The Music Education Podcast
Listen for authentic and challenging conversation on all things music ed. Brought to you by Charanga. Hosted and produced by Chris Woods of The Chris Woods Groove Orchestra.
The Music Education Podcast
Episode 75 - 'Creative Freedom For All' - Jack Grace
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode Chris chats to Jack Grace about music education. This episode is sponsored by Longy School of Music; find out more here... https://longy.edu/
Welcome to the Music Education Podcast. I'm Chris of the Chris Woods Groove Orchestra, and this podcast is brought to you by the Soundstorm Music Education Hub and our sponsor, Longit School of Music. One of my favourite things to do on this podcast is simply having an authentic conversation with a practitioner, and that is exactly what this episode is. It's a chat with musician and music educator Jack Grace. And it includes words of wisdom such as.
SPEAKER_01And I think the minute you try and enforce what you think music is, is then when the creativity of the young people get stunted.
SPEAKER_02It's packed full of wisdom just like that, and ideas for you to use in sessions. And let's be honest, sometimes it's just really nice to hear another practitioner and what they do. I hope you enjoy listening. Jack, thanks so much for joining me.
SPEAKER_01Can we start off with uh who you are and what you do? Yeah, sure. Uh my name's Jack Grace, uh, and I'm a music practitioner based out of Bournemouth. Um, and I do a variety of different sorts of roles. I work predominantly with um PMLD uh and SEN format, but I also do um music communication and sort of uh exploration with people in recovery as well, which is another sort of hat that I wear. Um, but that's the kind of the gist of the broad strokes, anyway, of what I do.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. Okay, people in recovery. Yeah, I think that would be a really interesting thing to get stuck into because that's something that we've not really discussed much on the podcast so far. But I mean, yeah, there's a whole bunch of stuff to to talk about. As I was saying to you before we sort of hit record, my uh inspiration to talk was seeing a really beautiful project you were doing with Soundstorm. Thanks. Do you want to give us a a summary uh an intro of that?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, um, so I spent it was well, it took 18 months to do, but it was 10 months of delivering 20-hour workshops to six SEN schools in BCP uh sort of catchment area, um with the regards of trying to get young people playing instruments that they want to play rather than like the kind of tokenistic here's a shaker, here's this. Um so if people are like, I want to play drums, I want to play piano, like being able to facilitate that, and then out of that process, sort of doing songwriting with them and and doing like songwriting games and workshops that I've sort of developed over the years, and then bringing in my recording equipment towards the end of the 20 hours, sort of 10 hours in terms of workshops, and then another 10 hours in terms of recording, and then with those songs that we'd written, recording them and then putting together as an album, so there were 10 songs total, but six that made the album because there were six schools, um so yeah, which was amazing, and then we got to do sort of it be debuted um on on radio at Victoria School, which was really cool, and then the sort of documentary, I guess, that was done by Soundstorm was was played at the Lighthouse Showcase Um at the beginning of July.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think that documentary was uh well it was super short and just I mean almost more of a sort of a montage of it, wasn't it? But yeah, just painted quite a profound picture, uh and I really enjoyed and interested in the end product as well, which maybe we'll skip to in a moment. But what what sort of needs and abilities were you working with with those students? Because you're talking about you said specifically like instruments that they want to work with, which is is that based on physical limitations where you might immediately think that that person wouldn't be able to play kit drum, for example. Actually, you're you're making that happen. Yes. That sounds cool.
