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The Pros and Cons Prison Music Pro­gram was ini­ti­at­ed as a response to the clo­sure of the agri­cul­tur­al pro­grams in Cana­di­an pris­ons, and from the out­set was run with the inten­tion of serv­ing a pop­u­la­tion that was not only lack­ing in resources, but was also being active­ly marginalized.

My expe­ri­ences have led me to under­stand many sen­si­tiv­i­ties of work­ing with con­victs, and the ways in which con­flict and politi­ciza­tion can be avoided.

I have also learned that it is of great advan­tage to cre­ate tools for inmates. Your work can have a mul­ti­pli­er effect by means of open source learn­ing, and the focus­ing of oth­er­wise neglect­ed ener­gies of those behind bars. (Let me dis­tin­guish that last sen­tence from the use of inmates for cap­i­tal gain, which is oth­er­wise known as slav­ery) We are inter­est­ed in humans build­ing skill and a knowl­edge base that can help them be more self-deter­mined, mak­ing choic­es of bet­ter ser­vice to them­selves and their soci­eties, inside and out­side of institutions.

The three videos shown hear dis­cuss three major aspects of build­ing mean­ing­ful pro­gram­ming in cor­rec­tion­al institutions:

Part One: Get­ting Inside

Part Two: The Music Process

Part Three: The Lega­cy Effect

For more music, inter­views , and con­tact information:

https://wolfeislandrecords.com/theprosandconsprogram/

Lis­ten­ing, touch­ing, feel­ing and sound­ing activ­i­ties using your voice, hands, whole body, instru­ments, or speak­ers (e.g. on phone, com­put­er, ear­phones). These sound activ­i­ties are for peo­ple of all —includ­ing hear­ing and non-hear­ing— abilities.

Note: To help pre­vent germ trans­mis­sion, wash and/or dis­in­fect your hands, oth­er body parts, and objects used before, in between, and after the activ­i­ties described here!

INTRODUCTION

Your music touched me —I was moved.

The metaphors we use reveal our lived expe­ri­ence: we feel sound all over our bod­ies! Feel the music… feel the bass!

Our uni­verse is filled with ongo­ing motion, result­ing in touch that trans­fers ener­gy. The ener­gy of this touch can cause more move­ment, such as vibra­tions. Vibra­tions are back and forth oscil­la­tions of mat­ter that rever­ber­ate and trav­el as waves. When vibra­tions reach our bod­ies they touch and move us, our skin, bones, joints, blood ves­sels, and organs, like our ears.

Sound touch­es us, caus­ing and also com­pelling us to move in dif­fer­ent ways. This is pow­er­ful. Sound and music are inti­mate: they touch the entire body, out­side and inside. Vibra­tions trav­el and touch us, from across dis­tances. Every­body has sounds they want or don’t want to touch. Can you think of some?

LET’S TOUCH SOUND!

Sing a con­tin­u­ous sound (e.g. a vow­el). Can you feel your mouth, neck, and oth­er body parts vibrat­ing? Con­tin­ue singing the same sound and gen­tly touch togeth­er your upper and low­er lips. Then try touch­ing togeth­er your upper and low­er teeth —the front teeth and then the back. What changes do you feel?

Slow­ly shift back and forth between two sung sounds (e.g. two vow­els like “ah-oo-ah-oo”). Can you feel what move­ments in your body cause the sound to change? Sing and hold the palm of your hand just in front of your mouth. What do you feel on your hand and face?

Now sing and use your hands to gen­tly touch dif­fer­ent areas of your body (e.g. your nose, lips, throat, back, or chest). How do vibra­tions of dif­fer­ent sounds feel in dif­fer­ent parts of your body? Grad­u­al­ly change the sound (e.g.: to a dif­fer­ent vow­el, con­so­nant or sono­rant, to a dif­fer­ent octave, or to a dif­fer­ent loud­ness). Do cer­tain sounds feel distinct?

Explore touch­ing sounds while your ears are plugged (or while wear­ing head­phones that are play­ing white noise). How does this change your sen­sa­tion of vibrations?

Explore vibra­tions with objects in your home: a musi­cal instru­ment or a spoon tap­ping and slid­ing along a met­al bowl or table. How do the vibra­tions of these dif­fer­ent motions feel? Try gen­tly damp­en­ing the vibra­tions of the bowl on dif­fer­ent parts of your arm or foot. Fill the bowl with water and con­tin­ue… can you see the vibra­tions rip­pling on the water? Sing dif­fer­ent vow­els into the bowl until you find one that real­ly res­onates! Make music by explor­ing the sen­sa­tions of vibra­tions —try plug­ging your ears and also clos­ing your eyes.

Sound is touch. When we hear sound, we are vibrat­ing —mov­ing— togeth­er with this sound. This is powerful.

