Connected Blog

The piece featured in today’s lunchtime Guitar Group rehearsal featured a short, slow introduction followed by a longer and much more upbeat section. Pupils had been encouraged to relax in the holidays and to refrain from practice in the hope of returning refreshed. So I wasn’t too disappointed to hear that the intro was a little rough round the edges (and the middle to be honest). However, when the more rhythmic section kicked in, it sounded as though the group had tripled in size, confidence and joie de vivre.

Put simply, teenagers appear not to be fond of slow music. The gaps make them uneasy and, the reduced tempo, rather than relaxing them, can put them on edge. What to do?

Should one, through increased hands-on exposure to slower tempi, cultivate their ability to rely on an internal, as opposed to audible, beat? Or, realising that they are giving up half of their lunch break (more for those who play several instruments), choose items to which they will respond more readily – thereby increasing the chances of a spirited, successful concert item? Answers on a First Class postcard……

Just last week I was introduced to Ben Saunders, who responded with a courteous and short email along the lines of: “I’m a little busy at the moment but would love to meet up for a pint.” He was, in fact, four days away from starting his 30-day dash to North Pole. Alone.

An attempt to set a new world speed record from Ward Hunt Island to the Geographic North Pole by Ben Saunders.
The current record was set in 2005 by a guided team using dog sleds and
numerous re-supplies in a time of 36 days 22 hours. Ben’s expedition
will be solo and unsupported and on foot. This route has only ever been
completed once solo and unsupported, by Pen Hadow in 2003. Ben aims to
halve his time and complete it in 30 days. More than geographic
exploration, Ben is exploring the limits of his own human potential.

You can follow the trip blog, catch up on his amazing Flickr stream (but probably after the trip , and see what equipment one needs to make this voyage alone.

I’m hoping that, the next time, we might be able to help spread Ben’s work to more school children, and bring their aspirations to a high with some of the motivating speak that Ben can offer. Maybe something schools on Glow can enjoy through Marratech video-conferencing, as well as in person. Don’t know what I mean? Take a look at Ben’s TED Talk, Three Things To Know Before You Ski To The North Pole, and be inspired to get cold and miserable yourself:

Here is the full, uncut text of the research report by Robert Hart, Director of Research at Intuitive Media, which was featured in issue 20 of Connected Magazine. Drawing on the results of a research project into how online connectivity is changing children’s lives, Robert shares the story of Emily Sanderson.

The human species is evolving rapidly. Our children are growing up in a very different environment to their parents. They have access to huge amounts of information at the click of a mouse. They can connect with people all over the world from their desktops, their laptops, and now increasingly from their mobile phones and mobile internet devices. Things have changed.

Let’s wind the clock back 25 years to 1972, when Carl Sagan was asked to design a plaque to go into deep space with the NASA Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. It was naively designed to invite ET round for tea, or to eat us for tea! It showed how to find us and what we looked like. Looking at the plaque (pictured left), the humans are standing side by side, but disconnected. If Sagan had known about Emily Sanderson and her online friends, the picture might have been different.

With humans now intimately connected to each other online around the world, we are seeing the emergence of Homo sapiens continuus – the Connected Ape.

Working with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and Becta, Intuitive Media conducted extensive research into how children behave and learn in protected online social learning networks. The research included observation and analysis of the online behaviour of more than 120,000 children, direct online consultation with some 12,000 children who took part in a series of research surveys and the detailed profiling of eight representative children. Here, we distil what we learned through the profile of a single 10-year-old girl.

Who is Emily Connected?

Emily Sanderson is a real child (although her name has been changed to protect her identity). She is 10 years old, lives in the Midlands and is a representative of more than 120,000 children in the SuperClubsPLUS & GoldStarCafe social learning networks. This profile describes Emily alongside other children in her online community.