SPEAKER_01Um so yeah, so this the sort of spectrum in terms of the young people that I was working with was everything from um you know like autism sort of level one and two all the way up to like PMLD with young people who are sort of wheelchair users and bed users, and being able to facilitate their need whilst also facilitating everyone. Um, so there was no like only a certain catchment of young people can attend. I was like, I want everyone and anyone to be able to attend because the idea behind my practice is it needs to be as inclusive as as possible that it can work in a mainstream education all the way up to like university level, and then also have then the scope for it to then work in an SCN environment. So that's was really important for me to be able to keep that and and maintain that because that's a real big driving force for me and my my my practice, and that's I think came across in the work because it's maybe it's working with the teacher or working with someone that knows the needs of the young person really well. Um, and lucky enough, like I've worked in some of these schools before, so I've got a really good relationship with some of these young people and kids, and I've done the legwork sort of beforehand and sort of trial and error of like what worked, what didn't work. Um, so I had that beforehand on a few schools, but then some I was literally just coming in and being like, What do you like? You know, like what are you interested in? And some people are like, Yeah, I like electric guitar, but have never played guitar uh in their life, so it's like mm getting getting them to be able to play and and have because really ultimately it also comes down to like they need to they need to be enjoying it, they need to have fun, because the minute they're not, then it's like a chore to do it, and you like music should never be a chore, like it should be like it's the reason I get up every day, and that's why that's what I want for young people as well, so that's really important as well. So it's just sort of trying sometimes thinking outside of the box, they might they might maybe it's that they like the sound of drums, but they can't maybe like for because of limitations, not necessarily because of disabilities, but just because of like time frame and stuff, like micing up a drum kit and stuff. But like I'm lucky enough that I've been as a recording artist for like 15 years now, and I have heaps of samples and libraries and stuff of from doing that for many years. So it might be that we load drum sounds onto a keyboard and there they actually play it in themselves, but all the music that was captured was all done by young people. Like, I wasn't there like, oh, I'll I'll I'll tart it up, I'll do this. It was like anything that was recorded, which meant there was over a thousand tracks of audio for all the schools across 82 children total. There was like a lot.
SPEAKER_02But it was I like I like I like your term uh tarting it up. I think uh, and yeah, you can't really tart up a thousand different audio tracks can be particularly successfully. But I mean that that's a really interesting point there in itself. That idea of the end product and how much you tart it up. Um I think especially if you're working with students who aren't basically you know accomplished musicians already. So you're working with people who maybe have never like played a note before, and you're saying, We're gonna write a song. And I think that there's a big ego thing in there, right? As a as a sort of a practitioner of going, Well, I've got to go back and go, this is what we did, and I know because I was there for the whole thing that even though this sounds like you know, just atonal mess, but I know that the whole process was beautiful and everyone's was so engaged, but yeah, I need to explain this to people, and that there's yeah, there's just so much there, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01There is a there is an element to that, but that's kind of part I think I struggled that in the early years as as sort of when I was embarking on this as a career, but what I learned more was that the more that the young people are engaged and the more the young people like it, whether it's you know me from like a a trained background in music, but at the same time, like I continually strive in my own music that I make to have these elements of like unsettling, jarring moments within music. So if that's just happening naturally and occurring anyway, then you can use like your skills as as a as a trained musician to then have that as a bed and then maybe like steer it in a way that like I would do like chord writing, I call it I call it chord safari, where you you you basically you would choose a key and then you'd have all the chords available, and then you play a game where you get them to choose the chord progression by just playing the chords, and you're like, Do you like this one? And it's always always nine times out of ten, everyone loves the diminished chord, like and it's just like okay, I've got to make this work somehow, and you know, like in a conventional way, but also I think just throwing convention out the window is also like how some of you know, whether it's working with children or working with professional musicians, is when some of the most interesting work happens. So just being open to the process and and letting the young people steer it because they will steer it in a direction of which they want, which is then really inspiring for me, because then I I'm not coming away just having written C, A, minor, and F progressions for 10 months, you know. So, in that sense, is fun and and just having it as an open spectrum, really, just like any like there's no there's no such thing as a a bad note because if they're like I love it, then it's like that's way more important than my ego of being like to you know the head teacher or the whoever it is at Soundstorm that's hearing it, saying, like, yeah, so they really like this really horrible note, hence why it's in there. It's just like that's that's not my priority. Do you know what I mean? I'm I'm there to facilitate for the kids. So um, and and as it happens, no one was like, Yeah, our song's a bit weird, Jack. Like, can we can we make it can we make it nicer? Like everyone loved it, and it was across the board, whether it was like the head teacher or whether it was you know, the guys at Soundstorm, like the feedback that I continuously got from this whole process was just like this is amazing, and then to hear it like in its entirety, like all the way through, was quite like an emotional thing, because like I said, I've worked I worked relentlessly on it for like I was doing two days a week in terms of like actual facilitating the workshops, so I would do like two to three hours at one school, break, travel, another school two to three hours, and that was Tuesday and Friday for ten months, and then I would then come home and then while it's fresh, like get the ideas that we'd been working on, and because like sometimes you there might be like a section that's really really good that was consistent playing, and there might be a bit that wasn't you know keeping time as well, which then affects everyone else's ability to like record on top of that. So it's then just finding like little nuggets and little loops and and sort of piecing it together, but still maintaining that it's the young person's song, not me. Do you know what I mean? So there's a real like fine line, and I feel on the whole, I really a bit of being a producer, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Essentially, you're producing their work and you're capturing a a vibe and a feeling rather than just necessarily mechanics.
