Music for Teachers

Welcome to the ‘Music for Teachers’ blog. The ‘Music for Teachers’ website is at www.m4t.org

The follow link provides a range of sources to support parents in giving thier children a good start in music making.

Music for Parents

Bad Penny Blues  link 1

Humph - wikipedia link 2

The sixty-piece orchestra performed a charity concert for Hope House children’s hospice this afternoon at Meole Brace School. A magnificent sum of £1000 was presented to support the music room at Hope House.

The concert programme, performed by senior players and staff from the County orchestras and band, included music from current and classic cinema and theatre scores.

Performers who would like to join us for the 2008/9 season programme should please contact me.

Two training days have been planned for all schools in South Shropshire (April 7th) and Shrewsbury (April 8th) to work together to review schemes of work to support the changes in the new curriculum for music, to be launched for year 7 in September 2008.

You will receive details of the agenda and venues for the day from your school. I hope these prove to be interesting days and also times when we can work together to redesign units of work.

Musical Futures (www.musicalfutures.org.uk) is a national initiative focusing on ideas and approaches which can personalise the music learning experience for young people at secondary level, and make it more enjoyable and effective, while still achieving and attaining.

There is a training session coming up on the 24th January 2008 at the Molineux Stadium in Wolverhampton. This CPD session aims to introduce delegates to the various models and approaches developed through Musical Futures, in a practical, hands-on way. The day is designed for teachers and other staff who might want to find out about Musical Futures in more depth.

For details contact westmidlands@musicleaders.net or on 0121 236 7978

I was delighted to receive an invitation to see ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ performed this week by a very strong cast at Grove School, Market Drayton, since their version of ‘Summer Holiday’ last year had been a totally enjoyable experience.

I attended the first night performance on Wednesday and the score was definitely ‘
Croatia 3 – The Grove 10!’ A most enjoyable evening made much more so since the diction was very good enabling the audience to hear the delights of the lyrics and dialogue.

A strength of the production was a uniformly very capable cast – good vocal work was a strong feature and very good characterisations throughout – unlike in many performances in some schools where the dramatic character is dropped as soon as a song begins.

I would particularly like to draw attention to the excellent work of the three students who linked the whole plot together as the characters Ronette, Crystal and Chiffon – they were outstanding – good stage presence, excellent communication with the audience and fine vocals with good well-balance harmonies – well done, Harriet, Mel and Hope, a great strength of the production.

I enjoyed the work of Marcus Groom as Mr Mushnik, he had created a convincing character and supported it with very good vocals; Audrey was played with style and confidence by Daisy McKee and earned the audience sympathy with a well sustained presentation seeming, initially, to be the only element of normality in a bizarre situation; Jonnie Hardy was amazingly over the top, a necessity for the role of ‘The Dentist’, he clearly thoroughly enjoyed the part which was an amalgam (!) of a sort of cross between Elvis, The Fonz and Hannibal Lecter – delicious! … and an inspired revisit of the chest-hair joke – brilliant!

Amy, Ollie and Robbie in smaller support roles made an impact – these were without the use of microphones and this caused a slight problem of balance in the vocal numbers but not a major issue.

Seymour played by Jo was such a considered characterisation – hesitant, exhibiting such low self-esteem and embarrassment that you were sympathetic even when he commits murder! Jo has a good voice – in places I felt the score was pitched a little low for him but he was convincing in this black role and with an extremely strong cast the vocal ensemble set pieces worked a treat.

The technical difficulties of this show should not be underestimated. It seemed to me that much time had been invested in this aspect of the show and it was really effective – the work of the sound and lighting team was very good. Some fine work had been undertaken to achieve a good sound balance in the musical numbers between the band and the voices – this was excellent – there’s nothing worse than seeing a show when the sound system is poor – not in this case. Excellent work Gareth and Jordan. This was well supported by the stage crew, Ben and Alex were presented with what must have been some complex set changes – these were very slick and made for a professional presentation.

Audrey #2 was a delight in all its forms – congratulations to Geert, Lyn and Stew for bringing the beast to life with good timing and effective ‘lip sync’.

This is truly an ensemble piece and the school is fortunate in having a talented group who magnificently held the audience’s attention and were responsible for creating much humour and fun – well done to all.

I’d like to say how good it is to see schools continuing to present major theatrical presentations at a time when it is so easy to focus on things that are easier to quantify and assess. A round of applause is deserved by the senior team of the school for supporting this vital work – so much of this weeks presentation will be remembered as a key part of school-life and long after the SATs scores have disappeared into history.

Congratulations to the cast and their directors Ken Stirling and Sharon Wright for another great show.

The wonderfully useful application called ‘Snippy’, which can be downloaded free from this link allows any section of any screen to be captured with little more than a right click of the mouse - an ideal tool to add visuals to your presentations.

Thanks to Steve on the Shropshire Education blog for this one.

I have been contacted by the company Legacy Productions who have made a new software program to help musicians of all levels to learn letters on all staves as well as on piano and guitar. The program is ’shareware’ and called “Noteable” and you can try out a demo version of it at www.noteableflashcards.com. 

I’ve had a quick look at it and found that I have a disturbingly slow reaction time when using a mouse! The shareware is free for 15 sessions for evaluation purposes. 

Let me know what you think via the blog

I have made a career doing things that weren’t even invented when I graduated from high school 40 years ago. It will be the same for today’s graduates, only on a sharply accelerating timeline. Much of what I learned in the classroom is obsolete or, at best, only marginally useful. What has made a difference in my life has been the ability to learn as I go, to adapt to new ideas, to have the courage to take risks, and to feel confident I will be able to perform and successfully meet the challenges of new situations. These skills I learned through participation in band and drama. - Fred Behning retired from IBM Corporation after a 32-year career that included assignments in systems engineering, product development, management, and customer technology briefings, and is still an IBM consultant. A life-long musician, Fred plays oboe and English horn in the Williamson County Symphony Orchestra and the Austin Symphonic Band.

This extract has been reproduced from the website of an American Music Association - The National Association for Music Education