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Piece of Mind uses the per­for­ming arts to syn­the­size and trans­late know­ledge about Parkinson’s disease (PD) and demen­tia. Our par­ti­ci­pa­to­ry research-crea­tion pro­ject brings toge­ther artists (cir­cus per­for­mers, dan­cers, musi­cians, visual artists), resear­chers, indi­vi­duals living with PD or demen­tia, and care­gi­vers to co-create artis­tic works based on scien­ti­fic research and lived expe­rience. The ove­rall goals are to :

1) faci­li­tate know­ledge crea­tion and exchange bet­ween the see­min­gly dis­pa­rate com­mu­ni­ties par­ti­ci­pa­ting in the crea­tive pro­cess and

2) create per­for­mances that can engage a wide audience on both an emo­tio­nal and intel­lec­tual level, and spark mea­ning­ful conver­sa­tions around PD and dementia.

 We use an emergent and ite­ra­tive pro­cess to iden­ti­fy the key themes and mes­sages to com­mu­ni­cate in our per­for­mances, and to ensure that mul­tiple pers­pec­tives are incor­po­ra­ted along the way. Our research pro­cess has inclu­ded nume­rous vir­tual work­shops, faci­li­ta­ted dis­cus­sions, and movement/music ses­sions to build rela­tion­ships and explore both scien­ti­fic and lived expe­rience know­ledge through crea­ti­vi­ty and embo­di­ment. Rather than present a sum­ma­ry of the various acti­vi­ties we’ve under­ta­ken, we’d like to share two examples* that could easi­ly be applied in dif­ferent contexts.

*You can find our other example here :
https://www.newmusicnetwork.ca/projects/piece-of-mind-give-us-a-hand-participatory-art-sci-video/

ACTIVITY : impro­vi­sa­tion exer­cise from lived expe­rience, to artis­tic repre­sen­ta­tion, to scien­ti­fic interpretation

GOAL : the pur­pose of this acti­vi­ty is to explore topics around Parkinson’s disease (PD) through the lens of lived expe­rience, artis­tic repre­sen­ta­tion, and scien­ti­fic inter­pre­ta­tion, and to faci­li­tate mutual unders­tan­ding bet­ween participants.

WHERE : via a vir­tual plat­form such as Zoom, or in person.

DURATION : 1–2 ses­sions ; each 1–2 hours.

PARTICIPANTS : in our pro­ject, the par­ti­ci­pants were resear­chers, artists (inclu­ding musi­cians, cir­cus per­for­mers and dan­cers) and people living with Parkinson’s disease. The pro­cess can easi­ly be adap­ted to other tar­get audiences.

GROUP SIZE : 3 per group : one per­son living with PD, one artist, one resear­cher. If you are wor­king with mul­tiple artists (ex. a musi­cian and move­ment artist), you could increase the group size to 4.

INSTRUCTIONS :
1. Intro­duce the topic or ques­tion of inter­est that you would like to explore in the ses­sion. In our case, topics were used that emer­ged in pre­vious ses­sions, inclu­ding motor limi­ta­tions, the invi­sible aspects of PD, and how PD changes one’s per­cep­tion of time.

2.  Pro­cess : Each per­son in the group has 1–2 minutes to share or present some­thing based on the pro­po­sed topic. The per­son with PD begins by sha­ring their lived expe­rience of the topic. The artist then responds to the expe­rience, either direct­ly (e.g. with voice, an ins­tru­ment, move­ment) or by explai­ning how it might be repre­sen­ted in an artis­tic medium. The resear­cher closes the loop by pro­vi­ding scien­ti­fic context to the expe­rience, or new ques­tions that come to mind from the exchange. Repeat the cycle as many times as you wish.

3. Par­ti­ci­pants are reques­ted to keep their res­ponses to 1–2 minutes so as to allow seve­ral cycles bet­ween lived expe­rience, artis­tic repre­sen­ta­tion and scien­ti­fic inter­pre­ta­tion. As the cycles pro­gress, the pro­cess can become less defi­ned as par­ti­ci­pants build on one another’s ideas. We use body lan­guage and impro­vi­sa­tio­nal games to help bridge the connec­tion bet­ween the 3 pers­pec­tives — you can check out some examples in the atta­ched videos.

4. If wor­king vir­tual­ly, group par­ti­ci­pants into brea­kout rooms. You can choose how long to make the brea­kout ses­sions ; we recom­mend at least 15 minutes per topic. If you would like to revi­sit the exchanges after­wards, don’t for­get to record !

5. After the acti­vi­ty, have a group dis­cus­sion (with all par­ti­ci­pants) to share ideas and get par­ti­ci­pant feed­back. If you have time, switch groups and repeat the acti­vi­ty based on new ques­tions that emerge !

DESCRIPTION OF INCLUDED VIDEOS :
1. Anne, Louise, Anu­sha (English)
In this video, the par­ti­ci­pants dis­cuss how Parkinson’s disease shapes one’s per­cep­tion of time, and how the rhythm of life is control­led by medi­ca­tion. Anne, a woman living with Parkinson’s disease, begins by explai­ning her expe­rience of how time fluc­tuates during the day. Musi­cian Louise Camp­bell invites her to par­ti­ci­pate in a musi­cal simu­la­tion of the expe­rience, by “conduc­ting” her cla­ri­net playing through hand ges­tures. Anne raises her hands to indi­cate when to play fas­ter, lowers them to indi­cate slo­wer, and Louise adds tex­ture to the music based on Anne’s other move­ments. After the exchange, neu­ros­cien­tist Anu­sha reflects upon the exter­nal cues that regu­late our sense of time, and how medi­ca­tion might affect people differently.

Trans­la­ted quote from Anne (in the group dis­cus­sion after­wards): “[…] it was incre­dible – it was as though my brain was sin­ging. It was real­ly, real­ly beautiful.”

2. Serge, Caro­line, Nai­la (French)
In this video, Serge, a man living with Parkinson’s disease, begins by explai­ning the motor symp­toms he expe­riences, and how these feel in his body. Caro­line, a musi­cian, sug­gests an idea as to how the symp­toms Serge des­cri­bed could be repre­sen­ted on vio­lin, and impro­vises a short piece. Nai­la, who stu­died the brain cir­cui­try affec­ted by Parkinson’s disease, ends by dra­wing a paral­lel bet­ween these motor symp­toms and how PD changes the com­mu­ni­ca­tion bet­ween neurons.