SPEAKER_01And each session would start with like whatever I'd done, I would play it back and say, like, do you like it? You know, because there was one bit, there was a couple of times where like I had moved um like just so it was in my head uh a more like consistent transition, and they're like, No, we liked it like the other way, and so then just change it back, and then you build on that, you know what I mean? Because like I'm I'm thinking like if all the songs are like eight-minute long, you know, wizard pieces, then it's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna be a long process when we like when we did the radio launch, because I knew we only had like 45 minutes. So I was also trying to keep it, but it didn't work. I don't like I wasn't conscious of time at any point because when I actually like pieced it all together and with the interviews and stuff, I was like, oh, this is this is great, you know. Um it worked out really well, so it just yeah, I'd not I'd done something like this before, obviously, like recording with bands and like working on my own music and stuff, but it was like the first time that there was like an end deadline, you know, because you can't rush creativity, but it was like I only had 20 hours, I only had you know, it had to be done by like you know, June. So there was a couple of moments where I was like, ooh, like really feeling the pressure and and putting stuff together until they're very, very wee hours of the morning to then get up and then do it all again. But I loved it, man, it was great. Like I it might sound a bit cheesy, but like I feel I got as much out of it as as the young people did, because it really taught me a lot about like what music is fundamentally, and it is just the whether you're trained or not, just this childlike exploration of just finding things that make you happy. Um so I learned a lot from that. Um that was really nice.
SPEAKER_02Is that partly out of people working with instruments when they might never have worked with it before, or they might have such profound physical mechanical limitations that you would again just go like probably, probably mate, guitar isn't gonna be for you. Yeah, but then it's like you're gonna do it in oh, oh fair play, actually. You're you've you're saying something is just not what I expected.
SPEAKER_01That's it, and I think the minute you try and enforce what you think music is, is then when the creativity of the young people gets stunted, like just like we would do like, right, we're gonna I do like mood boards at the beginning, like when we're coming up with like lyrics and stuff, and it might be like, you know, we're too we're choosing, we're doing a thing on like things that we like, so someone says, like, oh, I really like roast dinners, and it's like, okay, so what does a roast dinner sound like? Do you know what I mean? And then it's like, and then they're like, Well, I think it sounds like this, and you're like, Okay, cool, like, do you know what I mean? Like, that's that's amazing, because I'm there going, like, you know, I can't record roast potatoes, do you know what I mean? I need I need I need I need sound, so but it's all about like what what their interpretation is around like the kind of stimuluses that we were using. So like each session, as I said, started off with just playing together and just being spontaneous in the room, and then you know, one young like, and again, it's figuring out like what what a young person wants to gravitate towards because some have sensory issues, so something that's like really metallic and harsh might be but might be difficult for them. So then moving to like more like organ, I want to say like organic, but like you know, like whether it's at hand drums or um I mean I had I had access to these uh thumb bells, which are like like a tube that has a hammer and you like shake them and it's like all 12 notes, and I used them a load, and they were like, you could just figure out what the key was and then just give everyone in the room one, and then I'm just like have at it, do you know what I mean? Like just go wild, and you just capture that, and that's like the bed of like what you're starting with. So it's almost like this drone thing, and then it just progressively grew, and then when we started then thinking about like how they wanted the voices to sound, I'd say like I I like to use just very stripped back methods, and then once I show them like delays and reverbs, they're like whoa, like mind blown, and then all of a sudden everything sounds you know like it's underwater. But that's because for them they've never heard their voice like that. And then I would like then started playing around with like showing them like what autotune was, and then one group which was Victoria, like really lent into that in that that they actually wanted to use it not to not to correct their voice because they weren't singing well, they wanted to use it as like an instrument, which I've which I thought was really cool because like people hear autotune and they just assume you're just making it like you're again tarting it up to make it sound sound quote unquote better. But we were using it in this that really creative way, in that like we had the autotune on whilst recording, so then they were like intentionally like singing in and out of tune so that the autotune was really like kicking in. It sounded great, you know, and you know, loads of modern musicians use it, and I'm just like, well, why can't we? Do you know what I mean? Like, what music are you listening to if you're if you're listening to modern music, then that's just a it's just a tool now, do you know what I mean? That people use it, and it's not so much that they can't sing, it's as I said, it's it's like a creative way of using it. So I think as long as you're not as like you know, tr for forcing the creativity, then it doesn't really matter like what convention is. So yeah, like playing around with that, and then I guess like limitations of people's mobility, like you'd have a kick drum, and it's like, well, you can't, you can't, because we can't get you out of your chair, you can't get down and press the kick pedal. But what you can do is I can put the kick drum right up to your chair, and you can boot it, and I'll record that instead, you know what I mean? And it's like so, but then drummers are probably going, like, you can't kick a drum head, and I'm like, Well, I did it, and it sounded great, you know.