Like the tiny parts inside the ear, a micro­phone con­tains thin and sen­si­tive com­po­nents that vibrate sim­i­lar­ly to the sounds that touch it. The microphone’s vibra­tions are con­vert­ed into vari­a­tions of elec­tri­cal ener­gy which get trans­mit­ted to oth­er devices and, even­tu­al­ly, back into vibra­tions of a speak­er… at a con­cert or in your phone or com­put­er. Explore the vibra­tions of speak­ers. Inflate a bal­loon and explore how its thin mem­brane vibrates with dif­fer­ent sounds. What does your favourite music feel like to touch? Would you rec­og­nize it with your ears plugged?

Can you tell if some­one you know is feel­ing sad, joy­ful, angry, or anoth­er emo­tion, by the sounds they make when they come home? Do you feel their vibe-rations?

Maybe your friend will explore vibra­tion with you? Make sound togeth­er, per­haps tak­ing turns care­ful­ly and gen­tly touch­ing agreed upon parts of each other’s bod­ies or musi­cal instru­ments. Where do you feel motion and vibra­tion when your friend plays a recorder or gui­tar? If you’re explor­ing through a phone or com­put­er con­nec­tion, take turns sound­ing and feel­ing the speak­er vibra­tions against your bodies.

Dis­cov­er which types of sounds your dif­fer­ent body parts are sen­si­tive to. What parts of your body feel more sen­si­tive in dis­tin­guish­ing high­er, mid, or low­er-range fre­quen­cies (pitch­es), and between more and less intense vibra­tions? What vibra­tions com­pel you to move and dance?

When you hear a sound, notice and explore your sen­sa­tions of vibra­tions and your instincts to move your body.

Let sound touch us! 

FURTHER VARIATIONS & IDEAS:

How does touch­ing a sound with your hand, alter the sound? Flick­ing the tongue while vocal­iz­ing or flick­ing the hand in front of the vocal­iz­ing mouth is an ancient tech­nique and has an ono­matopoe­ic term in Eng­lish: ‘ulu­la­tion’ (which is also used to refer to wail­ing). In fact, dif­fer­ent lan­guages seem to use com­pa­ra­ble “l‑l” sounds to describe this sound-flick­ing tech­nique. Some the­o­ries sug­gest that the first part of the word “hallelu+ja” (Hebrew “praise/shout to + G‑d”) orig­i­nat­ed from such praise­ful, trilling ulu­la­tion. Dif­fer­ent reli­gions describe God and God’s cre­ative pow­er as sound and vibration.

(Clean your phone!) Cup your hand around the phone speak­er and then gen­tly move your fin­gers and palm to change the res­o­nance fre­quen­cy. You can also do this with the speak­er placed near your mouth and move your mouth as though you are say­ing “wow wow” (but with­out using your voice). You are chang­ing the vow­el shape of your mouth a bit like a “wah wah” mute on a brass instru­ment or elec­tric ped­al. Remem­ber ear­li­er we explored shift­ing back-and-forth between sounds, like “oo-ah-oo” —”wow”?!

Run your fin­ger along dif­fer­ent objects (e.g. a plas­tic con­tain­er, a drink­ing glass, a wall, a table). Can you guess the vibra­to­ry qual­i­ty of a sur­face by mere­ly hold­ing it, with­out mov­ing your skin along its sur­face? Can you infer the tex­tur­al rhythm of an object just by look­ing at it? Use a pen­cil and paper to draw imag­i­nary shapes and tex­tures (not objects), and give your page of draw­ings to a friend for them to cre­ate the sound of each tex­ture (per­haps as you indi­cate the pres­sure and rate of motion with your hand). Guess which of your images your friend is soni­fy­ing! Adapt the “Eye Spy…” game: “I touch with my lit­tle fin­ger some­thing that feels like [make the sound of the tex­ture with your mouth]!” (Cf. “Opta­con”.)

Are mechano, ther­mo, pho­to, and chemo–reception each a form of touch?

Sing a sound and imag­ine your toes or oth­er extrem­i­ties vibrat­ing or res­onat­ing with your voice. Do you feel some­thing? How and why?

Micro­phones res­onate with sounds that touch their sen­si­tive com­po­nents. Do oth­er objects also “feel” each other’s vibra­tions and res­onate togeth­er? Exper­i­ment with or watch videos of pen­du­lum clocks or mechan­i­cal metronomes syn­chro­niz­ing when they are placed on a com­mon sur­face. (Cf. “Entrain­ment or Mode Locking”.)

ABOUT THE SENSATION OF MECHANICAL VIBRATION:

“Mechanore­cep­tors” are dis­trib­uted across our body to sense dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties of touch, vibra­tion, and pressure.