Trans­la­ted quote from Serge (in group dis­cus­sion): “[…] she star­ted playing the vio­lin, and at first I had a lot of tre­mors, but her music cal­med me […] I mana­ged to control my body.”

3. Serge, Caro­line, Rebec­ca, She­ri­lyn (French)
This video depicts a second round of the impro­vi­sa­tio­nal acti­vi­ty, in which Serge (who has Parkinson’s disease) shares how the Piece of Mind pro­ject has affec­ted him emo­tio­nal­ly. The musi­cian Caro­line inter­prets his tes­ti­mo­nial through rhythm and voice, while Rebec­ca, dan­cer and resear­cher, accom­pa­nies her with a move­ment impro­vi­sa­tion. She­ri­lyn, a PhD student stu­dying Parkinson’s disease, explains the emo­tio­nal aspects of the disease and the cor­res­pon­ding brain regions that are affected.

Trans­la­ted quote from Serge (fol­lo­wing an expla­na­tion from She­ri­lyn): “You just des­cri­bed me as though you’ve known me for a long time.”

4. Anne, Louise, Claire, Anu­sha (English)
This video depicts a second round of impro­vi­sa­tion bet­ween Anne, Louise, and Anu­sha, a few weeks fol­lo­wing the first one (example 1). This time they are also joi­ned by Claire, a resear­cher and tap dan­cer. In this clip, Anne, who has Parkinson’s disease, conducts Louise’s cla­ri­net playing, using hand ges­tures to demons­trate how she is fee­ling that day. After the impro­vi­sa­tion, Anne pro­vides context as to how this com­pa­red to the pre­vious session.

*Please contact Nai­la at pieceofmind.montreal@gmail.com if you’d like to know more about the project.*

Young Com­po­ser Pro­gram – Contem­po­ra­ry Show­case Edmonton

The Young Com­po­ser Pro­gram orga­ni­zed by the Contem­po­ra­ry Show­case Edmon­ton Socie­ty intro­duces stu­dents ages 12 and up to com­po­si­tion and assists stu­dents to deve­lop their com­po­si­tio­nal techniques.

This annual pro­gram is held in 4 sessions :

Ses­sion #1 (Group ses­sion of 2 hours)

The composer/clinician speaks about com­po­si­tion in the first hour.  These lec­tures have inclu­ded anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion about how the cli­ni­cian became inter­es­ted in com­po­si­tion them­selves, how they approach star­ting a piece, where they get their ideas, etc.  These ses­sions have also inclu­ded dis­cus­sions of ele­ments of new music inclu­ding ana­ly­sis of scores, pre­sen­ta­tion of non-dia­to­nic scales, and even sound walks.

The 2^nd hour, held in a pia­no lab, gives the stu­dents a chance to start sket­ching ideas or doing assi­gn­ments given by their cli­ni­cian with the oppor­tu­ni­ty to dis­cuss these ideas with the cli­ni­cian as they begin to take shape.  Cli­ni­cians have given a varie­ty of star­ting assi­gn­ments.  These include :

• Intro­du­cing a varie­ty of non-dia­to­nic scales (inclu­ding whole tone and octatonic)
• Expe­ri­men­ting with 12-tone rows
• Wri­ting a varia­tion on an ori­gi­nal theme
• Crea­ting one unit for an alea­to­ric box work to be per­for­med collectively.
• Crea­ting two dif­ferent triads (avoi­ding the stan­dard tria­dic for­mu­la of sta­cked thirds) and deve­lo­ping a varie­ty of ways to use the notes in dif­ferent regis­ters and groupings.
• Crea­ting an ove­rall sketch for a piece by first map­ping out tonal cha­rac­ter, dyna­mics, regis­ters, etc. and the approxi­mate num­ber of bars for each section.

Ses­sion #2, 3 & 4 (Indi­vi­dual les­sons for 30 minutes each)

After a 2 week per­iod, the next 3 ses­sions are held week­ly.  Each student receives a half hour les­son with the cli­ni­cian to dis­cuss how to deve­lop their ideas into a full piece.  Stu­dents are encou­ra­ged to attend other stu­dents’ les­sons for maxi­mum benefit.

After the 4^th ses­sion, the pieces are most­ly fini­shed. Stu­dents then have 1 to 2 weeks to polish their score and sub­mit it to the cli­ni­cian for final comments.

Final Concert

A final concert is held about 3 weeks after the last class for the stu­dents to per­form their own compositions.

Stu­dents, espe­cial­ly at begin­ning stages, are encou­ra­ged to do hand­writ­ten scores to gain prac­tice using their rudi­ments training.

Crea­ted Pieces from pre­vious Young Com­po­ser Programs

Samples below include Cat and Mouse (ins­pi­red by Brid­get the cat) and Eve­ning Storm both by Jona­than Urschel – age 12 ; Waltz of the Wild by Ash­ley Kang – age 14 ; and MASS EXTINCTION ! by Soin­tu Aal­to, age 16.

Jonathan’s cli­ni­cian had the stu­dents expe­riment with 12 tone wri­ting as an exer­cise.  Jonathan’s Eve­ning Storm was his com­ple­ted exer­cise and he chose to use 12 tone ele­ments in his main pro­ject, Cat and Mouse, also.  Jona­than did not have any pre­vious wri­ting experience.

Ash­ley also had very lit­tle wri­ting expe­rience and Waltz of the Wild was writ­ten in her first year of the program.

Soin­tu has been invol­ved in the pro­gram for at least 3 years and has cho­sen to stu­dy com­po­si­tion serious­ly throu­ghout the year. The com­po­si­tion below, writ­ten during the 2020 pro­gram is the win­ner of the 2020 Louise Mac­Pher­son Memo­rial Ward. It embo­dies her rage at the num­ber of spe­cies pre­sent­ly beco­ming extinct and the silent tam-tam repre­sents those who stand by doing nothing to change the problem.

Have you ever wan­ted to create your own music/multimedia art­work, but couldn’t figure out where to begin ? While crea­tion can seem inti­mi­da­ting, it can actual­ly be sur­pri­sin­gly acces­sible, and more impor­tant­ly, FUN !

The Para­morph Col­lec­tive (Kim Far­ris-Man­ning and An-Lau­rence Hig­gins) has put toge­ther a series of five exer­cises to guide you through vocal and sound impro­vi­sa­tion, home­made video crea­tion and crea­tive wri­ting. You can use one or many of these exer­cises in order to help guide the crea­tion of your own ori­gi­nal art­work. The series also contains one brief over­view on sound and video edi­ting.

