opera north update

Here's the latest on the music front!
Judith's class have all created and recorded various instrumental motifs that fit with their original ideas for the documentary. They did brilliantly when we recorded this as I had no voice, they had a lot of noisy instruments and fortunately enough discipline and motivation not to play them when were recording. These sections will later on be put with the documentary - some obviously changing their context slightly - but the kids will be able to sort all that out!
They also have their protest songs which need some finishing off.

Philip's class have turned into the music techno whizzes! They've recorded sounds and texts using their voices to match their cartoon character and commissioned music from Matt to fit alongside it. They've begun processing this and matching it up with the animation. They've also given the individual phonemes in the word 'Jabberwocky' personalities, recorded them, added effects and this will later be able to be fitted with the letter animation. The music for the final pixilation section is yet to be done! In addition they have started to work on a chant to go with the rubbish puppets. This grew out of some drama work we did exploring ideas of armies, generals and footsoldiers. Philip has a list of the words which the pupils are learning, - it includes names like Gilbert, Warrior, knuckle boxer, Nellie, Gangster, Yo, Beowulf.....!

Rachael's class has just started some musical work, writing a melody that captured the way that they had intoned their 'Who started it' poem, contuing on from the work with Caroline. This group needs to have quite a lot of music input over this term.

Jennifer's and Sally's class now have an intact structure from beginning to end. Both of them are made up of a mixture of sounds that they have recorded or performed and composed themselves that have then been processed, recordings of sounds that they have 'live processed' (ie. stretched, speeded up, pitch shifted, echoed etc.) song and spoken text. It has been great fun creating both of these pieces as the way that the small sections of material have been worked on, explored and then fitted together to form something which sounds fundamentally exciting, large-scale and impressive has been rewarding for all involved. It was really nice for me too to be able to assemble the pieces in a collaborative and immediate way with Pauline. These still need a lot of work tidying, but it feels good to have some groups where the structure is all in place and all the organic work has fitted together into something that can be performed.

Incidentally, both Sally's and Philip's classes have songs which don't quite fit into their dance pieces but which could possibly go into the evening sharing.