Creative Music for Everybody?Sarah Stiles, Primary Music Today
When Jo Glover asked me to write a short article introducing my new publication I asked her if she wouldn't mind sending me a couple of magazines so that I could check my contribution would be 'suitable'. In the past I have been known to write articles with rather provoking titles such as 'Is practise really necessary?' which as you can imagine is not the sort of thing that all teachers are happy to see! I was enjoying looking through the magazines when Jo's editorial caught my eye and I read that the magazine was about to celebrate its eleventh year and 'how astonishing it is how much the climate and concerns in primary music have changed since our first issue in 1994'. This made me think about the developments that I have also noticed over the years, particularly since moving to Amsterdam sometime ago.
British education has changed and I am shocked! And for someone who does not shock easily this is quite something. You have Government Targets, Guidelines, Assessments, Wider Opportunities, Inclusion, ICT, Special Educational Needs, Independent Learning Skills and many more examples with menacing Capital Letters or abbreviations. How do you cope? Well from what I can see teachers just do, they make the best of it and for those with that extra love of their profession they often do so much more.
When writing 'Music in a Box' I wanted to make it work independently of any existing rules or regulations (whether in the UK or elsewhere) whilst at the same time bearing them in mind. Teachers need freedom to teach in their own way and yet at the same time need structures within this freedom - or freedom within these structures. I wanted to create musical possibilities for all musical levels without too many restrictions. To make a publication which encourages creative music-making for any combination of instruments, for all ages, for both individual and classroom teaching regardless of technical ability or experience sounds rather challenging to say the least. To expect pupils who cannot read music to play along with fellow classmates who can seems optimistic and to ask pupils and teachers who have little or no experience with improvisation to just 'make stuff up' seems improbable! But this is what I wanted to achieve with Music in a Box.
Children often react very strongly to visual elements and I coupled this aspect to encourage the interpretation of cards into musical compositions of their own without them being limited by having to read music. If a child sees a single blob it is not too difficult to play or sing this as one note. Because the interpretation is up to the individual player, no note or sound can be 'wrong'. The interpretation of graphics can be taken further: a small blob could be played as a soft note, a large blob perhaps as loud, ascending shapes as ascending notes, a line could be played as a long note and the depth of colours could represent other nuances. The possibilities are literally endless!
The word cards combined with the other cards encourage pupils to lead small groups, to make choices and get used to giving directions to influence the style and outcome of the music. For those who read music there are music cards without any written clef which can therefore be played by any instrument and combined with other cards to make mini duets, trios or quartets. The cards can be placed two ways up thus creating two melodic possibilities and when playing with transposing instruments the music sometimes takes on a more atonal feel with no less pleasing results.
There are ten games to give some ideas for compositions including games which encourage interaction and often result in spontaneous discussions between pupils. They often come up with new rules and even new games. All in all I hope that Music in a Box is a useful 'tool' which can be used in virtually any instrumental or classroom situation but more importantly... it should just be a lot of fun!
© Sarah Stiles, Primary Music Today, June 2006