess what the sound was.
3. Ready… set… lis­ten: Over a two-minute peri­od, sit qui­et­ly and lis­ten. Then, ask stu­dents to write or draw the sounds they heard. If they have trou­ble remem­ber­ing what they heard pre­vi­ous­ly (I do!), they can write or draw any sounds they are cur­rent­ly hear­ing. Ask vol­un­teers to read their list or describe what they heard. Notice the sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences in what stu­dents hear.

Tips:

• Use a visu­al aid to show where you are in the two min­utes peri­od to avoid the inevitable ques­tion ‘how much longer?’
• Adapt the length of time to your group. I pre­fer sev­er­al lis­ten­ing peri­ods of short­er time frames so the trea­sure hunt is dif­fer­ent every time. Giv­en how much how quick­ly sound changes in an ele­men­tary school, one two-minute trea­sure hunt could fea­ture the jan­i­tor walk­ing down the hall­way with a trol­ley, greet­ing a few kids, while the next might be about the sounds of the heat­ing sys­tem start­ing (reluc­tant­ly), and the next bas­ket­ball prac­tice in the gym down the hallway.
• Brain­storm a num­ber of dis­tinct acoustic envi­ron­ments to lis­ten to that are with­in easy walk­ing dis­tance. Repeat the trea­sure hunt in each loca­tion, writ­ing and draw­ing the sounds of each. Dis­cuss, com­par­ing locations.

For Sound Bites, we chose to lis­ten to a stair­well, the library, and two dif­fer­ent loca­tions in the cafeteria.

The kids floored me with their enthu­si­asm and acute ears. As you can see in the images below, their respons­es are amaz­ing, com­plex and var­ied, and say as much about each indi­vid­ual as it does about their school.

Find­ing Folk for Music is a way to share con­cepts and strate­gies for a kind of exper­i­men­tal folk music. The series engages peo­ple in hands-on cre­ation regard­less of anyone’s lev­el of pre­vi­ous musi­cal expe­ri­ence. Work­shops pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for impro­vi­sa­tion, explo­ration, sound mak­ing, and audio record­ing in response to the envi­ron­ment. They are a chance to prac­tice deep lis­ten­ing, a phi­los­o­phy and approach to music and sound devel­oped by com­pos­er Pauline Oliv­eros. Deep lis­ten­ing helps us under­stand and per­ceive our­selves in the world, and whether through envi­ron­men­tal, social, or polit­i­cal impacts, our sound­scape is always in a state of change. Doc­u­ment­ing sound is an impor­tant aspect of Find­ing Folk for Music. The work­shop and per­for­mance record­ings are like tran­scrip­tions of the acoustic spaces and the par­tic­i­pants’ musi­cal engage­ment. The record­ings have archival and doc­u­men­ta­tion val­ue, and I find them pleas­ant to lis­ten to. Through these work­shops I am find­ing new strate­gies to bring peo­ple togeth­er to make exper­i­men­tal music, and in this way, the series is an exten­sion of my com­po­si­tion and sound art practice.

In Octo­ber of 2019 I was invit­ed to present Find­ing Folk for Music at the Sounds Like Fes­ti­val in Saska­toon. The two-hour ses­sion involved eight peo­ple and explored tran­scrip­tion and com­po­si­tion strate­gies with a vari­able set of instru­ments. The sam­ple work­shop strat­e­gy found below this text was used for one of the activities.

It is inter­est­ing to hear the dif­fer­ent results from the two groups who were fol­low­ing the same set of instruc­tions and lis­ten­ing to the same loop­ing audio sam­ple, and to note how quick­ly the par­tic­i­pants found a shared musi­cal­i­ty in their playing.

One year ear­li­er in Read­ing, UK, I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present a longer-form ver­sion of Find­ing Folk for Music, as a four-day work­shop with an ad hoc ensem­ble lead­ing to pub­lic performance.

Over the four days, our group explored field record­ing, tran­scrip­tion, and impro­vi­sa­tion, with the goal of mak­ing music that com­pli­ment­ed and respond­ed to the envi­ron­ment. We went into wood­ed areas near cam­pus and lis­tened to the trees, city nois­es, and Heathrow air traf­fic above us. With an array of micro­phones and instru­ments in our hands, we set up in iso­lat­ed as well as busy pub­lic spaces, mak­ing music that tran­scribed and com­pli­ment­ed the sound­scape. In the qui­etest places, we found a world of sound already present, and for the per­for­mance at the muse­um, the large audi­ence and their chat­ter, clink­ing glass­es, and shuf­fling feet became anoth­er sound­scape to which we respond­ed. Through­out the process, we asked our­selves the ques­tions: Is there already enough to lis­ten to? Why am I adding anoth­er sound? When I do, how can it be already part of the sound­scape or how can it stand out through inten­tion, rep­e­ti­tion, or expression? 

On the first day of the work­shop, par­tic­i­pants bor­rowed portable record­ing units and set out to mon­i­tor and record the most qui­et places they could find on campus.