This series of exer­cises was ori­gi­nal­ly crea­ted by com­po­sers and mul­ti­me­dia artists Kim and An-Lau­rence for a com­mis­sio­ned pro­ject with the vir­tual com­mu­ni­ty choir SING THE NORTH, lea­ding to the crea­tion of “sud­den­ly I was alone/d’un trat­to ero sola” (2021) with 49 sin­gers from high-school age to reti­rees based in Cana­da, the USA, the UK, Aus­tra­lia and Ita­ly. Watch the final video below.

This series of exer­cises is meant to be used by self-direc­ted indi­vi­duals or groups. Exer­cise mate­rial can be used by faci­li­ta­tors upon request. If you wish to col­la­bo­rate with Kim and An-Lau­rence, or hope to orga­nize a simi­lar pro­ject as a faci­li­ta­tor, please get in touch at kfm.alh@gmail.com.

Remem­ber that the true value of impro­vi­sa­tion lies in the pro­cess, not in the end result.

✧･ﾟEXERCISES ･ﾟ✧

Links to all audio examples are lis­ted at the bot­tom of this page. You will find pdfs of each exer­cise in the score sec­tion below.

Exer­cise 1 : Drone, Magnet Tone | Vocal impro­vi­sa­tion

Ex.1 : Create a drone online !

Exer­cise 2 : Sound Tex­tures | Ins­tru­ment- or object-based improvisation

Exer­cise 3 : Har­mo­ny | Vocal impro­vi­sa­tion

Exer­cise 4 : Video | Recor­ding a home-made video

Ex.4a : Came­ra frames and angles !

Ex.4b : Came­ra movements !

Exer­cise 5 : Spo­ken Word | Crea­tive wri­ting and spo­ken words

Ex.5 : Spo­ken word example !

Sound and Video Edi­ting : Overview

These Lis­te­ning & Soun­ding Games are fun and easy games for two or more people and will acti­ve­ly engage par­ti­ci­pants in a pro­cess of dee­per lis­te­ning and play­ful soun­ding with the voice.

They are ins­pi­red by and adap­ted from theatre games, vocal improv exer­cises and my work in tra­di­tio­nal Bal­kan sin­ging. Like many folk sin­ging tra­di­tions from around the world, tra­di­tio­nal Bal­kan folk sin­ging is an oral tra­di­tion ; the songs, their sto­ries and the ways in which they are sung were pas­sed down from one gene­ra­tion to the next, lear­ned much in the same way that one first learns to speak : by lis­te­ning, imi­ta­ting and repea­ting.

I dis­co­ve­red that these three ele­ments were essen­tial to the deve­lop­ment of musi­ca­li­ty and pre­sence in my sin­gers and so it is I began imple­men­ting these games, dra­wing from three forms of sin­ging found in many oral sin­ging tra­di­tions : uni­son sin­ging, the drone, and call-and-res­ponse.

These games be used in any set­ting – from the class­room, to the com­mu­ni­ty centre, to the choir rehear­sal. I have most­ly used them as warm-ups, but they can easi­ly be used as stand-alone exer­cises, incor­po­ra­ted into pri­ma­ry or secon­da­ry school les­son plans, or even used as spring­boards to new pos­si­bi­li­ties for inter­pre­ta­tion, impro­vi­sa­tion and performance.

The games are an excellent tool to get non-sin­gers to sound, but they are also very effec­tive for expe­rien­ced sin­gers who might other­wise be more accus­to­med to sin­ging from nota­ted music or lyric sheets, to go beyond the page and into their sen­sing bodies resul­ting in a more dee­ply felt and embo­died soun­ding that can be car­ried over into their other music-makings.

Out­comes :

• dee­per listening
• whole-body par­ti­ci­pa­tion
• heigh­te­ned senses
• increa­sed awareness
• ease, confi­dence and joy in soun­ding with the voice
• increa­sed musi­ca­li­ty and presence
• dee­pe­ned rela­tion­ships among­st group members
• a grea­ter sense of connec­tion and ensemble

You’ll find down­loa­dable colou­ring-page ins­truc­tions to each game below.
Print them out, colour them, and share them with your groups !

UNISON
This game real­ly gets people lis­te­ning – beyond the ears. Encou­rage par­ti­ci­pants to use their eyes to see, their ears to hear, and their bodies to feel.

CALL AND RESPONSE
This game encou­rages people to lis­ten, imi­tate, explore the voice and gain confi­dence in their sin­ging. By incor­po­ra­ting ges­ture, this game is very play­ful and fun for young and old alike. Varia­tion : Use it as an ice-brea­ker ! Have indi­vi­duals sing their name with an accom­pa­nying ges­ture, which the group sing and ges­ture back ! Up for a chal­lenge : Have one indi­vi­dual sing the call, and ano­ther sing a dif­ferent res­ponse. This game can easi­ly turn into an impro­vi­sed song !

SOUND WHEEL
No time to think ! This game will get people out their heads and into their bodies.

HUM
There are so many pos­si­bi­li­ties with this game ! Some ideas : incor­po­rate it into a per­for­mance ; give direc­tions for dif­ferent tem­pi or dyna­mics in the walking/sounding ; have par­ti­ci­pants walk silent­ly and hum when still ; try it without wal­king, sit­ting with eyes closed…

DRONE DUET
This game is great to begin work on timbre, into­na­tion, and lis­te­ning and soun­ding with the whole body,

MIRROR
This theatre game lends itself well to soun­ding with the voice. Deve­lops lis­te­ning, pre­sence, whole-body awa­re­ness and a sense of connec­tion. Varia­tion : Ins­tead of facing one ano­ther, try it with two sin­gers sea­ted with backs toge­ther tou­ching. Begin by brea­thing toge­ther. Turn the breath into voi­ced sighs then into sounding.

A com­mu­ni­ty-based col­la­bo­ra­tion fea­tu­ring ori­gi­nal local music pai­red with the sto­ries and sounds of seniors resi­ding in an assis­ted living centre

Over the course of mul­tiple work­shops, get to know par­ti­ci­pants so a bond can be for­med and par­ti­ci­pants will feel open to sha­ring. During the workshops :

1. Using a hand held digi­tal recor­der, record and cata­logue sound as much as pos­sible, which will allow for many ran­dom moments that may sur­pri­sin­gly lead to song titles, or themes. Cap­ture sounds unique to the indi­vi­duals enga­ged. These sounds can be loo­ped or pit­ched and used to make beats or rhythms spe­ci­fic to the locale, and be used to teach that ordi­na­ry sounds can be musical.