SPEAKER_02That's why it's called a kick drum head.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's it. So, so it's stuff like that just being flexible and and and allowing allowing them to explore music in the way that you know that probably you and I explored music when we were first discovering it, and it's like that where you go like, wait, open tunings, like bling, and you're like, wow, and that you know I mean, and so whether or not quote unquote someone can play guitar, you know, they they can get notes out of it. So it's just my job to be able to be ready to capture that when that happens, you know what I mean? So it's basically having everything always set up because they might do something once and it was amazing, and it's just like it's the same as that raw inspiration, you know what I mean? Unless you hear it back, you're like, how did that go? And then you're you're then sort of chasing the idea, it didn't happen naturally. So that was a big thing that I learned was just like basically record all the time, and then it's then my job to sieve through two hours of audio, but multiple like takes like everywhere. Like I think there was one track that had a hundred and thirty individual stems as like a full-on production thing, do you know what I mean? Like that's like Jacob Collier level, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, but it was it was heaps fun. I loved it, and I'd love to do something like that again because the feedback that I was getting specifically at the lighthouse was like parents were like, God, we had no idea that something like this was available, and we'd love to maybe maybe our school could get involved because because of timing and and as well, that was the the thing, like I'm planning this, but I've never done it. Do you know what I mean? So I'm like, I'll do six schools, 20 at that, and you at first you're like, oh, that seems like it seems like I'm gonna be sat on my thumbs quite a lot, and then it was quite the opposite. It's like, yeah, this is maybe I've bitten off far more than I'm able to chew right now, but you just you just gotta do it. You just gotta push through it.
SPEAKER_00Is your music career ready for its next beat? Longy School of Music of Bard College offers a Master of Music in Music Education program online. Longy's top-ranked accredited program is rooted in culturally responsive teaching and designed with the working teacher in mind. Flexible options like asynchronous classes mean you don't have to take time off to pursue your degree. Longy School of Music, located in Boston, Massachusetts, is a leader in centering music as social change, expanding the world's understanding of what a life in music can mean. Our Master of Music and Music Education online alumni go on to do things like advance their teaching licenses, earn higher salaries, found community music organizations, and teach in higher ed. Financial aid is available, so apply today. Learn more at longi.edu slash study. That's l-o-n-g y doted study.