As a strat­e­gy to encour­age deep lis­ten­ing, the field record­ing exer­cise con­tributed to the cre­ative process. When mak­ing field record­ings, par­tic­i­pants wore head­phones and expe­ri­enced the sound­scape in a close-up and immer­sive way, hear­ing the small­est details and encoun­ter­ing the back­ground noise in even the qui­etest places. This aware­ness of the sound­scape informed the group’s abil­i­ty to impro­vise togeth­er, and parts of the field record­ings were inte­grat­ed into the performance.

Our per­for­mance was well-received, with hun­dreds of peo­ple stand­ing, sit­ting, and walk­ing through the muse­um to lis­ten. Audi­ence mem­bers com­ment­ed on the focused and immer­sive qual­i­ty of the music we played, and after­wards group mem­bers were inter­viewed about their expe­ri­ence in the workshop:

“The sound is sup­posed to react to the envi­ron­ment but not over­pow­er it. We also record­ed some silence and played along with those record­ings. It feels very calm in our cor­ner; the exhi­bi­tion is very hec­tic otherwise.”

“I learned about sound com­po­si­tion, how to use instru­ments in dif­fer­ent ways, cre­at­ing sounds with record­ings from nature.”

“We were work­ing with sounds, with dif­fer­ent ways to record sound, to doc­u­ment it. It was a group project, four of us and Jeff as well. We were all there, work­ing togeth­er dur­ing the work­shops, mak­ing indi­vid­ual record­ings, and putting it all together.”

Fol­low­ing the work­shop and per­for­mance in Read­ing, I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present a stand-alone ver­sion of the field record­ing exer­cise in Win­nipeg, on a very cold day in March in the office space of Cre­ative Manitoba.

Par­tic­i­pants were giv­en a set of instruc­tions dur­ing a short 20-minute session: 

(1) Bor­row a sound recorder and toy xylo­phone; (2) as a soli­tary activ­i­ty, move through the build­ing to find a silent or near-silent space; (3) record the sound­scape; (4) speak qui­et­ly and describe where you are and what you hear; (5) make sounds with the xylo­phone; (6) after a few min­utes, stop and return.

This exer­cise invit­ed par­tic­i­pants to lis­ten to the acoustic envi­ron­ment, and to hear them­selves and their actions in rela­tion to the sound that was already there. The hall­ways and stair­wells were filled with ambi­ent office back­ground noise, with machines hum­ming and the sound of icy wind out­side. The xylo­phones inter­ject­ed a play­ful ele­ment and a kind of sound impulse that acousti­cal­ly mapped the spaces through echo and reverberation.

Lat­er the same year, I had a chance to present Find­ing Folk for Music at the Regi­na Pub­lic Library. As in ear­li­er pre­sen­ta­tions, the work­shop includ­ed field record­ing exer­cis­es, group impro­vi­sa­tion, and deep lis­ten­ing. We found sounds in and around the build­ing, and we used these record­ings as bed tracks and as a kind of acoustic score. Play­ing in the open area of the library beside a rum­bling esca­la­tor and with sounds of peo­ple all around us, we respond­ed to the sound­scape, imi­tat­ing what we heard, mix­ing back­ground and foreground.

Through all of the pre­sen­ta­tions of Find­ing Folk for Music, the series has grown and has been adapt­ed for dif­fer­ent con­texts. I have learned more about ways that deep lis­ten­ing, cre­ative music mak­ing, impro­vi­sa­tion, and com­po­si­tion can be engaged with by peo­ple with any lev­el of musi­cal train­ing or expe­ri­ence. Results vary, and while I am moved by all the music we have made, appre­ci­at­ing this is a mat­ter of taste.  The process, how­ev­er, is most impor­tant, and the strate­gies I am work­ing with play­ful­ly reveal musi­cal rela­tion­ships, artis­tic choic­es, and col­lec­tive efforts by peo­ple in the cre­ation of a work of art. For me that’s the point of Find­ing Folk for Music.

* * *

Jeff Mor­ton is a com­pos­er, musi­cian, and media artist based in rur­al south­east Saskatchewan.

Cat­a­lyst is an online, music impro­vi­sa­tion learn­ing expe­ri­ence. Along with three instruc­tion­al videos, this guide will out­line some of the key com­po­nents of musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion. This video series draws from the Cre­ative Abil­i­ty  Devel­op­ment method and music ped­a­gogy cre­at­ed by Alice Kanack.

Along with three inter­ac­tive videos, this accom­pa­ny­ing video guide can be used by indi­vid­u­als or small groups of a wide age range and musi­cal ability.

These instruc­tion­al videos are designed to work in con­junc­tion with an educator/workshop facil­i­ta­tor as a sup­port­ing activ­i­ty, or stand alone for indi­vid­ual use.

What is Cre­ative Abil­i­ty Development?