2. Let par­ti­ci­pants try ins­tru­ments and/or music apps on devices. See Shei­la and Steve sit down to create ‘Hope’ as an example of intro­du­cing someone to an ins­tru­ment for the first time. For trying music apps, see Ger­maine steps up to the iPad for the first time. Tell par­ti­ci­pants there is “no wrong way” to touch the screen and make a sound, and that often­times being naive is an advan­tage because they will do some­thing new. Put them at ease by casual­ly trying it in front of them and sho­wing them that it’s easy to do. Record these to use as seg­ways, intros, or full tracks.

3. During the recor­ding of voices for work­shops, encou­rage conver­sa­tions on themes. This will give a sense of play to the pro­ject and pro­cess and bring mea­ning to par­ti­ci­pants. Some examples include : “Where were you born?” “Have you ever had a nick­name?” What was your favou­rite toy as a child?” “What’s your big­gest fear?”

4. Be open and present to reco­gnize a magic moment – be it group laugh­ter or a serious sto­ry, and use that to anchor the song/piece.

5. Gather musi­cians to play a score that has been crea­ted (a num­ber of short ins­tru­men­tals or songs) or impro­vise music and edit pieces or moments into short clips of music (2–5 mins) that will fit well with the length of a short sto­ry. Use ori­gi­nal recor­dings from par­ti­ci­pant enga­ge­ment with apps in work­shops to include as back­drop pieces of music. Expe­riment with dif­ferent com­bi­na­tions of ins­tru­ments : drums and voice, gui­tar and bass, full band, etc. Use the “kee­ping tur­ning left” model of doing some­thing oppo­site of what was just impro­vi­sed : change keys, change tem­po, change instruments.

6. Lis­ten to the recor­dings of the sto­ries and choose which musi­cal piece would fit well, based on theme, lan­guage, mood, and length, or ran­dom­ly com­bine work­shop recor­dings with music.

7. Edit the sto­ries if neces­sa­ry, crea­ting space bet­ween words, and treat the mate­rial as sonic or musi­cal moments, or leave the cho­sen sto­ry in it’s ori­gi­nal state and let the music and sto­ry be inde­pendent of each other, all the while being combined.

8. A strong idea to create mea­ning and flow is to edit a word or sec­tion and repeat it as you would a cho­rus of a song. Many times you will find sen­tences that have their own rhythm work well when com­bi­ned with music of a dif­ferent tem­po and/or rhythm.

Sound Sto­ries from the Land

okâwî­mâw askiy is Mother Earth (nêhiyawêwin/Plains Cree lan­guage), always pro­vi­ding for us in ways beyond our wil­dest ima­gi­na­tions. This work­shop pro­vides an ope­ning for us to streng­then our connec­tion to earth while acti­va­ting our voices and bodies through sound and movement.

As we move through prompts based on tea­chings from the medi­cine wheel, we dee­pen our pre­sence with our four bodies (men­tal, phy­si­cal, emo­tio­nal, spi­ri­tual) and the four ele­ments (earth, fire, wind, water) and we acti­vate our senses. We work in a circle, whe­ther actual or per­cei­ved, in an on-going ack­now­led­ge­ment of our rela­tion­ship to the many earth and sky rela­tives that are beyond our two-leg­ged (human) realm.

Loo­king at concepts :

medi­cine wheel : in an nêhiyaw/Plains Cree pers­pec­tive we all have four bodies ; phy­si­cal, men­tal, emo­tio­nal, spi­ri­tual. When we consi­der all four bodies in the way we voca­lize and respond to the world within and around us, we can find balance through sound. We also ack­now­ledge the four ele­ments and the four direc­tions as inte­gral aspects of this balancing.

mis­kâ­so­win : fin­ding one’s sense of belon­ging, loca­ting one­self within the circle (of life). We conti­nual­ly work in rela­tion­ship to one ano­ther where all voices matter.

wâh­kôh­to­win : kin­ships beyond our imme­diate fami­ly ; an ack­now­ledg­ment of all of earth’s crea­tion as mem­bers of our exten­ded fami­ly, as relatives.

nika­mo­tan : let us sing toge­ther as crea­tive medi­cine to help us grow and streng­then our capa­ci­ties for lis­te­ning, mir­ro­ring and living a good life together.

nanâs­ko­mo­win : gra­ti­tude. We give thanks through music and sin­ging. In a simple way, we say “hay hay” as a way of ack­now­led­ging all the rela­tion­ships that uplift, ins­pire and help us grow.

What place or land­scape is home for you ? How do you ack­now­ledge your body as home ?

1. Coming home through breath :

Fol­lo­wing a simple count in a cir­cu­lar pat­tern, we explore the cycles of birth, growth, death and release. We inhale and take in the air around us, this air ignites the fire inside, war­ming us and filling our bodies with ener­gy. We hold this air inside in awe, fee­ling into where space is being made with new breath. We release this air and we calm the waters in our bel­lies. We feel the emp­ti­ness of release. We repeat. Each time we cycle through breath, we engage with dif­ferent images, thin­king about the ele­ments, the cycles of life, of sun­rise and sun­set. We use our body as a map to connect with land­scapes and remem­ber that our body is our ter­ri­to­ry. Once you are fini­shed cycling through this brea­thing exer­cise a few times, take a minute to sit quiet­ly and notice if there are subtle changes in your inner world. Then ask, what has shif­ted in your per­cep­tion of your rela­tion­ship to the world around you ?

2. CALL + RESPONSE. Lis­ten, Reci­pro­cate, Respond :

What sounds, sights, smells, fee­lings, tastes ins­pire you to sing and to call into exis­tence the sounds alive inside and around you ? We explore how our voices blend, echo and mir­ror the world around us and invite new sounds and lan­guages for connec­tion. You can work with images, sounds from nature and other found objects or memo­ries to create the acti­va­tion for call and response.

3. GRATITUDE song :

Through song we give thanks to all the beings, people, places and gifts that sup­port our exis­tence. Loo­king around and within you, we sing out, name and cele­brate these gifts together.

What does it mean to “Know Music”?