If a vibra­tion oscil­lates reg­u­lar­ly (“peri­od­i­cal­ly” return­ing to the same con­di­tion at equal incre­ments of time) between 20 to 20,000 Hz (cycles per sec­ond) and is intense (loud) enough, the ear fus­es the sep­a­rate oscil­la­tions into an expe­ri­ence of con­tin­u­ous pitched tone. The low­est note on a piano is 27.5 Hz, and a lit­tle below that, from 25 down to 20 Hz, pitch­es sound more wob­bly and indis­tinct, and from 20 Hz down (known as “infrapitch”) to about 0.5 Hz (one cycle every two sec­onds), each oscil­la­tion is heard as a dis­crete click (a “pulse”) with­in a steadi­ly repeat­ing rhythm. Dif­fer­ent oscil­la­tions can also be expe­ri­enced as vibra­tion and pres­sure changes by mechanore­cep­tors all over our body. And even fre­quen­cies that we can’t feel as dis­tinct vibra­tion or pres­sure changes, may still affect our bod­ies.  

RELATED TERMS & RESOURCES TO EXPLORE (HYPERLINKED)

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-rkS6BcMVyt-94SaOujtKJm_vJa0IBa

Mechanore­cep­tors: 

• Lamel­lar corpuscle

• Tac­tile corpuscle

• Merkel nerve ending

• Bul­bous corpuscle

Tado­ma

Vibratese Lan­guage

Opta­con

Phonon

Cymat­ics

Essen­tic and Sen­tic Forms (See Clynes, in book & doc­u­ment list below)

Entrain­ment or mode locking

Vestibu­lar Self-Motion (See Bharucha, in book & doc­u­ment list below)

CREDITS

Con­cept — Daniel Oore

Text — Daniel Oore

Nar­ra­tion — Daniel Oore

Video Demon­stra­tion — Jonathan Oore & Daniel Oore

Videog­ra­phy — Sta­cy Smith, Jonathan Oore, Daniel Oore

Video & Audio edit­ing — Daniel Oore

Orig­i­nal Music & Sound­scape — Daniel Oore

Con­sul­tants — Dr. Morde­cai Oore, P. Eng (IMP Aero­space) & Dr. Jonathan Oore, MD (McGill Uni­ver­si­ty) 

WARNINGS:

To help pre­vent germ trans­mis­sion, wash and/or dis­in­fect your hands, oth­er body parts, and objects used before, in between, and after the activ­i­ties described. 

The demon­stra­tions in this video have been sped up to allow a high­er num­ber of ideas to be pre­sent­ed in an enter­tain­ing man­ner. Try­ing these activ­i­ties at such a fast paces is not rec­om­mend­ed (and could even result in injury…). If you want to watch the activ­i­ties slow­ly, select a slow­er play­back speed in the YouTube video pref­er­ences. 

BOOKS & DOCUMENTS WITH INFORMATION & IDEAS ABOUT SOUND, VIBRATION, TOUCH, AND HEARING

Ball, Philip. The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do With­out It. New York: Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2010.

Bash­win­er, David Michael. “Musi­cal Emo­tion: Toward a Bio­log­i­cal­ly Ground­ed The­o­ry.” The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go, 2010.

Bea­ment, James. How We Hear Music: The Rela­tion­ship Between Music and the Hear­ing Mech­a­nism. Boy­dell Press, 2003.

Berendt, Joachim-Ernst. Nada Brah­ma, the World Is Sound: Music and the Land­scape of Con­scious­ness. Des­tiny Books, 1987.

Berg, Jere­my M., John L. Tymoczko, and Lubert Stry­er. “Hear­ing Depends on the Speedy Detec­tion of Mechan­i­cal Stim­uli.” Bio­chem­istry. 5th Edi­tion, 2002. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22542/.

Bharucha, Jamshed J., Mea­gan Cur­tis, and Kaivon Paroo. “Vari­eties of Musi­cal Expe­ri­ence.” Cog­ni­tion 100, no. 1 (May 2006): 131–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.008.

Blauert, Jens, ed. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Acoustics. Berlin: Springer-Ver­lag, 2005.

Boom­sliter, Paul, and War­ren Creel. “The Long Pat­tern Hypoth­e­sis in Har­mo­ny and Hear­ing.” Jour­nal of Music The­o­ry 5, no. 1 (1961): 2. https://doi.org/10.2307/842868.

Bra­con­nier, Deb­o­rah. “Woman Can Lit­er­al­ly Feel the Noise.” Med­ical Xpress, May 30, 2011. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011–05-woman-literally-noise.html.

Bur­rows, David L. Time and the Warm Body a Musi­cal Per­spec­tive on the Con­struc­tion of Time. Lei­den; Boston: Brill, 2007.

Car­i­ani, Peter. “Tem­po­ral Codes, Tim­ing Nets, and Music Per­cep­tion.” Jour­nal of New Music Research 30, no. 2 (2001): 107–135.

Changizi, M.A. Har­nessed: How Lan­guage and Music Mim­ic­ked Nature and Trans­formed Ape to Man. Kin­dle edi­tion. Ben­Bel­la Books, 2011.