Cre­ative Abil­i­ty Devel­op­ment (CAD) is a method cre­at­ed by Alice Kanack where stu­dents use musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion as a mean to devel­op the cre­ative side of the brain. The main goal of CAD is to teach unique self expres­sion or musi­cal­i­ty.  When stu­dents engage in impro­vi­sa­tion, there are three rules or inten­tions we abide by:

1. There Is No Such Thing As A Mistake

”Cre­ativ­i­ty Is About Mak­ing Choices”

Our first, and per­haps our most impor­tant rule, helps stu­dents to free them­selves into embrac­ing their own cre­ativ­i­ty in choos­ing sounds. Com­pos­ing is mak­ing deci­sions with sound; impro­vi­sa­tion is mak­ing those deci­sions in real time and exe­cut­ing them in the moment. Allow­ing our­selves to freely make musi­cal deci­sions with­out wor­ry­ing if they are right or wrong leads us on a jour­ney to craft­ing a musi­cal lan­guage that res­onates with who we are.

2. Silence and Applause

Prac­tic­ing Respect and Communication

Silence: Some­one once told me that grow­ing in our craft as musi­cians is cen­tred around the art of lis­ten­ing.  By active­ly lis­ten­ing to the music being cre­at­ed around us we are grow­ing in our musi­cal under­stand­ing and aptitude.

Applause:  When we hear some­one call out “Bra­vo! or Bra­va!” after a mag­nif­i­cent per­for­mance, it was not orig­i­nal­ly used to just cel­e­brate vir­tu­os­i­ty. When the word was first used in ancient Greece, it was used to rec­og­nize the brav­ery of a per­former.  When we applause, it may not always take place in the lit­er­al sense, but through our expres­sions, minds and our hearts we hon­our the musi­cal expe­ri­ence we are hearing.

3. Nev­er Crit­i­cize A Friend

”Because there is no such thing as a mistake”

Judg­ing a mas­ter­piece before it is com­plet­ed is a sil­ly idea–improvisation is a life-long jour­ney! ​When we engage in impro­vi­sa­tion we are tak­ing part in a revolv­ing feed­back loop:We make a deci­sion and cre­ate a sound.  We hear the sound, make anoth­er deci­sion, and the process con­tin­ues… To show respect for each other’s cre­ative jour­ney and process, we refrain from judg­ing some­one else’s musi­cal choic­es. This keeps the feed­back loop clear, and fos­ters an encour­ag­ing sup­port­ive com­mu­ni­ty for every­one to explore their cre­ative voices.

Impro­vis­ing and cre­at­ing sound­scapes with a loop pedal

Loop Ped­al Devices & Apps:

Boss Loop Sta­tion RC-20

Boss Loop Sta­tion RC-30

Boss Loop Sta­tion RC-300

Vox VDL‑1 dynam­ic looper

Super-Loop­er App

Loopy App

Cre­at­ing sound­scapes: A Frame­work For Cre­at­ing A Sound­scape With A Loop­ing Device

Start With The Root: Set the tem­po, char­ac­ter and feel of your sound­scape and show­case the key (this can be done by using arpeg­gios and oth­er scale notes)

Build It Out: Hold­ing long tones can help cre­ate a wash of sound and help par­tic­i­pants to get com­fort­able by blend­ing their sound into the texture.

Add Some Tex­ture: Cre­ate a har­mo­ny or counter melody, Change the type of bow stroke you are using (for exam­ple: pizzi­ca­to, trem­mel­lo etc.)

Leave Room For ‘Play’ : Rests are part of the music, Feel free to leave some open space with­in the sound­scape and let your melodies, breath.

About Kathryn Patri­cia Cobbler:

Loop ped­al vio­list, com­pos­er, and arranger Kathryn Patri­cia Cob­bler has craft­ed a sin­gu­lar niche in impro­vi­sa­tion, and clas­si­cal per­for­mance. She obsess­es over cre­at­ing unique­ly arrest­ing sound­scapes, whether in solo recitals, com­pos­ing for the­atre, per­form­ing in site spe­cif­ic art instal­la­tions, and more.

As an edu­ca­tor, Ms. Cob­bler is a Cre­ative Abil­i­ty and Devel­op­ment method teacher and teacher-train­er.  She con­tin­u­al­ly seeks to expand reper­toire for solo vio­la and loop ped­al, and has engaged with the 9th Hour The­atre as a com­pos­er and per­former for their pro­duc­tion of Halo. She has also been known to col­lab­o­rate with oth­er com­posers, includ­ing a pre­miere of a piece by the Cana­di­an cel­list and com­pos­er Raphael Weinroth-Browne.