• Statements about Emily are given in relation to the statistical analysis of whole community. For example: “Emily owns a Nintendo DS (24%)” indicates that statement is true for 24% of the community.
• How and when is Emily connected?
  Like 61% of the SuperClubsPLUS and GoldStarCafe communities, Emily has a home PC. She also owns a Nintendo DS (24%) and a Sony PSP (16%). She has a mobile phone (like 76%) which she uses her mobile to access SuperClubsPLUS (as do 46% of her peers).
• Like more than half of the children surveyed, Emily gets just 30 minutes a week on the school computers. Emily would like more frequent access for longer periods of time. Most of her online communications activity is at home. She checks her SuperClubsPLUS emails before she leaves for school and logs in again as soon as she gets home. She’s active in the evenings from 4-8 pm and very active at the weekends. She spends over 300 hours a year in the SuperClubsPLUS community.

What does Emily get up to online?

In her online community Emily is exceptionally productive and communicative. She joined SuperClubsPLUS in June 2006 and makes three visits a day. Emily is a dedicated personal website developer. To populate her four home pages in SuperClubsPLUS, she has sourced, prepared and published 32 images and 15 icons. She’s edited her home pages 4,180 times, with 279 updates per month or nine per day. She also contributes her content to her school’s site in SuperClubsPLUS.

Emily has created her own online club – a Web Ring called ‘Birmingham City are the best!’ Emily’s home pages and webrings are dedicated to her favourite football teams.

At home, Emily likes to create her own images, photos and animations (e.g. icons) and send interesting site links to friends. In SuperClubsPLUS she says she likes to make and share content. Emily likes sharing her ideas and content with others, but wants to retain her creative individuality.

How communicative is Emily?

Emily is very sociable and communicative one-to-one. In 15 months she sent 8,419 emails to 580 different members. She sends 140 emails a week and receives 146. She’s also a prolific communicator in groups. She made 5,721 contributions to 13 different SuperClubsPLUS forums (mostly from her Nintendo DS) She is a prolific contributor to community ‘hot-seat’ forums, making 72 posts in 12 weeks.

Emily’s pages are very popular with other children. She’s had an exceptional 6,268 visits to her main home page and her digital guest-book has been signed by 544 visitors. Her circle of young friends has expanded enormously, spanning the UK. She receives emails from 503 different community members. One hundred children list her as a close buddy (they can only choose 10 buddies each, so this is an indication of high regard).

Emily also has a productive online relationship with her teacher (133 emails sent, 84 received). She talks more with the community mediators (259 emails sent 212 received).

How does Emily’s learning vary between home and school?

At school Emily wishes she had more choice in what she learns. She wants to “choose my own work” and “do my own projects.” Unlike 95% of her online community, Emily says she prefers to do easier work and at a slower pace than other kids in class.

Like 83% of SuperClubsPLUS members, Emily would like to work with her teacher from home, making use of email and forums to show her teacher her work and ask for help and ideas. Emily thinks she learns better at school (like 77%), but says she also learns well in the evenings and weekends (17%), with her parents (53%) and siblings (22%).

In contrast to her limited access to ICT at school, she spends over 300 hours a year communicating, collaborating, creating and learning in SuperClubsPLUS.

What can we learn from Emily?

Emily works at a slow pace at school, but she turns into Hurricane Emily online! Her mobile connected lifestyle has changed her educational and social experience. The combination of a mobile phone or games console plus a safe online learning community leads to a new social learning dimension.

Things have changed. Emily takes her learning home. She communicates and collaborates with a vast peer group across the UK. She has become a productive, effective and engaging publisher and communicator, sociable and popular with a very wide circle of online friends – adults and children.

Emily Sanderson has become Emily Connected, a member of the species H. sapiens continuus – the connected ape!

In an attempt to refresh mind and body between school and a twilight Parents’ Evening, I recently spent an hour in the pool and health suite of North Berwick Sports Centre. In the steam room I found myself, inexplicably whistling*. Apart from the fantastic acoustic and the apparent contribution of the steam to the quality of sound, I wondered, “why is this so easy?” I’ve never been inclined to whistle and have probably whistled fewer than 40 seconds worth of music in as many years.

