Month: July 2023

Sensory Music: Exploring the sensory and well-being aspects of music

“What part of your body did you use to experience music?”

It is always a pleasure to explore a Rhythm Circle pet topic and one of my favourites is the multi-sensory aspects and benefits of music.

For the second year now, I’ve had the privilege of introducing this aspect of Rhythm Circle work to doctors of the future. At the University of Leicester, 3rd year medical students who chose the SSC Disability and the Arts module spend several weeks with the Attenborough Arts Centre learning how art in its myriad forms support people with special needs.

  • Composing music for spanner glockenspiels

This year’s intrepid medical cohort rose to the challenge by assembling, playing and composing music for spanner glockenspiels and balloon drums. They used a simple graphic score to capture ideas about sound patterns and this led explorations of different playing techniques (tapping, glissandi and different ways of combining different pitches.

Simple graphic scores capture ideas about sound patterns – each coloured dot represents a different spanner. Each team had slightly different ideas – we even had performance directions to use specific beaters (1st score at the top) and glissandi was represented by a dots played in rapid succession vertically (4th score from the top).

We concluded that the experience of making, playing and composing music involved many parts of the body, not only the ears and fingers, but also eyes, skin, and brains.

Many thanks to the fabulous Marianne Pape and the Attenborough Arts Centre for hosting the annual event.