Kathryn Patri­cia holds degrees in vio­la per­for­mance from West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty (B.M.) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottawa (M.M.).  She per­forms on a vio­la by luthi­er, Sibylle Rup­pert and a Boss RC-30 loop pedal.

https://www.kathrynpatricia.com/

From find­ing objects around the house (the recy­cling and ‘junk draw­er’ are trea­sure troves!) to turn­ing them into musi­cal instru­ments and dec­o­rat­ing them, to com­pos­ing a sym­pho­ny, to con­duct­ing the final per­for­mance! Kids will find a huge amount of joy in lead­ing this activ­i­ty, stretch­ing their imag­i­na­tions, turn­ing up their ears, and explor­ing their sound art poten­tial. The instru­ments can be any sound mak­ing objects the imag­i­na­tion finds poten­tial in. The sym­pho­ny is a frame­work: a sto­ry­line with a begin­ning, mid­dle, and end, depict­ed in a graph­ic score. The chil­dren will cre­ate the work and adults sim­ply facil­i­tate as much or as lit­tle as is nec­es­sary, based on the child/children. The final per­for­mance con­sists of the child/children using basic hand sig­nals, cue cards, or words to cue the orches­tra of musi­cians pre­mier­ing the Stay at Home Sym­pho­ny on their new­ly mint­ed ‘found object’ instruments.

Step by Step Instructions:

• Take a look around your home for ran­dom items you think might eas­i­ly be trans­formed into sound mak­ing machines. Toi­let paper tubes, tin­foil take out con­tain­ers, old keys, dry mac­a­roni, and emp­ty egg car­tons are some of the things we’ve collected.

• Pull out your art sup­plies and get crafty! Try attach­ing objects togeth­er to cre­ate new instru­ments. You might also attach string to hang the instru­ment or make a han­dle out of tape to hold the instru­ment. Imag­ine how you might drum on some­thing, blow through some­thing, strum something…what cool sounds can your found objects make? Per­haps you hook elas­tic bands onto nails to cre­ate some­thing you can strum, cut or, alter­nate­ly, glue tubes togeth­er to cre­ate dif­fer­ent sound­ing ‘horns,’ or dan­gle old keys or tin­foil take-away con­tain­ers from strings to cre­ate chimes or cym­bals. Any­thing goes! Once you’ve adapt­ed your instru­ments into sound mak­ing machines, you can dec­o­rate them how­ev­er you like; with paint, sparkles, stick­ers, string, you name it! The more colour­ful, the better.

• Next, you’ll need some coloured pen­cils and a big piece of paper to com­pose your graph­ic score. For this step, imag­ine the sounds you’d like to hear and what draw­ings might match up with those sounds. I’ve includ­ed some exam­ples below. You might give each found object instru­ment that you’ve cre­at­ed its own colour on the score, so that when the play­er of that instru­ment sees their colour, they know it’s their turn to play. Or, you might draw a bunch of dif­fer­ent shapes that can be inter­pret­ed by the musi­cians in your Stay at Home Sym­pho­ny as sounds. A lot of dots or short lines might mean real­ly per­cus­sive stac­ca­to (short) sounds on the instru­ments. Swirly cir­cles or long lines might mean more con­nect­ed sounds. You can use height in your draw­ing, too. High sounds could be indi­cat­ed with mark­ings high­er up on the page and low sounds could be low on the page. Dif­fer­ent colours could be used to tell the play­ers what kinds of sounds to play. Or, you could sim­ply draw an idea of what you want to hear and use hand sig­nals to point to the musi­cian you want to play and how you want them to make their instru­ment sound in that moment.

• Last­ly, set up a space for your big con­cert! You’ll need at least one per­son to play your instru­ments, but, prefer­ably, you’ll gath­er your fam­i­ly or friends togeth­er and have one per­son play­ing each instru­ment. You’ll be the conductor!

A Per­son­al Experience:

I first taught this Found Objects Orches­tra and Con­duc­tion project to a day camp of preschool aged chil­dren at a music school where I used to work teach­ing most­ly vio­lin. I drew from my expe­ri­ence as an impro­vi­sor, my knowl­edge of graph­ic score com­po­si­tion, and my brief intro­duc­tion to John Zorn’s com­po­si­tion, Cobra, which uti­lizes a sys­tem of con­duc­tion hand sym­bols and cue cards. All of these things mixed with the play­ful­ness, zeal, and chaos that any room full of preschool­ers will bring came togeth­er to cre­ate a mag­i­cal per­for­mance built from the ground up, coop­er­a­tive­ly, by the chil­dren them­selves. In the end, our class­room resem­bled a fan­tas­ti­cal scene akin to some­thing out of a Dr. Zeuss book, with colour­ful home­made instru­ments hang­ing from the ceil­ing, stretched from wall to wall, and bal­anced on chairs. The per­form­ers were assigned an ini­tial sta­tion equipped with an instru­ment to make sound with and then each child rotat­ed through the sta­tions and took turns at the conductor’s “podi­um.” When at the helm, so to speak, the con­duc­tor could use any means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion they want­ed to con­vey the sounds they desired from the per­form­ers. All in all, we had a blast mak­ing impro­vised music in the moment and exer­cis­ing our cre­ative minds. The chil­dren gained so much from the expe­ri­ence and came away from their final per­for­mance glow­ing with excite­ment and a sense of accom­plish­ment as a group.