The impor­tant thing, as one can­not repeat too often, if that the child should learn to feel music, to absorb it, to give his whole body and soul to it ; to lis­ten to it not mere­ly with his ear but with his whole being. ~ Emile Jaques Dalcroze

Goals :

• Embo­died unders­tan­ding and enga­ge­ment 
• To encou­rage “kno­wing-in-action”.
• To accept and nur­ture move­ment impulses and emo­tio­nal reac­tions to music.
• To engage with the sen­sing, fee­ling, expe­rien­cing body through musi­cal sounds and activities.
• To culti­vate per­for­mance, lis­te­ning, reflec­tion and creation.
• To exa­mine the body as a conscious and expli­cit mode of transformation.
• To invite the wealth of infor­ma­tion and know­ledge that the sen­sual body holds and invite it into the edu­ca­tio­nal musi­cal expe­rience. 
• To acti­ve­ly engage in ima­gi­na­tive, music crea­tion at all ages and levels.
• To deve­lop musi­cal poten­tial through infor­mal gui­dance that connects the lis­te­ning expe­rience with sound exploration.
• To create a lis­te­ning and res­pon­sive musi­cal community.

By uti­li­zing the mood meter, par­ti­ci­pants explore their inner emo­tio­nal world and how that emo­tio­nal world can be explai­ned in terms of plea­sant and unplea­sant fee­lings and higher or lower ener­gy.

These concepts are explo­red using the lan­guage of emo­tion.  By tuning into this emo­tio­nal expe­rience, docu­men­ting it, and then rela­ting it to music, par­ti­ci­pants can explore their own sound art poten­tial. 

Any ins­tru­ments can be used, inclu­ding found objects, the voice and/or body per­cus­sion. The music ensemble of any size and/or ins­tru­men­ta­tion is the framework.

The music crea­ted will reflect the four colours found on the mood meter (see atta­ched photo).

Par­ti­ci­pants will create an impro­vi­sed work – a col­lec­tion of 4 pieces. 

The faci­li­ta­tors par­ti­ci­pate as much or as lit­tle as neces­sa­ry, based on the stu­dents brains­tor­ming and impro­vi­sa­tions. 

The final per­for­mance consists of the stu­dents using the lan­guage of emo­tion and color to create an impro­vi­sed musi­cal work.

Step by Step Instructions :

• Look at the Mood Meter and explain how it works.
• Divide the group up into 4 ensembles.
• Using large pieces of paper and colou­red mar­kers, have each group brains­torm “fee­ling words” around the 4 colours on the mood meter :
  1. Blue : low ener­gy, unpleasant
  2. Green : low ener­gy, pleasant
  3. Yel­low : high ener­gy, pleasant
  4. Red : high ener­gy, unpleasant
• Once the group has brains­tor­med lan­guage of emo­tions, they can explore “impro­vi­sing emo­tions” on their ins­tru­ments. 
• The group creates a suite of 4 impro­vi­sed pieces based on the four colours dis­played on the mood meter.

Exten­sions :

• Brains­torm contras­ting musi­cal terms that coin­cide with emo­tions and cor­res­pon­ding musi­cal res­ponses (ex. stac­ca­to, lega­to, forte, pia­no, dis­so­nance, conso­nance, timbre, etc.)
• Use pho­to­gra­phy, video or visual art found through online research to mir­ror the emo­tion as a way to fur­ther enhance the sen­sual explo­ra­tion. 
• The visual art work or poe­tic res­ponses could be crea­ted by the students.
• Lis­ten to ins­tru­men­tal music from a varie­ty of styles and have the stu­dents iden­ti­fy the “colours” or “moods.” The stu­dents can think in terms of high or low vibra­tion, plea­sant or unplea­sant fee­lings, and the lan­guage of emo­tion. 
• Use music nota­tion, lead sheet construc­tion and/or gra­phic scores to docu­ment the composition.

My Per­so­nal Reflection : 

I first taught this unit when I was the artist-in-resi­dence at my son’s Reg­gio Emi­lia based ele­men­ta­ry school in Coquit­lam, B.C.

As a school, they were respon­ding to the Mood Meter as a dai­ly check in. Over the weeks, I wat­ched my son learn about how to des­cribe his mood. His voca­bu­la­ry expan­ded and he became very com­for­table arti­cu­la­ting his fee­lings at a very young age. I was exci­ted to see this work hap­pe­ning with young chil­dren and I qui­ck­ly rea­li­zed that this voca­bu­la­ry was a won­der­ful gate­way into aes­the­tics in music. I  loo­ked to deve­lop a musi­cal acti­vi­ty that would draw from the socio-emo­tio­nal lear­ning that was alrea­dy hap­pe­ning in the class­room . 

Music is the lan­guage of emo­tion and when young chil­dren deve­lop the lan­guage to des­cribe their inner worlds, they also deve­lop the lan­guage to des­cribe music and then, in turn, create musi­cal work in res­ponse to those concepts. 

Over the years I have used this acti­vi­ty with groups of all ages and abi­li­ties.  I am always ama­zed at the unique ways the par­ti­ci­pants were able to engage with the mood meter, relate their fin­dings to des­cri­bing recor­ded music and then create beau­ti­ful, impro­vi­sed music com­po­si­tions. 

Lis­te­ning Games for Redu­cing Noise Levels in a School Cafeteria

Pic­ture a large room : concrete floor, low tile cei­ling, bare plas­ter walls, tables lined with stools, a wall of indus­trial fridges and an atta­ched com­mer­cial kit­chen. Ima­gine the accom­pa­nying sounds : hums, buzzes and the metal­lic clanks of a busy kit­chen. Now ima­gine the same room filled with 100 or so kids eating lunch, anti­ci­pa­ting going out­side to play. The enthu­siasm and effi­cien­cy of this room are lau­dable ; the sound levels impres­sive. I had the plea­sure of being an Artist in Resi­dence for Sound Bites, a School Hosts an Artist pro­ject aimed at redu­cing the noise level in this room, Coro­na­tion Ele­men­ta­ry School’s cafeteria.

A school cafe­te­ria is simi­lar to a res­tau­rant or a bar – there are a lot of people in an enclo­sed space, usual­ly with a fair amount of back­ground music and/or noise. People talk loud­ly so they can be heard by their friends, which means other people talk lou­der in turn. In brains­tor­ming with science tea­cher and visual artist Shel­ly Sharp, we came up with the fol­lo­wing focus questions :

“How does sound affect our well-being ? What can we do as artists, stu­dents and adults to unders­tand and posi­ti­ve­ly impact sound qua­li­ty and volume in the Coro­na­tion Ele­men­ta­ry lunchroom?”

In order to have an effect on noise levels in any space, you start by lis­te­ning. So if the pro­ject Sound Bites aims to reduce the noise levels in the Coro­na­tion Ele­men­ta­ry School cafe­te­ria, we nee­ded to make lis­te­ning fun and enga­ging for the stu­dents. The fol­lo­wing games aimed to do just that.