SPEAKER_02I'm interested by um what you've learned from working in an SN and PMLD scenarios, and then bringing that back to your average state school because so often in your average state school you might only have a couple of kids who are regularly accessing music anyway.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Right? So I'd so the I'd done a project at a mainstream primary school where I'd done something similar, but it was just one school, um, and it worked really well. But it was like, you know, I was they again they weren't like able to access instruments all the time, and and if they had they'd only just embarked on that journey. So I was getting like maybe three or four young people, and I'd give them a guitar that'd be plugged in, and I'd be like, I just need you to just play this note, just keep playing that note, and once you get like the rhythm of it, and then you then get someone else to play the other note, which is like the third, and then the fifth, then you can start building like chords with it. So I had already kind of experimented with that, and I was like, Well, if I if that can work at like a primary level where again the musical journey has just started or hasn't even started yet, then what's to say I can't then apply that with the skills that I've got of being able to facilitate young people with with extra need. So I'd kind of had experimented with it beforehand, but just not as on a big of a scale. Um, and I don't work all that much with mainstream anymore. I predominantly work with SEN and PMLD these days. So I think what it's just taught me is more to just like trust the process because each song, every time I started it, I was like, what is this gonna sound like? Do you know what I mean? And then ten sessions later, it's like this whole piece, and it's like the same as when you're writing music, you don't when you sit down and you pick up your guitar or you're at the piano and you're writing, you don't go like it's gonna sound like this, and I think if that's what you're doing when you're creating music, like oh, I want one of those, is when music's probably its most disingenuous, like just make music, don't don't be making things specifically, unless there's like a brief or something like that. Like if you're you know someone's got a vision like for a score or something, then that's I guess that's slightly different. But for me, when I'm making original music, I don't sit there and go like, Oh, I want I want one of these because that's the hot thing. I just go, just make art, and then it will sound like how it sounds. So that was kind of what I just applied to working with these young people, but but then they all had a clear direction of what they wanted to do. It wasn't like we were there going, like, oh well, I guess we could do like a rock tune, or like, you know, some were like, I just want to sing about my friends, and I'm like, okay, like that could be like kind of a campfire vibe, and I'm like, oh, wicked. So I'm then thinking, like, okay, so that's probably gonna involve like some guitars and some like group work singing and stuff, and and then others were like, We don't want to sing, we just want instruments and we want it to be instrumental, and so that's the way that the music's did, and um everyone had a clear vision, like after we've done maybe like three or four hours of like workshops together, and also like young people had then found like an instrument that they really liked, um, and they're like, Yeah, I just want to play that, and it's like okay, well, let's do that then, you know.
SPEAKER_02Um I think there was um, and it's hard for people listening to to get this because obviously they haven't seen the little documentary, but yeah, what what why I was excited by that project and what I picked up from that documentary is the things that you're talking about now that sort of there didn't seem to be uh like sort of typical musical expectations, there seemed to be like a freedom to it, uh an authenticity to it, and it just felt really quite beautiful. But I'm particularly interested by if you're working in that same way of say, for example, going, here's an open chain guitar, okay, let's work with one note stuff. Um, because I I know this from my experiences in working in mainstream schools, as soon as you start working very simplistically, like individual notes, or without much direction, or crucially without any kind of um guidance towards progression, of like you can oh, you can challenge yourself, you can push yourself, you need to push yourself. Then if that's not there, then people are sort of like, oh, this has no value to it because no one's moving, you're not moving, you're not progressing as a musician. And I guess from my perspective, what what I've learned as a musician, probably quite recently, really, in the last like five, six years, maybe, is that actually that uh technical progression is really quite a negative thing, and what you captured in your workshop there in SEN is really beautifully musical and yeah, deep sort of connection with sound and place and space, and but then when you put that into a mainstream school, I wonder if it can function in the same way, even though it'd probably be the best project for all mainstreams to go through, right? But that sort of constant do you think there's that constant need for progression and development?