Clynes, Man­fred. “Time-Forms, Nature’s Gen­er­a­tors and Com­mu­ni­ca­tors of Emo­tion.” In Robot and Human Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, 1992. Pro­ceed­ings., IEEE Inter­na­tion­al Work­shop On, 18–31. IEEE, 1992. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=253908.

Clynes, Man­fred, and Yehu­di Menuhin. Sen­tics: The Touch of Emo­tions. Anchor Press Gar­den City, NY, 1977. http://senticcycles.org/home/sentics/articles/sentics.pdf.

Fras­er, J. T. “The Art of the Audi­ble ‘Now.’” Music The­o­ry Spec­trum 7 (April 1985): 181–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/745887.

Gaulon, C., C. Derec, T. Com­bri­at, P. Mar­mot­tant, and F. Elias. “Sound and Vision: Visu­al­iza­tion of Music with a Soap Film.” Euro­pean Jour­nal of Physics 38, no. 4 (July 1, 2017): 045804. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361–6404/aa7147. (https://www-liphy.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/pagesperso/marmottant/Publications_files/Gaulon2017EJP.pdf)

God­win, Josce­lyn. Har­monies of Heav­en and Earth: Mys­ti­cism in Music from Antiq­ui­ty to the Avant-Garde. Simon and Schus­ter, 1987.

———. The Mys­tery of the Sev­en Vow­els: In The­o­ry and Prac­tice. Grand Rapids, MI, USA: Phanes Press, 1991.

Gold­stein, E. Bruce, Glyn W. Humphreys, Mar­garet Shiffrar, and William A. Yost, eds. Black­well Hand­book of Sen­sa­tion and Per­cep­tion. Black­well Hand­books of Exper­i­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy 1. Oxford, UK ; Malden, MA: Black­well Pub, 2005.

Han­del, Stephen. Per­cep­tu­al Coher­ence: Hear­ing and See­ing. Oxford; New York: Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2006.

Hud­speth, A. J. “How Hear­ing Hap­pens.” Neu­ron 19, no. 5 (1997): 947–950.

Hugill, Andrew. The Dig­i­tal Musi­cian. New York: Rout­ledge, 2008.

Kei­del, W. “The Sen­so­ry Detec­tion of Vibra­tions.” In Foun­da­tions of Sen­so­ry Sci­ence, edit­ed by W.W. Daw­son and J.M. Enoch, 465–512. Berlin: Springer-Ver­lag, 1984.

Lund­borg, Göran. The Hand and the Brain. Lon­don: Springer Lon­don, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–1‑4471–5334‑4.

Mayr, Albert. “Sketch­es for a Low-Fre­quen­cy Solfège.” Music The­o­ry Spec­trum 7 (April 1985): 107–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/745882.

Mazur, Joseph. The Motion Para­dox the 2,500-Year-Old Puz­zle Behind All the Mys­ter­ies of Time and Space. New York: Dut­ton, 2007.

Merchel, Sebas­t­ian, and M. Ercan Altin­soy. “Audi­to­ry-Tac­tile Expe­ri­ence of Music.” In Musi­cal Hap­tics, edit­ed by Ste­fano Papet­ti and Char­alam­pos Saitis, 123–48. Springer Series on Touch and Hap­tic Sys­tems. Cham: Springer Inter­na­tion­al Pub­lish­ing, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3‑319–58316-7_7.

Nuss­baum, Charles O. The Musi­cal Rep­re­sen­ta­tion: Mean­ing, Ontol­ogy, and Emo­tion. A Brad­ford Book. Cam­bridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2007.

Research Fea­tures. “Over­lap­ping Sens­es: Hear­ing and Touch Share Cir­cuits in the Brain,” April 5, 2018. https://researchfeatures.com/2018/04/05/hearing-and-touch-share-circuits-in-the-brain/.

Pareyón, Gabriel. On Musi­cal Self-Sim­i­lar­i­ty: Inter­semio­sis as Synec­doche and Anal­o­gy. Ima­tra; [Helsin­ki]: Inter­na­tion­al Semi­otics Insti­tute ; Semi­otic Soci­ety of Fin­land, 2011.

Parisi, David. Archae­olo­gies of Touch: Inter­fac­ing with Hap­tics from Elec­tric­i­ty to Com­put­ing. U of Min­neso­ta Press, 2018.

Pater­son, Mark. The Sens­es of Touch: Hap­tics, Affects, and Tech­nolo­gies. Oxford ; New York: Berg, 2007.

Piechows­ki, Michael M. “The Log­i­cal and the Empir­i­cal Form of Feel­ing.” Jour­nal of Aes­thet­ic Edu­ca­tion 15, no. 1 (Jan­u­ary 1981): 31. https://doi.org/10.2307/3332208.

Plomp, Reinier. The Intel­li­gent Ear: On the Nature of Sound Per­cep­tion. Mah­wah, N.J: Lawrence Erl­baum Asso­ciates, 2002.