Intrigued, I decided to push the envelope and put myself through a mock Grade 8 Whistling exam. I tested myself on ascending and descending scales (major, harmonic minor, melodic minor, whole tone & chromatic both forms of diminished & augmented) and then the remaining modes (dorian, phrygian, lydian, mixolydian, aeolian, & locrian). Then came the turn of arpeggios (major, minor, dominant 7^th, minor 7^th, major 7^th, minor with major 7^th, diminished 7^th, major 6^th, minor 6^th). There were some tricky moments – notably the descending form of the augmented scale – but the vast majority seemed simply to be lying in wait, pret a siffler.

“Wait a minute,” I hear you cry, “you know the sound of these through your musical explorations over the years and have the benefit of a practised ear.” This is true but what is also true is that I’d have struggled to sing them.

What intrigues me is that the entire musculature of whistling seemed in place, benefiting from neither interest nor training and must therefore be hard wired. Was there a time when it was commonly used for communication than today? Many will already have come across Silbo-Gomero, the whistling language used mainly by shepherds communicating with one another across the valleys of La Gomera Silbo. Does anyone out there know if this practice was once more widespread?

There’s an interesting article on studies of brain patterns decoding whistling here suggesting that those who perceive music as a language process it using different brain regions.

Why not test your aural recognition of scales and modes here?

* I was the only person using the steam room at this point.

In 1994 I went on a trip to Sweden with the Lothian Regional Orchestra and Jazz Band. Our host, a man with the resoundingly Nordic name of Gerry Morrisey, took us out for a tour in his car and and pointed out a patch of spare ground covered in oil where learner drivers would practise dealing with skids. Immediately I wondered why we don’t do that here. Why defer your first skid until you are either in traffic or in danger?

This flashed through my mind today when I was thinking about the dangers which acceleration* can present in an ensemble situation**. Many people’s first experience of minimal control occurs in a concert. They may have limited experience of:

• the factors causing it – adrenalin – allowing a tempo in excess of the norm to feel normal
• acoustical/aural novelties – not sitting next to (as as near to) the people you normally follow
• how to be part of the remedy*** – increase your volume and slowing down while your section is in command of the most frequent notes i.e. make people wait for you
• how to notice that another section (or individual) is offering a remedy i.e. being so at home with the own part that you have spare attention for the other parts

So, can you practise these skills? Here is a midi file of a Bach Air with wandering tempo. The tempo changes every bar. For the first minute the changes, while noticeable, are mild. Thereafter, they are more drastic – even humorous. Why not try the following tasks?

• See if you can keep track of the beat by tapping your finger on your leg (this way you’ll feel it in addition to hearing it).
• See if you can hear the best part to follow – the one with the most frequent notes
• Try to play along if you know it (this version is in G as opposed to the original key of D – consider it an extra challenge

* deceleration is rare – curiously a wandering tempo usually goes up, whereas wandering pitch usually goes down

** this is less of a problem in a solo situation and, if it does occur, is more quickly fixed – the nature of the situation being more like a speedy dictatorship than a time-consuming democracy

*** I’m referring here solely to ensembles without a conductor – otherwise you’d simply follow the beat (easier said than done).

It’s not often you get a glimpse into – far less a listen to – pre-history. Michael Wood’s The Story of India (BBC4 last night – sadly not available on iPlayer) visited Brahmin priests in Kerala taking young trainees through vocal preparations for a 12-day celebration of Agni – the god of fire.

The prayers being passed on pre-date language and possibly music, as experts could find no matching analogue. The nearest comparison was with birdsong. It was certainly very interesting to see and hear a few moments of these normally secret teaching sessions.