SPEAKER_01There is, and I think if you can break it down to what it is, what is it that you're wanting to progress? Are you wanting to progress young people's musical ability or you want to progress and enrich them? So if they're getting something out of playing, you know, whether it's a mainstream setting and they've got a young person that loves Metallica, and they're just playing Metallica and they're loving it. So what's what's more important, the fact that they're steering and learning other genres and scales and stuff, or they are so g'd up that they want to continue playing this instrument because it inspires them. And that for me is that's the progression. Do you know what I mean? Like whether you can whether you can like put it to a scaling or not, it's like what I mean you can because you can like do you can do things with around like their mental health and their well-being, like before the project and after the project, and like I I do similar things at Absolute, and I work with where maybe it's young people that have got high anxiety, or they're in sort of niche groups because uh like within like community stuff, so they might be they were previously involved with like county lines, or they're still involved with county lines, and or it could be um you know anything and everything, really. And we do like how did you feel before you started it, and how do you feel after, whether or not they've like grown in terms of their musical ability, they've grown in terms of their confidence, and that's like I think is something that's really overlooked, specifically in like main mainstream, because you know, it's all about like the grades and stuff like that. And when I work in mainstream, I you know, I I've had feedback from teachers and stuff because I'm not following a curricula, I'm like teaching them the you know, like one, four, and five are your majors and minors in scales and stuff, but like I do it in a different way, and then like after it like they remember it, and then the teachers like, I've been trying to teach this to this class for like nine weeks, and you've done it in your fun little hour workshop. So, again, not following what's measurable in terms of progression, they've then progressed because I'm not I'm not tying myself that oh, I have to teach them scales, I have to teach them this. They're they're they're learning it by doing it, and I think that's the easiest way with anything. Like, I'm a very hands-on person, like I learn things by doing it, and so do young people. So, like, if it worked for me, because with my sort of education journey, I really struggled with like GCSE music because it was just presented to me in ways that I just didn't it just didn't connect with me and I didn't understand, and then it wasn't until I started doing my own independent study around it, and I started figuring this stuff out on my own or figuring it out in a way that makes sense to me. I'm like, well, if that makes sense to me, then that'll that will probably make sense to other people who are also struggling to hear it. So it's just I've just applied those things that make sense to me in my workshop because that's the glory of it being my workshop. Like I get to teach it the way I want to teach it. So I sort of do it in the ways that worked for me because I knew that in the past that things hadn't worked, and then you get the best results, and so it's like again, it's just trying like taking away that thing of like measured success and more just thinking about it as like the process and think of it as like something that's consistent and routinal. Because if you're playing every day for like three hours, you are going to progress, whether you're seeing it or not. Like, it might be that your timing's better, it might be that your dexterity is better, and and specifically with the young people that I was working with, you know, progression isn't necessarily always the main outcome because some of these young people have really severe like degenerative diseases, and it's more about maintaining their ability rather than progressing.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so because you will naturally see a regression of some kind, right?
SPEAKER_01So so if you're just thinking and focusing on progression, then you're focusing on the wrong thing. And I think that's something that I've taken away from working in S E N and PMLD environments that like progression is actually main like maintenance, like maintaining it, they're still able to do this thing consistently, and that they want to as well. Like, you know, so many young people embark on a musical journey and they're put off by it because they're they're not inspired by the music that they're being told to play, or you know, like I know when I first started playing guitar, like I forget what it was that we were doing at school, but it wasn't what I wanted to be doing. Do you know what I mean? And so I asked them, like, what do you like? What music do you like? And then maybe we can like unpick what that is, you know, because everything's got rules around genres and stuff, and that's why genres are genres, because they've got sort of traditions and nuances within them, and and and so if you if you can unpick that as a practitioner and implement it, and not and not being like, oh well, oh, so you like you like rock music, so it's gonna be these sets of chords, or oh, you're really into pop music, it's gonna be these sets, like you don't don't sit there and tell them that because that's like that's either gonna make them uninterested or or they'll might switch off because you're getting too theory-heavy. If you just present it in the way of like, so these chords would work, which ones do you like? And let them choose, then that's that's the best way I've had results. And even when I've done work like songwriting workshops in mainstream, that's the same way as I do it. I just go like a little bit of theory at the beginning, start off in C, A minor. Do you want it to be happy or sad? Cool, then we'll pick major minor. And then I'm like, these are your chords, here's your numbers, these mean this, these work together because of this relationship, and then we just do the kind of chord safari workshop, and it's the same with like lyric writing. Like I do a workshop that's around taking a dictionary, a fact, and a fiction book, and we play a game where we just flick random pages open, choose random lines, write that down, choose a random word from the dictionary, write the definition down, and then on a random word from like either the fiction or or sort of biographical, write them all down, and then set a three-minute timer to write two sentences that have like those three elements in it. And then once you've done those sentences, do it again, but then you're gonna expand on the sentences and then make like a paragraph. Then once you've got a paragraph, then expand it. And then if you want to do collaborative work, then take someone's idea and another idea and then amalgamate them together, and then by the end of it, you've got you've got like a whole bunch of like lyrics, and then you've removed the anxiety of like being like, right, we're gonna write songs, and it's got it's got to be about something that's really meaningful to you, and then young people clam up because they're scared about what the repercussion is of maybe saying something that they really strongly feel about and having the sort of being ridiculed for that. So if you remove that, and then it's it's not that the lyrics are like disingenuous, it's just like that's a springboard, and then they actually start filling in the gaps themselves, and that's something I actually do in my own practice, like when I do songwriting uh workshops with with artists that want to record with me, I do that, and then you actually, because of the way you want to associate like thoughts and feelings within your music, like you do just like you see these kind of patterns and you start steering it in a certain direction, and it just happens like so naturally. So, again, it's just like if you're sitting there going, like, what are we gonna write about? And everyone's like, I don't know, and it's like you just spend a whole hour just sitting there going, Oh, we could write about the weather, we could do what I mean, just get the ball rolling.