Pogo­rilows­ki, Andrei. The Music of the Tem­po­ral­ists. Bucharest, Roma­nia: André Pogo­riloff­s­ki, 2012.

Reed, C. M., N. I. Durlach, L. D. Brai­da, and M. C. Schultz. “Ana­lyt­ic Study of the Tado­ma Method: Effects of Hand Posi­tion on Seg­men­tal Speech Per­cep­tion.” Jour­nal of Speech and Hear­ing Research 32, no. 4 (Decem­ber 1989): 921–29. https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3204.921.

Reed, C. M., W. M. Rabi­nowitz, N. I. Durlach, L. D. Brai­da, S. Con­way-Fithi­an, and M. C. Schultz. “Research on the Tado­ma Method of Speech Com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” The Jour­nal of the Acousti­cal Soci­ety of Amer­i­ca 77, no. 1 (Jan­u­ary 1985): 247–57. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.392266.

Ro, Tony, Johanan Hsu, Nafi Yasar, Caitlin Elmore, and Michael Beauchamp. “Sound Enhances Touch Per­cep­tion.” Exper­i­men­tal Brain Research. Exper­i­mentelle Hirn­forschung. Expéri­men­ta­tion Cérébrale 195 (April 1, 2009): 135–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009‑1759‑8.

Shus­ter­man, Richard. Body Con­scious­ness: A Phi­los­o­phy of Mind­ful­ness and Somaes­thet­ics. Cam­bridge; New York: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2008.

Stein, Deb­o­rah Kent. “The Opta­con: Past, Present, and Future.” nfb.org. Accessed July 2, 2020. https://www.nfb.org/sites/www.nfb.org/files/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm98/bm980506.htm.

Sterne, Jonathan, ed. The Sound Stud­ies Read­er. New York: Rout­ledge, 2012.

Tru­ax, Bar­ry. Acoustic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. West­port, Conn.: Ablex, 2001.

Van­Hemert, Kyle. “Cos­mic Visu­als Made With Light, Sound, and … Soap?” Wired, March 27, 2014. https://www.wired.com/2014/03/cosmic-visuals-made-light-sound-soap/.

Von Helmholtz, Her­mann. On the Sen­sa­tions of Tone as a Phys­i­o­log­i­cal Basis for the The­o­ry of Music. Lon­don: Long­mans, Green, 1875.

Zbikows­ki, Lawrence Michael. Con­cep­tu­al­iz­ing Music: Cog­ni­tive Struc­ture, The­o­ry, and Analy­sis. AMS Stud­ies in Music. Oxford ; New York: Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2002.

Hel­lo!  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pared for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am liv­ing the expe­ri­ence in a way.  When every­one involved is open and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate, then it feels like we are all in this togeth­er.  We receive and give in this very direct and delib­er­ate way that I think is an hon­est exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy!

Swirl

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Gath­er some met­al sal­ad bowls with your friends and place them on the floor.

2. Fill each bowl with 3 to 4 mar­bles.  Remem­ber to count the total num­ber before and after to ensure you don’t lose any mar­bles.  We don’t want any­one to acci­den­tal­ly slip on them.

3. Before we play, let’s prac­tice.  Swirl the mar­bles inside the met­al sal­ad bowl.

Let’s Play!

Swirl mar­bles in the bowl and place bowls back onto the floor.  While mar­bles are in motion, con­tin­ue this action to keep the sounds going.  (Ah!  Lis­ten to these beau­ti­ful sounds.)

Impor­tant

Be on the look­out for jump­ing mar­bles.  Pick them up quick­ly and place them back into the bowl.  Explore this as long as you like.

Hel­lo!  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pared for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am liv­ing the expe­ri­ence in a way.  When every­one involved is open and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate, then it feels like we are all in this togeth­er.  We receive and give in this very direct and delib­er­ate way that I think is an hon­est exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy!

Keys Chain for Jesse Stewart

Prepa­ra­tion:

Gath­er a bunch of unwant­ed keys from friends, neigh­bours or your local hard­ward store.

If you are play­ing on the floor you don’t want to scratch, use a piece of ply­wood instead.

Let’s prac­tice: play the key by hold­ing the long part of the key and bring­ing the large flat part of the key fall onto the floor.

Let’s play!

1. Choose a prompter for your game of 2 or more players

2. The prompter directs a slow heart beat for all the play­ers to follow

3. Let’s use fruit names to sub­di­vide the heart beat start­ing with peach.

4. You can also use apple (for a sub­di­vi­sion of 2), pineap­ple (for 3) or water­mel­on (for 4).

5. The prompter can also use their fin­gers to indi­cate the sub­di­vi­sions of the heart­beat (1, 2, 3 or 4).

6. Thumb up indi­cates the ending.

Hel­lo!  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pared for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am liv­ing the expe­ri­ence in a way.  When every­one involved is open and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate, then it feels like we are all in this togeth­er.  We receive and give in this very direct and delib­er­ate way that I think is an hon­est exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy!