Rea­dy… set… listen !

Sound Trea­sure Hunt

1. Before playing the sound trea­sure hunt, ask stu­dents to name any sound they hear (e.g. a sneeze, a car horn hon­king, shuf­fling feet).
2. Ask stu­dents to iden­ti­fy a sound they hear fre­quent­ly in this room, and not say it out loud. Pick one student to ‘play’ the sound while eve­ryone else covers their eyes (e.g. era­ser on whi­te­board, chair scra­ping, per­cus­sion mal­lets cla­cking against each other). Ask for volun­teers to guess what the sound was.
3. Rea­dy… set… lis­ten : Over a two-minute per­iod, sit quiet­ly and lis­ten. Then, ask stu­dents to write or draw the sounds they heard. If they have trouble remem­be­ring what they heard pre­vious­ly (I do!), they can write or draw any sounds they are cur­rent­ly hea­ring. Ask volun­teers to read their list or des­cribe what they heard. Notice the simi­la­ri­ties and dif­fe­rences in what stu­dents hear.

Tips :

• Use a visual aid to show where you are in the two minutes per­iod to avoid the inevi­table ques­tion ‘how much longer?’
• Adapt the length of time to your group. I pre­fer seve­ral lis­te­ning per­iods of shor­ter time frames so the trea­sure hunt is dif­ferent eve­ry time. Given how much how qui­ck­ly sound changes in an ele­men­ta­ry school, one two-minute trea­sure hunt could fea­ture the jani­tor wal­king down the hall­way with a trol­ley, gree­ting a few kids, while the next might be about the sounds of the hea­ting sys­tem star­ting (reluc­tant­ly), and the next bas­ket­ball prac­tice in the gym down the hallway.
• Brains­torm a num­ber of dis­tinct acous­tic envi­ron­ments to lis­ten to that are within easy wal­king dis­tance. Repeat the trea­sure hunt in each loca­tion, wri­ting and dra­wing the sounds of each. Dis­cuss, com­pa­ring locations.

For Sound Bites, we chose to lis­ten to a stair­well, the libra­ry, and two dif­ferent loca­tions in the cafeteria.

The kids floo­red me with their enthu­siasm and acute ears. As you can see in the images below, their res­ponses are ama­zing, com­plex and varied, and say as much about each indi­vi­dual as it does about their school.

Fin­ding Folk for Music is a way to share concepts and stra­te­gies for a kind of expe­ri­men­tal folk music. The series engages people in hands-on crea­tion regard­less of anyone’s level of pre­vious musi­cal expe­rience. Work­shops pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty for impro­vi­sa­tion, explo­ra­tion, sound making, and audio recor­ding in res­ponse to the envi­ron­ment. They are a chance to prac­tice deep lis­te­ning, a phi­lo­so­phy and approach to music and sound deve­lo­ped by com­po­ser Pau­line Oli­ve­ros. Deep lis­te­ning helps us unders­tand and per­ceive our­selves in the world, and whe­ther through envi­ron­men­tal, social, or poli­ti­cal impacts, our sound­scape is always in a state of change. Docu­men­ting sound is an impor­tant aspect of Fin­ding Folk for Music. The work­shop and per­for­mance recor­dings are like trans­crip­tions of the acous­tic spaces and the par­ti­ci­pants’ musi­cal enga­ge­ment. The recor­dings have archi­val and docu­men­ta­tion value, and I find them plea­sant to lis­ten to. Through these work­shops I am fin­ding new stra­te­gies to bring people toge­ther to make expe­ri­men­tal music, and in this way, the series is an exten­sion of my com­po­si­tion and sound art practice.

In Octo­ber of 2019 I was invi­ted to present Fin­ding Folk for Music at the Sounds Like Fes­ti­val in Sas­ka­toon. The two-hour ses­sion invol­ved eight people and explo­red trans­crip­tion and com­po­si­tion stra­te­gies with a variable set of ins­tru­ments. The sample work­shop stra­te­gy found below this text was used for one of the activities.

It is inter­es­ting to hear the dif­ferent results from the two groups who were fol­lo­wing the same set of ins­truc­tions and lis­te­ning to the same loo­ping audio sample, and to note how qui­ck­ly the par­ti­ci­pants found a sha­red musi­ca­li­ty in their playing.

One year ear­lier in Rea­ding, UK, I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present a lon­ger-form ver­sion of Fin­ding Folk for Music, as a four-day work­shop with an ad hoc ensemble lea­ding to public performance.

Over the four days, our group explo­red field recor­ding, trans­crip­tion, and impro­vi­sa­tion, with the goal of making music that com­pli­men­ted and respon­ded to the envi­ron­ment. We went into woo­ded areas near cam­pus and lis­te­ned to the trees, city noises, and Hea­throw air traf­fic above us. With an array of micro­phones and ins­tru­ments in our hands, we set up in iso­la­ted as well as busy public spaces, making music that trans­cri­bed and com­pli­men­ted the sound­scape. In the quie­test places, we found a world of sound alrea­dy present, and for the per­for­mance at the museum, the large audience and their chat­ter, clin­king glasses, and shuf­fling feet became ano­ther sound­scape to which we respon­ded. Throu­ghout the pro­cess, we asked our­selves the ques­tions : Is there alrea­dy enough to lis­ten to ? Why am I adding ano­ther sound ? When I do, how can it be alrea­dy part of the sound­scape or how can it stand out through inten­tion, repe­ti­tion, or expression ? 

On the first day of the work­shop, par­ti­ci­pants bor­ro­wed por­table recor­ding units and set out to moni­tor and record the most quiet places they could find on campus.

As a stra­te­gy to encou­rage deep lis­te­ning, the field recor­ding exer­cise contri­bu­ted to the crea­tive pro­cess. When making field recor­dings, par­ti­ci­pants wore head­phones and expe­rien­ced the sound­scape in a close-up and immer­sive way, hea­ring the smal­lest details and encoun­te­ring the back­ground noise in even the quie­test places. This awa­re­ness of the sound­scape infor­med the group’s abi­li­ty to impro­vise toge­ther, and parts of the field recor­dings were inte­gra­ted into the performance.

Our per­for­mance was well-recei­ved, with hun­dreds of people stan­ding, sit­ting, and wal­king through the museum to lis­ten. Audience mem­bers com­men­ted on the focu­sed and immer­sive qua­li­ty of the music we played, and after­wards group mem­bers were inter­vie­wed about their expe­rience in the workshop :

“The sound is sup­po­sed to react to the envi­ron­ment but not over­po­wer it. We also recor­ded some silence and played along with those recor­dings. It feels very calm in our cor­ner ; the exhi­bi­tion is very hec­tic otherwise.”

