Weeks 33 34 35 & 36 Commencing 3rd February 2014

The last month has seen the introduction of a new orchestrate session which involves young people from the music hub. The basis of these sessions have also been to work on performances for the Celebration at the contemporary in April. However these sessions have differed in the sense that some of the young people that attend these sessions have been classically trained and are able to read music and play instruments that some young people may be less familiar with.

In these sessions the young people are being challenged to change the way they create music as out of the five compositions that will be produced from these sessions only one will be produced in a conventional form.

The last few months has not only been great for the development of young people but also myself and musical growth because people are being challenged to make music in a way which could be seen to be unconventional to them  it is initial making them come out of the comfort zone to achieve. This is something which at times can be quite worrying as the outcome may be uncertain, on the other hand, with the right effort, attitude and mentality this can produce outstanding results. 

The main focus is always the result the journey is just the process it takes to get to it but by enjoying the journey process you become more appreciative of the end result. One way to ensure that the result can always be appreciated is by using a different journey for example using a different structure to create a new piece of music, stepping out of your comfort zone. Music is freedom of expression but by always using the same structure, same method, same scale, same melody and same tempo the result will be thereabouts the same thus taking the freedom away from expression giving you just predictability.

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

Weeks 28 29 30 31 & 32 Commencing 6th Janurary 2014

Over the past month there has been a great development on the tracks for the performance in April as all the young peoples roles are now firmly established they can now concentrate on expressing their their performance and roles.

It is really great to see such passion brought to the sessions by some of the musicians and their enthusiasm and determination to always want to improve and run through the tracks until they feel that they are 100 percent happy with them. This month the idea of all musicians working together despite experience and knowledge has been successful and paid off again. So much so that I have been particularly impressed with young person's d and e as this change in the way in which they work with music has been a challenge over the past couple of months.

At first it was hard for them to adapt to the tempos that were being used for the tracks and fit their style into the music however, after taking a step back and listening to what was going on around them they were able to adjust their style so that it could fit into the stylistic approach of the tracks. This made me really happy as this showed their commitment towards the work they were doing as they could have easily said that they did not want to be involved in the performance anymore but they decided to continue. This was highly commendable of young person's d and e as this shows a real testament to their musical growth over the last couple of months.

With only a couple months out from the big performance in April the key focus is going to be to tighten up the the tracks and ensure that the young people are themselves ready as for the majority of them they would have never performed at something of this scale before.