Take Flight

Prepa­ra­tion:

Find a piece of tis­sue paper that is just for you!

Let’s play!

1. Cre­ate wind with your body to lift the tis­sue paper off the ground

2. Play with the paper freely

3. Come to stand­ing and toss the tis­sue paper, observe the paper sculp­tures in the air.

4. Get into a nat­ur­al toss­ing pulse, let’s call it heartbeat

5. Sub­di­vide this heart­beat (For exam­ple: 123, 123, etc.).  If you are play­ing with a friend or in a group, try toss­ing the paper to each oth­er.  Remem­ber, try to keep the tis­sue paper in the air.

6. Even­tu­al­ly, allow the paper to come into con­tact with dif­fer­ent parts of the body.

7. Allow the game to come to a nat­ur­al end.

Feel free to do a part­ner ver­sion while sitting!

Hel­lo!  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pared for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am liv­ing the expe­ri­ence in a way.  When every­one involved is open and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate, then it feels like we are all in this togeth­er.  We receive and give in this very direct and delib­er­ate way that I think is an hon­est exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy!

Part­ner Walk

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Gath­er an object or hand­held per­cus­sion instru­ment and a stick you can play it with, find a part­ner and link arms.

2.  Each pair of play­ers can decide who will be the leader.  Once a leader is select­ed, they can put up their hand.

Let’s play!

1. The leader plays their object while step­ping at the same time.  Their part­ner will try to syn­chro­nize with them as close as pos­si­ble.  The leader can move for­wards, back­wards, side to side, or change the pace or rhythm of their movements.

2.  For social dis­tanc­ing pur­pos­es, you can also play this game 6 feet apart from your partner.

Feel free to get cre­ative with your move­ments, stay safe and have fun!

Hel­lo!  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pared for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am liv­ing the expe­ri­ence in a way.  When every­one involved is open and will­ing to par­tic­i­pate, then it feels like we are all in this togeth­er.  We receive and give in this very direct and delib­er­ate way that I think is an hon­est exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy!

Path

Prepa­ra­tion:

1. Gath­er a bunch of objects around the house like cups, bowls, jars, what­ev­er you can find.  Test the sounds to see if you like them.

2.  Make 2 sound­ing pen­du­lums out of some mason jar lids by tying a long piece of string on each with a loop at the end.

3. With one friend or more, make a path­way with the objects leav­ing a space in between wide enough for a play­er to walk through.

Let’s play!

2.  The play­er starts to walk through the path while sway­ing the pen­du­lums gen­tly so that they come into con­tact with the objects.

3.  As the play­er gets towards the end of the path, path­mak­ers are respon­si­ble to keep on extend­ing the path with objects from the oth­er end.

The play­er can choose to walk back­wards or pause at any point, but must even­tu­al­ly con­tin­ue forward.

Path­mak­ers are free to change the shape and direc­tion of the path.

4.  The game ends when the play­er reach­es the end of the path.

Feel free to get cre­ative with your move­ments, stay safe and have fun!

This entry is a co-writ­ten account of “jam sessions”—an impro­vi­sa­tion­al musi­cal prac­tice based in Regi­na, Saskatchewan that embraces and accounts for rad­i­cal forms of access in son­ic expres­sion with dis­abled and Deaf folx. The writ­ers here are Dr. Helen Prid­more, a musi­cian-aca­d­e­m­ic who orig­i­nal­ly devel­oped the idea for “jam ses­sions,” and Dr. Chelsea Jones, a Mitacs Post­doc­tor­al Fel­low who assist­ed in sup­port­ing this vibrant work. The par­tic­i­pants in this project are mem­bers of The Big Sky Cen­tre for Learn­ing and Being Aston­ished! [insert URL: www.beingastonished.com], more com­mon­ly known as Astonished!.

1. Intro­duc­ing Jam Sessions

Helen: In ear­ly sum­mer 2019, I began to work with Aston­ished!, a fam­i­ly-dri­ven com­mu­ni­ty based orga­ni­za­tion offer­ing cre­ative and edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple with com­plex phys­i­cal disabilities.

Chelsea: At the time, my research focused on what “voice” can mean in the con­text of a bur­geon­ing, but under­rep­re­sent­ed, dis­abil­i­ty and Deaf art move­ment on the Cana­di­an prairies. I am not a musi­cian, so the ele­ment of impro­vi­sa­tion­al music-mak­ing was entire­ly new to me. I do, how­ev­er, strong­ly believe in doing work that usurps ableist and colo­nial ambi­tions of “giv­ing voice,” which is why it was impor­tant for me to sup­port Helen’s jam ses­sions, which con­tin­ue to be an impor­tant cul­tur­al con­tri­bu­tion to the dis­abil­i­ty arts scene in Regina.