“I lear­ned about sound com­po­si­tion, how to use ins­tru­ments in dif­ferent ways, crea­ting sounds with recor­dings from nature.”

“We were wor­king with sounds, with dif­ferent ways to record sound, to docu­ment it. It was a group pro­ject, four of us and Jeff as well. We were all there, wor­king toge­ther during the work­shops, making indi­vi­dual recor­dings, and put­ting it all together.”

Fol­lo­wing the work­shop and per­for­mance in Rea­ding, I had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to present a stand-alone ver­sion of the field recor­ding exer­cise in Win­ni­peg, on a very cold day in March in the office space of Crea­tive Manitoba.

Par­ti­ci­pants were given a set of ins­truc­tions during a short 20-minute session : 

(1) Bor­row a sound recor­der and toy xylo­phone ; (2) as a soli­ta­ry acti­vi­ty, move through the buil­ding to find a silent or near-silent space ; (3) record the sound­scape ; (4) speak quiet­ly and des­cribe where you are and what you hear ; (5) make sounds with the xylo­phone ; (6) after a few minutes, stop and return.

This exer­cise invi­ted par­ti­ci­pants to lis­ten to the acous­tic envi­ron­ment, and to hear them­selves and their actions in rela­tion to the sound that was alrea­dy there. The hall­ways and stair­wells were filled with ambient office back­ground noise, with machines hum­ming and the sound of icy wind out­side. The xylo­phones inter­jec­ted a play­ful ele­ment and a kind of sound impulse that acous­ti­cal­ly map­ped the spaces through echo and reverberation.

Later the same year, I had a chance to present Fin­ding Folk for Music at the Regi­na Public Libra­ry. As in ear­lier pre­sen­ta­tions, the work­shop inclu­ded field recor­ding exer­cises, group impro­vi­sa­tion, and deep lis­te­ning. We found sounds in and around the buil­ding, and we used these recor­dings as bed tracks and as a kind of acous­tic score. Playing in the open area of the libra­ry beside a rum­bling esca­la­tor and with sounds of people all around us, we respon­ded to the sound­scape, imi­ta­ting what we heard, mixing back­ground and foreground.

Through all of the pre­sen­ta­tions of Fin­ding Folk for Music, the series has grown and has been adap­ted for dif­ferent contexts. I have lear­ned more about ways that deep lis­te­ning, crea­tive music making, impro­vi­sa­tion, and com­po­si­tion can be enga­ged with by people with any level of musi­cal trai­ning or expe­rience. Results vary, and while I am moved by all the music we have made, appre­cia­ting this is a mat­ter of taste.  The pro­cess, howe­ver, is most impor­tant, and the stra­te­gies I am wor­king with play­ful­ly reveal musi­cal rela­tion­ships, artis­tic choices, and col­lec­tive efforts by people in the crea­tion of a work of art. For me that’s the point of Fin­ding Folk for Music.

* * *

Jeff Mor­ton is a com­po­ser, musi­cian, and media artist based in rural sou­theast Saskatchewan.

Cata­lyst is an online, music impro­vi­sa­tion lear­ning expe­rience. Along with three ins­truc­tio­nal videos, this guide will out­line some of the key com­po­nents of musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion. This video series draws from the Crea­tive Abi­li­ty  Deve­lop­ment method and music peda­go­gy crea­ted by Alice Kanack.

Along with three inter­ac­tive videos, this accom­pa­nying video guide can be used by indi­vi­duals or small groups of a wide age range and musi­cal ability.

These ins­truc­tio­nal videos are desi­gned to work in conjunc­tion with an educator/workshop faci­li­ta­tor as a sup­por­ting acti­vi­ty, or stand alone for indi­vi­dual use.

What is Crea­tive Abi­li­ty Development ?

Crea­tive Abi­li­ty Deve­lop­ment (CAD) is a method crea­ted by Alice Kanack where stu­dents use musi­cal impro­vi­sa­tion as a mean to deve­lop the crea­tive side of the brain. The main goal of CAD is to teach unique self expres­sion or musi­ca­li­ty.  When stu­dents engage in impro­vi­sa­tion, there are three rules or inten­tions we abide by :

1. There Is No Such Thing As A Mistake

”Crea­ti­vi­ty Is About Making Choices”

Our first, and per­haps our most impor­tant rule, helps stu­dents to free them­selves into embra­cing their own crea­ti­vi­ty in choo­sing sounds. Com­po­sing is making deci­sions with sound ; impro­vi­sa­tion is making those deci­sions in real time and exe­cu­ting them in the moment. Allo­wing our­selves to free­ly make musi­cal deci­sions without wor­rying if they are right or wrong leads us on a jour­ney to craf­ting a musi­cal lan­guage that reso­nates with who we are.

2. Silence and Applause

Prac­ti­cing Res­pect and Communication

Silence : Someone once told me that gro­wing in our craft as musi­cians is cen­tred around the art of lis­te­ning.  By acti­ve­ly lis­te­ning to the music being crea­ted around us we are gro­wing in our musi­cal unders­tan­ding and aptitude.

Applause :  When we hear someone call out “Bra­vo ! or Bra­va!” after a magni­ficent per­for­mance, it was not ori­gi­nal­ly used to just cele­brate vir­tuo­si­ty. When the word was first used in ancient Greece, it was used to reco­gnize the bra­ve­ry of a per­for­mer.  When we applause, it may not always take place in the lite­ral sense, but through our expres­sions, minds and our hearts we honour the musi­cal expe­rience we are hearing.

3. Never Cri­ti­cize A Friend

”Because there is no such thing as a mistake”

Jud­ging a mas­ter­piece before it is com­ple­ted is a silly idea–improvisation is a life-long jour­ney ! ​When we engage in impro­vi­sa­tion we are taking part in a revol­ving feed­back loop:We make a deci­sion and create a sound.  We hear the sound, make ano­ther deci­sion, and the pro­cess conti­nues… To show res­pect for each other’s crea­tive jour­ney and pro­cess, we refrain from jud­ging someone else’s musi­cal choices. This keeps the feed­back loop clear, and fos­ters an encou­ra­ging sup­por­tive com­mu­ni­ty for eve­ryone to explore their crea­tive voices.