It is claimed that what is being notated cannot be notated. I found this difficult to understand, feeling that a mix of pitch, duration and phonetics must be able to be transcribed – after all Janacek notated the melodies of the Czech language and Messiaen notated birdsong. However, weighing in with the heavy hand of invasive research, however tempting, is scarcely a sensitive response to the privileged invitation.

More on this topic in paragraph 11 of this link.

How can we make music on a computer slow down so that we can practise better?

Many students across the country use the commendable repertoire from Rock School’s graded books for the performing components of Standard Grade, Higher and Advanced Higher Music. One of the advantages of the CD which comes with each book is that pupils can play along with a professional accompaniment. This is only a snag when the song concerned is up tempo. By the time a pupil is sufficiently skilled to play along, the primary reason for doing so is no longer relevant.

In such cases, I’d recommend slowing down the original track using two free programs:

1. iTunes from Apple
2. Audacity from Source Forge

Follow the steps below:

• import CD track(s) into iTunes (free download form Apple)
• to check that they will import as wav files (the best sound) follow the route below:
• Edit / Preferences / Advanced / Importing
• then check that the pull-down window is set to wav
• mp3 would work too but the sound is not as good
• Apple’s own format called AAC (advanced audio coding) will not work in this procedure!
• download Audacity free of charge from Source Forge
• Then open a track in Audacity
• Before doing anything, the program needs to know which part you want to change – in this case it’s the whole track so Select All (short cut Ctrl+A)
• Go to the Effect menu and go down to Change Tempo
• be careful not to choose Change Speed – as this will alter the pitch of the notes too – it’s ok for a laugh, but you’ll be in the wrong key!
• until you get used to this, I’d recommend just using the slider rather than entering figures in the dialogue boxes – you can see the figures change as you do it.
• experiment a few times and you’ll see how much you need to go – the faster the original song the more you’ll need to slow it down to be able to play along
• Remember that when you open a tune in Audacity you haven’t lost the original file – Audacity simply makes a copy in its own style e.g. song_name.aup – which then can’t be opened in any other program

Are you born with a musical ear or can it be developed? I’d say both.

Some people are born with boundless talent and often aren’t really aware of how they do what they do. Others are born with good aural ability, which can be improved by study. Others still seem to require a little more graft but, regardless of willingness to engage, are unclear how to go about this. Enter Good-Ear

This excellent, free site (open to donations) is extremely well structured and consists of audio examples with multiple choice options for the user. The choice exists to change some of the parameters of the sound – specifically volume, tempo and instrument (three types of piano sound, guitar & violin). This is a great idea. Nine times out of ten, traditional aural training takes place at the piano and one’s crystal clear sense of analysis can suddenly flee in the face of more colourful sound sources e.g. rock bands, orchestras, choirs, pipe bands, brass bands etc.

There is a Beginner zone featuring:

• simple intervals (distance between notes)
• identifying chords major/minor
• a wider range of intervals

more intervals:

• simple intervals up
• simple intervals down
• simple intervals up/down
• simple intervals together
• diatonic intervals up
• diatonic intervals down
• diatonic intervals up/down
• diatonic intervals together
• chromatic intervals up
• chromatic intervals down
• chromatic intervals up/down
• chromatic intervals together

The More advanced zone sports:

Chords:

• major/minor
• simple chords – featuring augmented, diminished and sus4
• chords with inversions (notes not in logical order)

Scales

• basic
• 4 modes
• diatonic modes
• melodic minor modes
• harmonic minor modes
• symmetric & pentatonic
• dominant
• minor
• common
• mix of all the above

Cadences

• cadences bass
• cadences

Jazz Chords

• simple root position
• simple diatonic
• simple non-diatonic
• no tension
• minor
• dominant natural
• dominant altered
• dominant natural/altered
• dominant one tension
• dominant
• common
• all of the above

Note Location (chords are played to give a sense of key, then a note is played)

• diatonic (requires knowledge of diatonic sol-fa to identify options)
• chromatic (requires knowledge of chromatic sol-fa to identify options)

Perfect Pitch (identifying a note without key context)

• C, D, & E
• C, D, , E, F& G
• Full C scale
• Chromatic

As if this weren’t enough, there are links to other useful resources.