A co cre­ation project with adults faced with men­tal defi­cien­cy and autism issues through the rein­ven­tion of Car­men. With work­shops on opera, meet­ing with cre­ators, and train­ers help­ing them pro­duc­ing it as well.

For many years, Opéra de Mon­tréal has offered inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ty-engaged activ­i­ties with the objec­tive of ini­ti­at­ing under­rep­re­sent­ed and under­priv­i­leged publics to opera. Sev­er­al co-cre­ation projects have been led, such as YO’péra for men­tal health, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Espace Tran­si­tion (CHU Saint-Jus­tine) and La Gang à Ram­brou for this with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ties. In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Con­seil des arts de Mon­tréal, Pierre Vachon, our Direc­tor for Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment and Edu­ca­tion, has devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion four videos explain­ing the prin­ci­pal stages of a project in part­ner­ship with non artis­tic orga­ni­za­tions and with groups that are under-represented. 

Cap­sule #1: How to find and part­ner with organizations

• Under­stand­ing the mis­sion and objec­tives of the artis­tic organization

• Iden­ti­fy­ing an orga­ni­za­tion with whom to build a partnership

• Ini­ti­at­ing contact

• Explorato­ry meet­ings: under­stand­ing the val­ues and social fac­tors for the orga­ni­za­tion and poten­tial collaborations

Cap­sule #2: Defin­ing the project

After iden­ti­fy­ing the orga­ni­za­tion you want to work with, it is the moment to deter­mine the nature of the project. Pierre Vachon, Direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty Engage­ment and Edu­ca­tion at the Opéra de Mon­tréal, and Suzanne Beaulieu, Direc­tor of La Gang à Ram­brou, explain the foun­da­tion­al premis­es of their collaboration.

• Ideation: the project

• Roles: artis­tic team, facil­i­ta­tors, and participants

• Con­tri­bu­tions: (finan­cial, human, resources, etc.)

• Bud­get: invest­ment by partners

Cap­sule #3: Project realization

Now is the time to take action and estab­lish time­lines, plan work­shops, let your cre­ativ­i­ty take wings, write the plot, in brief, put the project together!

• Objec­tives

• Project frame­work: sched­ul­ing, roles, work­shop content

• Pro­duc­tion modalities

• Tak­ing par­tic­i­pants’ sto­ries into account

• Flex­i­bil­i­ty and production

Cap­sule #4: An deceiv­ing­ly sim­ple but essen­tial step: Eval­u­at­ing impact!

You will want to col­lect obser­va­tions from par­tic­i­pants, part­ner orga­ni­za­tion and mem­bers of the pub­lic. Often, we deal with this infor­ma­tion quan­ti­ta­tive­ly. It’s also impor­tant to eval­u­ate the effects on par­tic­i­pants’ per­son­al devel­op­ment. Dis­cov­er how La Gang à Ram­brou and their team has led this stage of the project.

• Eval­u­a­tion: under­stand­ing impact (artis­tic, per­son­al, professional)

• Mea­sured and ‘felt’ results

• Research: con­tribute to the method­ol­o­gy for eval­u­a­tion of the impact of social action on orga­ni­za­tions and participants

Here is an approach to col­lab­o­ra­tive music mak­ing based on using exist­ing reper­toire, where a group sam­ples and repur­pos­es mate­r­i­al and ideas for use as a Start­ing Point.

A. PREPARATION – Choose the Feature

Pre­pare by choos­ing one or more fea­tures direct­ly relat­ed to the reper­toire com­po­si­tion and intend­ed to use as a Start­ing Point.  You can also do this with the class, depend­ing on the “depth of engagement”.

Exam­ples:

Musi­cal Build­ing Blocks

• Meters (odd meters of var­i­ous tra­di­tion­al music)

• Rhyth­mic pat­terns (focus on syn­co­pa­tion, genre-spe­cif­ic beats)

• Cadences (tra­di­tion­al and as a broad­er concept)

Con­cep­tu­al

• Cross-dis­ci­pli­nary (Debussy’s La Mer inspired by Hokusai)

• Inspi­ra­tion from nature (Beethoven Sym­pho­ny No 6)

• Con­tem­po­rary sam­pling techniques

Socio-his­tor­i­cal con­text and oth­er knowledges

• Indige­nous knowledge

• Ori­gins of African (per­cus­sion) instru­ments in the Amer­i­c­as (var­i­ous con­tem­po­rary jazz and lat­inx composers)

• Inter­in­flu­ence of Asian and Euro­pean music tra­di­tions (mul­ti­ple composers/pieces)

B. The Workshop(s)

1. Warm-up

Warm-ups are intend­ed to bring a group into an opti­mal psy­cho-emo­tion­al state for cre­at­ing music togeth­er. I like to run com­plete­ly unfa­mil­iar activ­i­ties which “reset” the stu­dents’ usu­al band room mind­set. When design­ing the warm-up, keep in mind the cho­sen Feature.