SPEAKER_02That's all that blank, blank page fear, um, which is interesting, isn't it? Because yeah, I I always kind of thought that was just an adult thing, um, but it's it's not, is it? Like I think quite young children can be quite daunted by that idea as well of well where do I where do I begin? Um but you have to be careful, right? Because in all of those stimuli, is that the right word, or am I just making it sound like that to make it sound uh more academic? Um by using all those things, you are you are guiding them in a direction, aren't you? Because like you're saying, like you're called safari, which sounds wonderful, and I reckon a load of educators are now gonna nick that, yeah. Um, which is kind of cool, but you're not gonna get any royalties, which kind of sucks. Um, but you know, you're giving them, I'm presuming you work within the constraints of functional harmony. Um so you know, you're kind of putting them in a box there, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02To a degree.
SPEAKER_01But it's like, I think it's like when you when you if you give someone a plain piece of paper and say, draw me something, it's like, what do I draw? Whereas if you give them a plain piece of paper that's got a line on it already, then they might add to that line. They might think, oh, that line could be this. So it's just a stimulus to get the ball rolling. It's not like taking away from the fact that they're not creating it, because they're just creating it with like limitations. It's like when you build Lego, right? If you just if you've got whether if you like following instructions and stuff, then then the instructions are there to like build it. But if you've like been given only so many pieces, then you'll build something with that. But if you're just given a heap of stuff, you're like, where do I start? You know. So it's kind of it's kind of a bit like that, just making it less daunting to start, and then the quicker you start, the the more time you actually get to do playing and writing the music. So the actual like getting the chords and the kind of ideas down that happens in the first two hours, the very first session. So then you've still got 18 hours then of making music, and that could be like I I'll get like a flip chart and I'll be like, We're gonna make a character. Um, do they have big feet or small feet? And they go, Big feet! So you just draw massive shoes, and then you'd be like, Are they long or or short? And then they'll be like, Oh, they're they're short. I'm like, Well, do you want to come and draw it? So then they start then drawing this character, and I'm like, What's the after like 10 minutes of doing this? You've just got this mental picture, right? I'm like, what's this character called? And they're like, Oh, I don't know. And I'm like, Well, what do they like to drink? They're like, Well, they like to drink tea. I'm like, Oh, maybe he's called tea. Is it a heat? Do you know what I mean? Then you're just building this character out of nowhere, and then I'm like, Well, what do they like to do? And they're like, Oh, well, they actually they live underwater, and they and oh, okay, well, what's their house? It's like, well, they've got a banana for a house, so then all of a sudden you've got this character which is tea, the octa mouse who lives underwater and has a banana for a house. That's like lyrics there. So that's what I did with like Victoria, and that was like one of the songs we did. I'm not I'm not taking creativity away from them, I'm just trying, I'm just sort of fanning the flame to get it going.