I shall certainly be recommending this site to my pupils and colleagues. If you could do everything on offer here, you truly would have developed a great talent. Why not try it out?

How many epiphanies are you allowed in a lifetime? Assuming that the answer is – as many as you’re prepared to let in - then, are they likely to have anything in common?

I’d say that the common factor in all those moments when I was struck by something so meaningful that it should really have been obvious, is that they arrived when I wasn’t really looking for anything. I suppose that’s why people use the expression – it dawned on me. Dawn isn’t something you do. It comes in its own time and, if you’re awake, you get something out of it.

Ten years ago the MGS Guitar Group were rehearsing a medley of Scots songs for a concert. I noticed that the players, especially those on the melody part, were executing naturally a level of articulation which would have dozens of hours of rehearsal had the music been in another genre. It struck me that this music was in their bones and and they were hearing the articulation, not reading it and certainly not thinking about it. The only way that a similar attention to detail was going to be possible in other genres of ensemble music, would be if they could hear it much more frequently than a weekly rehearsal would allow.

The age of affordable PCs and music software had also dawned and it seemed like play-along midi files was going to be the way ahead. The irony of this is that machines were going to result in pupils playing in a more human way. Knowing that the choice and amount of articulation applied to the written parts was going to affect the sound files raised my level of attention of this aspect of music to a level I had not foreseen and I’m convinced that this happy accident has had a beneficial impact on lesson content.

Initially distribution of play-along files was not easy and a number of less than watertight methods were tried:

You can imagine that compared to this, we seem to living in something of a golden age where they can be deposited in this blog for pupils to pick up in their own time.

So where does osmosis fit in? One of the pieces we are preparing for the East Lothian Showcase Concert* is Enrique Granados’s Córdoba. For some reason it struck me, after parts were printed and midi files created and posted, that one bar of repeated notes should be both more pronounced and more detached than initially stated. Without actually planning to experiment with this, I simply started playing it like that – demonstratively, but not forcibly. To date I have not singled out this bar for discussion of any kind although I had noticed that a few people have taken to articulating the bar in the same way. You can imagine how noticeable it was when, in this afternoon’s rehearsal, all those sharing that rhythm (20/40) hammered it out in like style despite there being no written, spoken or midi suggestion that they do so.

I should also mention here that this piece is extremely challenging and that the pupils, many of them noticeably weary, put in an exhausting shift this afternoon without complaint. They really achieved a great deal when they could have been out playing.

If you plan to attend the Showcase Concert, and would like to test your musical memory, the bar concerned contains three repeated notes and occurs at 1:27 – 1:28 in this midi file: Córdoba – Performance Speed

* Friday 7 March at 7:30 in Musselburgh Grammar School.

A friend referred me to a very interesting site for guitar enthusiasts the other day called Chord Book It has many features, the most immediately useful of which for pupils is an online tuner.The beauty of this is that you can click R (for repeat) for each string and hear the note for as long as you need. In addition to standard tuning, it also features 7 altered tunings and the option to create your own by altering the virtual pegs. At any point, you can click strum to hear how your creation will sound.

Other features include chords, scales and some backing tracks for jamming. These features are very well laid out and intuitive to use so I won’t go on at length. Let me just recommend exploring the inversions feature on the chord page and point out that the virtual guitar neck can be reoriented for left-hand players.

From the home page, you can access some video lessons. While I would never discourage anyone from enjoying these, I feel that they (and I am referring to the the genre and not these specifically these lessons) have their limits. While affording a source of ideas and inspiration they are necessarily about someone else playing and not you. This type of situation has been summed up by a mind greater than mine:

“Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” – Chinese proverb, sometimes attributed to Confucius around 450 BC.