Uncategorized – Rhythm Circle News & Events

Music and the senses: Taste

If chocolate was a sound, what music would it make?

It dawned on me a few years ago, that when I teach almost all my metaphors are food-based. Food is one of my great weaknesses. Might have something to do with growing up in Malaysia, a society well-known for being food-obsessed. We talk a lot about food, eating, flavours, cooking, and cuisines!

Food is something we all need and have experienced all our lives. So whether you enjoy it or not, flavours and textures of food are something our senses understand.

Last week, I was searching for a way to help a piano student who was struggling to interpret and make sense of musical dynamics in particular piece of music. Two sections were clearly marked ‘quiet’ and ‘loud’ but all he was able to do was to mechanically produce two different volumes without understanding WHY the music demanded it.

I suggested that he played the sections again and asked “What food do these sections of music make you think of?”. Instantly, the light bulb went off. He pointed to the section which had a prominent bass tune and said “Lamb curry….maybe mutton. Something rich with gravy”. The other section with all tunes high up in the treble was ” Light and bubbly…like lemon sherbet or champagne?”

And just like that, he wanted to show off a light sparkly sound in the
‘quiet’ section and the ‘loud’ section took on a full-bodied tone.

So…. back to my original question. If chocolate was a sound what music would it make? I think of cellos and French horns as ‘chocolatey’ sounds. Coffee is Latin American music: wakes me up and makes me happy.

Brejeiro – one of my favourite pieces by Brazilian composer Ernesto Nazareth

Rhythm Circle / B’opera : a like-minded partnership

Being self-employed and working from home WILL give you cabin fever and so earlier this year, I decided to make an effort to get out and meet with other people in my industry. And that has turned out to be a very auspicious decision indeed! (I’m from a Chinese family, so we are big on anything that smacks of good fortune/luck/providence).

One of the organisations I came across was B’Opera, who create bespoke opera and musical performances specially for babies and pre-schoolers.

I am very excited to announce that Rhythm Circle has teamed up with B’Opera to form a musical partnership. Both our organisations have a common goal of bringing top quality musical experiences to children whilst respecting their needs as an audience.

With Zoe Challenor from B’opera, my new partner in crime

The B’opera team of Zoe Challenor, Jacqueline White and Phil Ypres-Smith put so much thought into addressing children as an audience in their own right. Everything from choice of moods, length of repertoire, choice of themes…. even the period before and after the concert has been taken into account.

But great musical experiences don’t just simply stop when toddlers grow up and begin their formal schooling. At Rhythm Circle, we pick up the thread by empowering school-aged children who choose to take the next step in their musical journeys. Using multi-sensory methods, the elements of music are taught by play, using fun and engaging musical games and activities. We believe that children are as worthy as adults to receive rich musical education and experiences. No short-cuts, no dumbing-down.

So this means that in the future B’opera and Rhythm Circle staff will be working together behind the scenes, sharing resources, and appearing at each other’s events.

RC /B’opera teamwork at Alice and the Library Tree (New Art Gallery, Walsall)

Musical Messy Play

I’d like to introduce my son who goes by the nom de plume ‘Stumpy’ (before we had to put his name down on the birth certificate, this was actually what we called the poor child).

Stumpy loves words: the sound of them , their rhythm, singing them, mangling them, making up new words. He also likes paint, mud, orange juice , coins and ice cubes. Especially when allowed to mix them all up. He does NOT like being taught how to sing words. Or what colours to use when he wants to paint. Or just how much water he should use to make a muddy puddle. Or how to form a triangle using coins

*Left triangle: made by me. Right triangle: made by Stumpy the minimalist*

Stumpy taught me one very valuable lesson: that sound is just a manipulable – just like paint or mud. And it made him very, very happy to be able to explore and experiment with his favourite materials.

Occasionally, he would become curious about my musical work materials and ask to play with them. I would then bring them out to show him and he would immediately touch them or try and make patterns with them. 3D graphic scores are very popular with Stumpy. Big circles = big sounds, little circles = quiet sounds.

When he asked to play with my bottle caps note values, he got very excited at being able to recognise the letters ‘p’ and ‘o’ (ie. minims and semibreves).

Me (jumping at the chance to pass on some musical knowledge): “Look, this symbol is for a 2 count sound and this is for a 4 count sound”.

Stumpy : “No, Mummy it says ‘poo’. Look, you can make many, many ‘poo’s!”

Musical Development Matters

Before you spend hours trawling the Internet choosing just the right musical experience for your baby/ toddler/school-aged child, STOP….. have a look at this fantastic resource called Musical Development Matters.

Last week, after some complicated juggling, I managed to clear a day to attend a brilliant and inspiring course called Musical Development Matters The course and its accompanying document is really a labour of love by Nicola Burke, one of UK’s leading lights in early childhood musical development (0-5 years old).

“The overall purpose of Musical Development Matters is to support practitioners, teachers, musicians and parents to see the musical attributes of young children and to offer ideas as to how they can support and nurture children’s musical development by offering broad musical experiences.”

Over the course of a day, Nicola guided us through discussions on:

awareness about how babies and young children learn

good practice when working musically with very young children

examples of how we as parents, teachers and educators can help and support their musical journeys

The course was such a timely reminder that children are capable of so much creativity and musicality from a very,very young age. We adults would do well to respect that and support that ability on our well-meaning quest quest to give them a musical education.

Life is always so busy . Work, school run, laundry, swimming classes, drama class, dance class, feed the kids a good meal, homework, more laundry …….but I’d like to think that we can always find the time to learn how to do meaningful things which help our children thrive.