Wed 28th Feb     (Session 2)

am   9.15 - 12.00     SALTWOOD PS

I began the session by talking through the order of events in yesterday's piece so that everyone (including me!) could remember what had happened.  We then ran through the composition and began to expand it with new ideas, working backwards and forwards as well as extending the ideas that we had already come up with.  Slowly but surely, the composition began to take on board a more recognisable and repeatable form each time we ran through, as the students learnt to place their sounds more sympathetically.

In my first session with them yesterday I had assumed the responsibility of cuing many of their ideas.  Today I handed over this responsibility to various orchestral members.  By the end of the morning we had doubled the length of our piece, with the first part (what we did yesterday) drastically improved.  Everyone could hear this improvement and was encouraged by the fact that our compositional process was working.  Just before the end of the morning, we ran through the whole of our composition so far, and I recorded it.

After the session, Louis, a young flautist with about two months playing experience behind him, came up to tell me he had learnt more that morning than he had done in all his other music lessons.  I asked him what he meant, and what sort of things he had learnt.  He replied that he had learnt how to trill (showing me what you had to do) and also play different long notes.  This was especially good to hear, as yesterday when I had asked each individual to improvise something, Louis had struggled to get even a bit of a note out of his instrument.  I told him that the knack was to keep learning and practising, and that if he did that he would improve even more.

pm   1.00 - 3.15     ST LEONARD'S  PS

Today the class teacher, Chris Bill, was present, although he did have to leave after three-quarters of an hour, and so was replaced by a classroom helper.

Like this morning, I first of all ran through the piece we composed yesterday, making sure everyone could remember the sequence, and then we continued adding one idea after another.  Unfortunately, when the teacher left there was a drop in the students' concentration level, which was a shame as perhaps they didn't progress as much as they otherwise might have.

By the end of the afternoon our composition had doubled in length.  As well as this, another girl (Robin) had also assumed the responsibility of a sub-conductor.  This meant that Abbie could just cue her and then think about another texture whilst Robin took care of her smaller ensemble.

At the end of the afternoon I recorded the composition so far.