Helen: My work with Aston­ished! is part of a large-scale project fund­ed by the Cana­da Coun­cil for the Arts. Enti­tled Mul­ti­PLAY, this project brings togeth­er artists and com­mu­ni­ties across Cana­da, explor­ing impro­vi­sa­tion, tech­nol­o­gy and col­lab­o­ra­tion. The first step in build­ing jam ses­sions was to meet with Aston­ished! mem­bers in Decem­ber 2018 to explain how impro­vi­sa­tion­al music mak­ing can work. Chelsea and I  pre­sent­ed the idea to stu­dent researchers and stake­hold­ers (such as fam­i­ly members).

1. Mov­ing Beyond “Voice” through Jam Sessions

Helen: In ear­ly 2019, Aston­ished! participants—known as stu­dent researchers for their role as design­ers and par­tic­i­pants in uni­ver­si­ty-based research projects—and I met reg­u­lar­ly in sum­mer 2019 and ongo­ing into the fall, explor­ing ways to impro­vise togeth­er.  I want­ed to encour­age explo­ration of what would be pos­si­ble for them, and to dimin­ish fears that the vocal sounds pro­duced were “not good enough” or “not nor­mal.”  What is a nor­mal vocal sound, any­way?  My own world as a singer embraces many dif­fer­ent types of vocal sound, inten­tion­al­ly explor­ing vocal pos­si­bil­i­ties and work­ing to break down stereo­types of vocal “beau­ty.”

1. Work­ing with Technology

Chelsea: I began attend­ing the group’s jam ses­sions. I took notes as part of my par­tic­i­pant-obser­va­tion research. To ini­ti­ate ideas and to over­come ini­tial shy­ness at using voic­es, we used some elec­tron­ic tools such as iPads loaded with sound-mak­ing apps, and a loop­er which record­ed and re-played sounds and voices.

Helen: One of the first impro­vi­sa­tions we tried togeth­er was an audio depic­tion of Bren­da MacLauch­lan, one of the founders of Aston­ished!, on her bicycle.

“Imag­ine Bren­da rid­ing to cam­pus (the Uni­ver­si­ty of Regi­na cam­pus, where ses­sions were held) against the wind.  What kind of sound does her bicy­cle make?  Now she’s lock­ing up the bike, and com­ing to meet us…and now she is coast­ing home with the wind behind her…”

These kinds of visu­al stim­uli, found­ed in real life and fea­tur­ing a well-loved friend, pro­voked col­lab­o­ra­tive sound-mak­ing and some fun.

Chelsea: Because this work involved a com­bi­na­tion of embod­ied voic­es and tech­nol­o­gy, I spent time out­side of the jam ses­sions work with Aston­ished! stu­dent researchers on learn­ing the tech­nol­o­gy. This meant try­ing new tools—iPads, phone apps, edit­ing soft­ware, voice recorders, and keyboards—and learn­ing them for the first time, togeth­er. The idea was to find tech­nolo­gies that gelled with people’s ambi­tions in son­ic cre­ation and fit their embod­ied modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For exam­ple, when it was not pos­si­ble for some par­tic­i­pants to hold iPads, Helen found mic stand attach­ments to hold and ele­vate the iPads for eas­i­er access.

Helen: As the sum­mer pro­gressed, the group began to explore actu­al vocal sounds, cre­at­ing sound­scapes on var­i­ous themes. We re-cre­at­ed the sounds of attend­ing a foot­ball game; we shared sto­ries from sum­mer camp, such as canoe trips and camp­fire ghost sto­ries; and we had some good laughs mixed in with the hes­i­ta­tion to use voic­es which func­tion in their own way.

1. Going Pub­lic: Jam Ses­sions as Dis­abil­i­ty Artivism

Helen: My inter­est in work­ing with the Aston­ished! stu­dent researchers is found­ed on my own research inter­ests in exper­i­men­tal voice and impro­vi­sa­tion.  How­ev­er, I must empha­size that my inter­est grew as I got to know this remark­able group of young peo­ple.  I was espe­cial­ly impressed with their efforts and cre­ativ­i­ty at the pub­lic sym­po­sium held in Regi­na in Novem­ber 2019, “Dis­abil­i­ty Artivism Across the Fly­over Provinces.” Orga­nized and pro­duced by Chelsea, this one-day sym­po­sium fea­tured a vari­ety of guest speak­ers, pre­sen­ta­tions and round­table dis­cus­sions, based on the themes of dis­abil­i­ty arts and cre­ativ­i­ty. Our jam ses­sion group was pleased to be fea­tured in the day’s activ­i­ties, and we pre­sent­ed a live impro­vi­sa­tion based on “a day in the life of an Aston­ished! stu­dent researcher.”