Exam­ples:

• For com­plex rhyth­mic pat­terns, warm-up by run­ning some sim­ple clap­ping riffs with phas­ing effect (3/4 4/4 5/4 start­ing together)

• Fun phys­i­cal ice-break­er activ­i­ty with some space for impro­vi­sa­tion, guid­ed towards the Feature

2. Engage with the Feature

The Facil­i­ta­tor can be cre­ative with the man­ner of pre­sent­ing the Fea­ture. For the stu­dents, this expe­ri­ence should be slight­ly chal­leng­ing, a stretch into the “less known”.

Exam­ples:

• Ver­bal­iza­tion of an odd meter (do-you wa-nna ba-na-na = 7/8)

• Graph­ic nota­tion of com­plex rhythms

• Learn melody/riff/motif (lat­er­al rote, decon­struc­tion of build­ing blocks, etc)

• Fast visu­al brain­storm of con­cepts on white­board and identify/discuss connections

3. Gen­er­ate Mate­r­i­al in Break-out Groups 

Assign small­er groups and give them a task for explo­ration and exper­i­men­ta­tion, based on the Fea­ture (and its parts).

Sug­ges­tions:

• Define clear deliv­er­ables and keep a tight dead­line (<20 min)

• Walk around and offer artis­tic assis­tance (lis­ten­ing, curios­i­ty, appreciation)

• Sug­gest ways a stuck group could move forward

• Pro­vide some socio-emo­tion­al guid­ance for resolv­ing con­flicts, assur­ing stu­dents that unused ideas are valu­able and can be used in anoth­er con­text, etc

4. Share – Dis­cuss – Combine 

The break­out groups share the musi­cal mate­r­i­al they came up with. After some dis­cus­sion, the idea is to try putting things together.

Sug­ges­tions:

• Lis­ten­ing groups pay atten­tion to details and make con­nec­tions with their own music material

• The Facil­i­ta­tor can get the ball rolling by direct­ing the mix/match process

• The Facil­i­ta­tor can suggest/direct vari­a­tions in tem­po, dynam­ics, octaves, extending/shortening bits

• Rather than ver­bal­ly dis­cussing what parts may or may not fit togeth­er, have the groups try out their ideas and lis­ten to how they respond

*For more musi­cal mate­r­i­al, repeat steps 3 and 4

5. Rehearse – Perform/Record

You know what to do!

Sug­ges­tions:

• Stu­dents’ self-esteem from cre­at­ing an orig­i­nal com­po­si­tion results in deep­er focus – praise them for it!

• Ask stu­dents which sec­tions need fixing

• Assign con­duc­tors for spe­cif­ic sec­tions and transitions

• Lim­it the num­ber of run-throughs before per­for­mance. Avoid ear/mind/soul fatigue!

6. Debrief – Appre­ci­ate – Celebrate

• Stu­dents can share some­thing pos­i­tive they’ve observed about one or more of their col­lab­o­ra­tors. Ask them to be specific!

• If you have time, run some fun cel­e­bra­to­ry games!

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS:

• Be ALERT and FLEXIBLE: stu­dents will unex­pect­ed­ly come up with new ideas, which often redi­rect the work­shop. Let go of your ini­tial plan and fol­low the music!

• Con­sid­er adjust­ing the “depth” of engage­ment to your stu­dents’ experience/skillset (also in real-time, dur­ing the workshops!)

• Think about mak­ing this an aur­al expe­ri­ence. If nota­tion is nec­es­sary, you can get stu­dents to cre­ate graph­ic nota­tion or oth­er alter­na­tive (stu­dent-cre­at­ed sculptures).

• Arrange the chairs into a large circle

• Please con­sid­er the ideas in this doc­u­ment as just a few from an infi­nite num­ber of pos­si­bil­i­ties. In the spir­it of this approach, this doc­u­ment can be chopped up and rearranged. Please feel free to be as cre­ative as you like with these ideas!

Case Study:

Edu­ca­tion­al out­reach for Saari­a­ho Fes­ti­val, orga­nized by New Euro­pean Ensemble

• the project involved music class­es from three dif­fer­ent schools (Inter­na­tion­al School in The Hague, Deutsche Inter­na­tionale Schule Den Haag, Haags Montes­sori Lyceum)

• each class had a dif­fer­ent lead facil­i­ta­tor and dif­fer­ent approach

• the Start­ing Point was Kai­ja Saariaho’s com­po­si­tion Licht­bo­gen (North­ern Lights)

• the Deutsche Schule class focused on research­ing and dis­cussing the nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­non, and then cre­at­ed sound­scapes based on tim­bre exper­i­men­ta­tion with their instru­ments. They then dis­cov­ered notes/scales/patterns which they super­im­posed on the soundscapes.