SPEAKER_02Um, do you think it's similar to the open-tuned guitar rather than giving a kid an out-of-tune guitar?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And going, I don't want to quash your creativity, man. Here you go, tune it how you want. It's going, here's an open D.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Explore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. And just, you know, and and even within being in an open tuner, you can still play wrong notes. Like I do it all the time. Yeah. And sometimes like sometimes like the best notes are the wrong ones. And and it's kind of steers you in a direction that maybe you hadn't a thought that it was gonna go in. And there is a beauty within dissonance. Like I I really like dissonance with like my my my ear appreciates dissonance, so I I'm fine with hearing that, and and and to someone who is untrained, they might not hear it as dissonance, they might just hear it as music. So, as long as you're comfortable with that as a practitioner, then you're good, really. There's no wrong answer, then you know, it could just be that it just builds, and it's just down to you as a producer with the producer hat. It's like, how how are you presenting that sound? And as I said, like we could sit at the piano and I'm like, what kind of sound do you want? And they're like, I want a warm sound, and I'm like, Right, okay, what's a warm? Do you know what I mean? So then I'll I'll pull up like a synth pad and I'll just pick bring up like a bunch of like ambient pads, and I'll just go, just say yes when you hear one, and they just go, meh, change meh, change. And they're like, I like that one, cool. Well, we'll do that one then. What notes do you want to use? I'd like these three, like, don't don't don't just give them, like, give them the whole keyboard, but then at the same time be like, I want you to pick three notes that you really like the sound of, and they're like, Okay, and they pick three notes. That's gonna be a chord at some point, right? And I'm like, I just want you to play around with a pattern, come up with a pattern, a pattern that you can repeat. That's a big thing I always try and implement within music is repetition because music has repetition, you know, all of the best songs are littered in repetition because then they're catchy. So if you've got parts that come back around or motifs that reappear or have just changed slightly, but the rhythm's different, or the or maybe the the harmony's different, but there's still that thing of like repetition, and then there's there's your development within it, then so then again the young people are then like learning these skills by doing it. They're like, oh yeah, because when I play piano now, I go up and I find three notes I like, and they just sit at the piano and then and then the teacher comes in, they're like, Oh wow, like that sounds amazing. But they've learned that if they take three notes rather than just hammering down cluster chords, it sounds good. There's development right there just within within that.
SPEAKER_02Just learning to strip things back.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, because like when you when you like it's like when I've you know when you look at guitar, there's depending on what you got, there's there's six strings with a potential of between twenty one and twenty four frets. It's like, where do you start with? That do you know what I mean? So I'm just like pick one string that you like and then find two notes that you like. That's all I want. They can be as far apart, they could be close to each other, but then you start getting these like kind of pedal notes, these pedal tones. And then if you're in a set key, then just allow them to find the ones that they like. And if they find ones that are really like clashy, you know, figure that out. Like you're the practical you know what I mean, you're the professional. You it's not it's not their job. They're they're there to have fun, they're there to enjoy themselves. It's down to me. Like that's why I'm there. That's the best bit, really. That's the bit that means the most.
SPEAKER_02It sounds like that music educators in all situations should be more producer than educator, if I think of my understanding of I don't know, even just watching a million rockumentaries about your favourite album and what have you, and the producer is there taking the voice of this artist and amplifying it, sort of pulling it together beautifully. It's almost like maybe all of us could do with studying some producers, really, and how they sort of work.
SPEAKER_01Definitely. I think I think I think just going in with zero expectation of what it should be, and then allowing the young people to like almost breathe in it That's when you get the best stuff. That's when it's just like it is then really organic. It's not I'm not like going, oh, I would really like a I don't know a romantic classical piece. Do you know what I mean? Like I'm not going into thinking I'm gonna, you know, record the next symphony of something. Because that's not what one young people want to make. Some might, and that's cool. If they do, like I had I had two young people that like, I want to play violin. I was like, alright, I'll get some violins then, you know, grab some violins from home, and I was like, this note is E. Go ham. You know. They're playing violin, whether it's been like structured or just tuning it so it doesn't matter what they play, it still sounds great. Same as open tuning. But to them, they're like, I'm playing violin, they're not sat there going like, oh, Jack's retuned it for me. It's like I've I've I've facilitated them to be able to do what they wanted, which was to play violin. Is it traditional? Is it conventional to do it? No, but what is convention, especially within SEN and PMLD. You know what I mean? Like one of my favorite quotes is like when working with well, it was it was uh it's from I've forgotten who it was now. It said, if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism, and I love that because everyone's how they present and how their needs are, just because they're autistic doesn't mean that they're all gonna be the same, they're not all gonna have noise sensitivity, they're all not gonna do what I mean. So just treat everyone individual, and that's again like a big part of my practice, like as just daily, whether I'm working within you know education or whether I'm working with people in recovery, whether I'm making music myself, it's just like just be open to it because the minute you're closed off is when you could potentially miss some really like magic moments. Thanks so much.
SPEAKER_02Thank you so much to our sponsor, Longy School of Music, and to Soundstorm for making this episode possible. And thank you to you for listening.