Chelsea: Fol­low­ing the lead of oth­er major dis­abil­i­ty-led arts events in Cana­da, such as Crip­ping the Arts [URL: http://bodiesintranslation.ca/cripping-the-arts-symposium-2019/] and Ren­dezvous with Mad­ness [URL: https://workmanarts.com/rendezvous-with-madness/] that cel­e­brate arts-based advo­ca­cy, this gath­er­ing focused on local dis­abil­i­ty arts entan­gle­ments with region­al under­stand­ing of dis­abil­i­ty pol­i­tics by ask­ing: how does the work of dis­abled arts disrupt—or “crip”—normative artis­tic prac­tices on the prairies? The col­lec­tive jam ses­sion served as a rad­i­cal arts prac­tice that might best be described using the words of Lucia Carl­son in her 2016 chap­ter, “Music, Intel­lec­tu­al Dis­abil­i­ty, and Human Flourishing”:

“This was not a ther­a­peu­tic endeav­or with a set goal; rather than being direct­ed at teach­ing, nor­mal­iz­ing, or cul­ti­vat­ing par­tic­u­lar skills, this musi­cal expe­ri­ence unfold­ed organ­i­cal­ly and was valu­able and val­ued for its own sake” (p. 41). 

Helen: Because our improv was sound-based, we were con­scious that it was not ful­ly reach­ing out to every­one in the audi­ence, as we had a large crowd of Deaf and hard-of-hear­ing par­tic­i­pants at the sym­po­sium.  There­fore it was a delight to invite our col­league, lead­ing edu­ca­tor in Deaf and hard-of-hear­ing pro­grams Dr. Joanne Weber, to lead a move­ment- and ges­ture-based improv that involved the entire audi­ence.  Dr. Weber passed on the lead­er­ship to one of her Deaf stu­dents and he ani­mat­ed­ly led the crowd in a spir­it­ed improv that includ­ed both sound and action.

Helen: I was thrilled to see and hear the par­tic­i­pa­tion of a large group in the impro­vi­sa­tion that began with the Aston­ished! jam group.  While the jam ses­sions are cur­rent­ly in hia­tus due to the pan­dem­ic, it is my hope that I can con­tin­ue to explore sound impro­vi­sa­tion with this friend­ly and engaged group of stu­dent researchers. Work­ing with them has cer­tain­ly enlarged my under­stand­ing of vocal beauty.

Mat­ter at Your Fingertips

Using play­dough, ‘Mat­ter at Your Fin­ger­tips’ is a play­ful ini­ti­a­tion to sound cre­ation. Objec­tive: to make a col­lec­tive com­po­si­tion fea­tur­ing a score made out of play dough.

By MariEve Lau­zon and Michel Frigon

Class I

1. Play the fol­low­ing sound para­me­ters using hands on a chair, desk or table. Empha­size visu­al con­tact to ensure a clean cut-off.

   1. Soft

   2. Loud

   3. Silence

   4. Sound that changes (Cycle 1; Gr. 1 & 2), crescendo/decrescendo (Cycles 2 & 3, Gr. 3–6)

   5. Short sound

1. Demon­strate how to rep­re­sent sounds using play dough. Explain the shapes for:

1. Show how to make sculp­tures by assem­bling shapes together.

Hint: warm play­dough up before mak­ing shapes.

1. Stu­dents make shapes.

1. Make a score using stu­dents’ shapes.

Hint: Use sto­ry as an anal­o­gy: a score need a begin­ning, mid­dle and end

1. Play the score (using hands on chair or other)

Fol­low conductor’s gestures

Fol­low student’s hand as the ‘cur­sor’

Class 2

Review the pre­vi­ous class. Eval­u­ate as appro­pri­ate (see work­sheet below).

1. Review dif­fer­ence sounds and shapes.

2. Ask stu­dents to make 2 dif­fer­ent shapes of their choice.

3. Cre­ate a col­lec­tive score. Stu­dents place their shape in a spot of their choosing.

4. Play the score.

5. Move shapes to make a new piece.

Eval­u­a­tion:

Invent (team­work)

• Clar­i­ty and pre­ci­sion of score

• Atten­tion to timing

Inter­pret

• Respect for the score (dynam­ics, silences, timing)

Appre­ci­ate (see work­sheet with questions)

• Iden­ti­fy sound para­me­ters of var­i­ous shapes (for younger students)

• Rec­og­nize sound para­me­ters by ear (e.g. dic­ta­tion of sounds for which stu­dents draw shapes or respond true or false to giv­en shapes)

Vari­a­tions:

Use instru­ments: boomwhack­ers, drums, recorders, wind instru­ments, voice, key­board per­cus­sion instru­ments, small per­cus­sion etc.

Asso­ci­a­tion of col­or of play­dough with: boomwhack­ers, vow­els or con­so­nants, vocal effects, instru­ment fam­i­ly, etc.

Add a sec­ond voice to the score

Hint: To help dis­tri­b­u­tion, take play­dough out of con­tain­ers and make one big ball of each colour. Wrap play­dough in plas­tic wrap to keep moist.