• the final com­po­si­tions were pre­sent­ed as a pre-show per­for­mance dur­ing the main Festival

The beat or pulse could be con­sid­ered the foun­da­tion of what we do, as music-mak­ers.  It is often the struc­ture with­in which we tell a sto­ry through melody, rhythm, tim­bre, dynam­ics and even lyrics.  As a music ther­a­pist, I have been wit­ness­ing the pow­er of the beat in the form of heart­beat record­ings.  I work in an acute care set­ting, with both pal­lia­tive and pae­di­atric patients.  Heart­beat record­ings were intro­duced to me by work col­leagues who had come across the work of Louisville music ther­a­pist Bri­an Schreck.  Brian’s work with indi­vid­u­als with can­cer focus­es on the process of record­ing individual’s heart­beats, and com­pos­ing a song to com­pan­ion that record­ing.  The result­ing process and prod­uct is one that empha­sizes cre­ativ­i­ty, beau­ty and lega­cy.  In the work that I do, heart­beat record­ings are used in work with patients, young and old, as a form of lega­cy for those whose diag­no­sis may be life-limiting. 

Mate­ri­als: ipad or record­ing device, stetho­scope, lapel mic

These mate­ri­als are not pro­hib­i­tive­ly expen­sive, as iPads are com­mon tools, and the oth­er sup­plies (Rode lapel mic and stetho­scope) total ~$350.00.  Oth­er indi­vid­u­als have suc­cess in using dig­i­tal stetho­scopes like the Eko Core which may have a steep­er learn­ing curve, but is rough­ly the same price, with some com­pat­i­ble smart tools (app, etc) that make it equal­ly easy to use. 

Con­sid­er­a­tions: When doing a heart­beat record­ing, it is impor­tant to deter­mine the best place on the chest in order to cap­ture the strongest sound of the beat.  There are lots of great resources online that pro­vide a good overview, along with dia­grams that give an idea of placement.

When using equip­ment that is sen­si­tive, it is good to try to have as qui­et of an envi­ron­ment as pos­si­ble – to put a sign on the door indi­cat­ing that a record­ing is in process, etc.

It is impor­tant to put the indi­vid­ual at ease, as they may be uncer­tain about a new expe­ri­ence, even when feel­ing pos­i­tive about mak­ing the record­ing. Many peo­ple with health chal­lenges often have changes to their bod­ies that can make them feel self-con­scious. This can be done by easy con­ver­sa­tion lead­ing up to the record­ing, by warm­ing the stetho­scope, etc.

There are oth­er con­sid­er­a­tions that may make it dif­fi­cult to obtain a clear record­ing.  If someone’s heart­beat is very weak, it may be chal­leng­ing to get a record­ing that sounds like a heart­beat.  This is also the case with indi­vid­u­als who have expe­ri­enced extreme weight loss due to dis­ease.  The most impor­tant thing would be to be      able to have a pres­sure-free time of try­ing to find a clear heart­beat that will deter­mine whether pro­ceed­ing with a record­ing is a good idea.

Con­sent: It is impor­tant to have con­sent for the process and the record­ing, whether it be for art, research, treatment/therapy, etc.  Ensur­ing that the indi­vid­ual clear­ly under­stands what is tak­ing place, and what the record­ing will be used for is crit­i­cal.  I use the con­sent forms for record­ing as well as com­mu­ni­cat­ing elec­tron­i­cal­ly (to deliv­er the final record­ing) in my work with patients.  I put the orig­i­nal in the chart, keep a copy for my records, and then pro­vide the indi­vid­ual with a copy of the con­sent as well.  It is a straight­for­ward process in my work, as the record­ings are sole­ly for the use of the patients, as they see fit.

Pic­ture a mut­ed video of a per­son walk­ing inside a house. Imag­ine what the foot­steps might sound like going up creaky steps or slight­ly drag­ging on the floor. Turn up the sound and become com­plete­ly dis­ori­ent­ed as you hear foot­steps walk­ing in crunchy snow, birds and a sym­pho­ny of frogs. Sound artist Guil­laume Jab­bour demon­strates how to use an iphone to shoot and edit a short video in iMovie and cap­ture, edit and mix real sounds in Garage­Band. The sounds are then synced with video to cre­ate a sur­re­al expe­ri­ence. The process offers insight into how movie sound effects are made by Foley artists.

Mate­ri­als: iPhone or iPad with Voice Memo, Garage­Band and iMovie

Tar­get Audi­ence: 10 years old +

Group Size: indi­vid­ual or pairs

Intro­duc­tion (15 min.)

• Watch the sam­ple videos below with music AND with­out music.

• Dis­cus­sion:

  • What do you notice? (e.g. the audio does not match the visu­al, sounds like snow, nature).

    • ADAPTATION: The dis­cus­sion could be direct­ed by ask­ing “Com­plete these state­ments, “I see… I hear…”

  • How do you think this was done? (e.g. audio was made sep­a­rate­ly from video, every­thing was glued togeth­er after).

• Watch the Foley Artists video below.

• Dis­cus­sion:

  • What does a Foley Artist do?

Step 1: Cap­tur­ing and Edit­ing the Video (30 – 60 min.)

• Open the cam­era app on your iPad or iPhone. Choose Video.

• Choose a loca­tion indoors where you can walk for at least 1 min. with­out interruption.

• Use your device to film a short scene (1 min. max). You can film a longer scene lat­er but for now, keep it short. Film your own legs if you are work­ing alone or take turns film­ing each oth­er walking.

• Don’t wor­ry if there is extra footage at the begin­ning and end of your video; you can trim that out afterwards.

• Watch your video and answer these questions:

  • Does the video look good?

  • Is the light­ing even? Is any­thing blown out (very bright and dif­fi­cult to look at) or too dark?

  • Is the image steady or is there lots of unwant­ed movement?

• Con­sid­er the answer to these ques­tions and decide whether you need to reshoot your video or not to make it look as good as possible.

• Once you are hap­py with the qual­i­ty of your video, open the iMovie app, select new project > Movie > choose the video you just shot and click on the + sign to add it to your iMovie project.

• Tap the video in your iMovie project and at the bot­tom Tap Detach to detach the audio. Remem­ber, you will be over­lay­ing a dif­fer­ent audio track later.

• When you see the sep­a­rate audio track below your video, tap and hold down to select it and press the delete key or flick it towards the top of your screen to delete it.

• Trim the video to the desired length, cut­ting out any unnec­es­sary footage.

• To remove parts of your video in the mid­dle of the clip, place your cur­sor close to where you want to cut, tap the video region and choose the “Split” option. Then pull the lit­tle scis­sors down to split your clip into two regions. You can now trim out any unnec­es­sary footage on either side of the split.

• Click on the Gear to access set­tings and tog­gle the slid­er to add a Fade in and out to your video to make it look smoother.

• Once you have decid­ed on the final ver­sion of your video, you are ready to begin work­ing on the audio.

Step 2: Cap­tur­ing and Export­ing the Audio (30 min.)

• Open the Voice Memo app on your iPhone or iPad – this app allows you to record even if you leave the app to watch your iMovie video at the same time. This is impor­tant for sync­ing the audio with the visual.

• Fig­ure out where you will walk to cre­ate a dra­mat­ic mis­match with the video footage. Crunchy snow, leaves or shal­low water are great options.

• When you are ready, start record­ing in Voice Memo, then leave the app and open your iMovie project. Hit play in iMovie and fol­low the video so that the audio cap­ture of your foot­steps match­es your video. Do this as many times as you need to, until you are happy.

• Go back to the Voice Memo app and stop the recording.

• Rename the file to a name that makes sense so that you can find it eas­i­ly lat­er on if nec­es­sary – e.g. Foot­steps crunchy snow

• From the filelist in Voice Memo, click and hold down on your file, click Share > Save File > Garage­Band > Garage­Band File Transfer.

• This is how you will access your file in Garage­Band so that you can mix the audio adding effects, pan­ning, EQ and compression.

Step 3: Mix­ing the Audio (30 – 60 min.)

• Open the Garage­Band app, then tap new project > microphone

• At the top right, tap the loops symbol

• Tap Files > Garage­Band File Trans­fer > drag the file you just export­ed to the Garage­band workspace

• Wear ear buds, air pods or head­phones and use your ears to edit the track until you are happy.

• Use Track Pan to send your audio sig­nal to the left or right.

• Use the EQ func­tion to bring out the high, mid­dle and low fre­quen­cies of your audio track.

• Use the Com­pres­sor to reduce the dif­fer­ence between your loud­est and qui­etest sounds.

• Use Effects (Reverb, Echo) to enhance your track.

• Once you are hap­py with your track, tap Projects at the top left, then rename your project to some­thing that makes sense like before (e.g. AV Mis­match Foot­steps). Then tap Done.

Step 4: Adding the Audio to the Video and Export­ing (15 – 30 min.)

• In Garage­band, tap and hold down on your project then select Share > Song > High Qual­i­ty > Share > Open in… (this may take a few moments as your project must be export­ed) > Tap Open in iMovie > Choose your iMovie project

• You will now see the audio and video in the same project

• Place the audio where you want it.

• You can add oth­er audio tracks using the same process

• You can also use Garage­Band to cre­ate music to use as a sound­track for your video.

• Tap Done.

• Tap the Share arrow.

• Decide how you want to export the file. A good option if you have access to a Mac­book or iMac is to Air Drop the Movie file to that and watch it there. Once the movie file is on a com­put­er, you can also upload it to your Youtube account.

Tak­ing it Further

What oth­er audio­vi­su­al mis­match­es can you imag­ine? Here are some examples:

• Birds chirp­ing dur­ing a scene of a space­ship land­ing on the moon

• A lizard walk­ing with foot­steps that sound like piano keys

• Sounds of springs and saws dur­ing a scene of a doc­tor exam­in­ing a patient 

Hap­py edit­ing and have fun!