Impro­vi­sing and crea­ting sound­scapes with a loop pedal

Loop Pedal Devices & Apps :

Boss Loop Sta­tion RC-20

Boss Loop Sta­tion RC-30

Boss Loop Sta­tion RC-300

Vox VDL‑1 dyna­mic looper

Super-Loo­per App

Loo­py App

Crea­ting sound­scapes : A Fra­me­work For Crea­ting A Sound­scape With A Loo­ping Device

Start With The Root : Set the tem­po, cha­rac­ter and feel of your sound­scape and show­case the key (this can be done by using arpeg­gios and other scale notes)

Build It Out : Hol­ding long tones can help create a wash of sound and help par­ti­ci­pants to get com­for­table by blen­ding their sound into the texture.

Add Some Tex­ture : Create a har­mo­ny or coun­ter melo­dy, Change the type of bow stroke you are using (for example : piz­zi­ca­to, trem­mel­lo etc.)

Leave Room For ‘Play’ : Res­ts are part of the music, Feel free to leave some open space within the sound­scape and let your melo­dies, breath.

About Kathryn Patri­cia Cobbler :

Loop pedal vio­list, com­po­ser, and arran­ger Kathryn Patri­cia Cob­bler has craf­ted a sin­gu­lar niche in impro­vi­sa­tion, and clas­si­cal per­for­mance. She obsesses over crea­ting uni­que­ly arres­ting sound­scapes, whe­ther in solo reci­tals, com­po­sing for theatre, per­for­ming in site spe­ci­fic art ins­tal­la­tions, and more.

As an edu­ca­tor, Ms. Cob­bler is a Crea­tive Abi­li­ty and Deve­lop­ment method tea­cher and tea­cher-trai­ner.  She conti­nual­ly seeks to expand reper­toire for solo vio­la and loop pedal, and has enga­ged with the 9th Hour Theatre as a com­po­ser and per­for­mer for their pro­duc­tion of Halo. She has also been known to col­la­bo­rate with other com­po­sers, inclu­ding a pre­miere of a piece by the Cana­dian cel­list and com­po­ser Raphael Weinroth-Browne.

Kathryn Patri­cia holds degrees in vio­la per­for­mance from Wes­tern Uni­ver­si­ty (B.M.) and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Otta­wa (M.M.).  She per­forms on a vio­la by luthier, Sibylle Rup­pert and a Boss RC-30 loop pedal.

https://www.kathrynpatricia.com/

From fin­ding objects around the house (the recy­cling and ‘junk dra­wer’ are trea­sure troves!) to tur­ning them into musi­cal ins­tru­ments and deco­ra­ting them, to com­po­sing a sym­pho­ny, to conduc­ting the final per­for­mance ! Kids will find a huge amount of joy in lea­ding this acti­vi­ty, stret­ching their ima­gi­na­tions, tur­ning up their ears, and explo­ring their sound art poten­tial. The ins­tru­ments can be any sound making objects the ima­gi­na­tion finds poten­tial in. The sym­pho­ny is a fra­me­work : a sto­ry­line with a begin­ning, middle, and end, depic­ted in a gra­phic score. The chil­dren will create the work and adults sim­ply faci­li­tate as much or as lit­tle as is neces­sa­ry, based on the child/children. The final per­for­mance consists of the child/children using basic hand signals, cue cards, or words to cue the orches­tra of musi­cians pre­mie­ring the Stay at Home Sym­pho­ny on their new­ly min­ted ‘found object’ instruments.

Step by Step Instructions :

• Take a look around your home for ran­dom items you think might easi­ly be trans­for­med into sound making machines. Toi­let paper tubes, tin­foil take out contai­ners, old keys, dry maca­ro­ni, and emp­ty egg car­tons are some of the things we’ve collected.

• Pull out your art sup­plies and get craf­ty ! Try atta­ching objects toge­ther to create new ins­tru­ments. You might also attach string to hang the ins­tru­ment or make a handle out of tape to hold the ins­tru­ment. Ima­gine how you might drum on some­thing, blow through some­thing, strum something…what cool sounds can your found objects make ? Per­haps you hook elas­tic bands onto nails to create some­thing you can strum, cut or, alter­na­te­ly, glue tubes toge­ther to create dif­ferent soun­ding ‘horns,’ or dangle old keys or tin­foil take-away contai­ners from strings to create chimes or cym­bals. Any­thing goes ! Once you’ve adap­ted your ins­tru­ments into sound making machines, you can deco­rate them howe­ver you like ; with paint, sparkles, sti­ckers, string, you name it ! The more colour­ful, the better.

• Next, you’ll need some colou­red pen­cils and a big piece of paper to com­pose your gra­phic score. For this step, ima­gine the sounds you’d like to hear and what dra­wings might match up with those sounds. I’ve inclu­ded some examples below. You might give each found object ins­tru­ment that you’ve crea­ted its own colour on the score, so that when the player of that ins­tru­ment sees their colour, they know it’s their turn to play. Or, you might draw a bunch of dif­ferent shapes that can be inter­pre­ted by the musi­cians in your Stay at Home Sym­pho­ny as sounds. A lot of dots or short lines might mean real­ly per­cus­sive stac­ca­to (short) sounds on the ins­tru­ments. Swir­ly circles or long lines might mean more connec­ted sounds. You can use height in your dra­wing, too. High sounds could be indi­ca­ted with mar­kings higher up on the page and low sounds could be low on the page. Dif­ferent colours could be used to tell the players what kinds of sounds to play. Or, you could sim­ply draw an idea of what you want to hear and use hand signals to point to the musi­cian you want to play and how you want them to make their ins­tru­ment sound in that moment.

• Last­ly, set up a space for your big concert ! You’ll need at least one per­son to play your ins­tru­ments, but, pre­fe­ra­bly, you’ll gather your fami­ly or friends toge­ther and have one per­son playing each ins­tru­ment. You’ll be the conductor !

A Per­so­nal Experience :

I first taught this Found Objects Orches­tra and Conduc­tion pro­ject to a day camp of pres­chool aged chil­dren at a music school where I used to work tea­ching most­ly vio­lin. I drew from my expe­rience as an impro­vi­sor, my know­ledge of gra­phic score com­po­si­tion, and my brief intro­duc­tion to John Zorn’s com­po­si­tion, Cobra, which uti­lizes a sys­tem of conduc­tion hand sym­bols and cue cards. All of these things mixed with the play­ful­ness, zeal, and chaos that any room full of pres­choo­lers will bring came toge­ther to create a magi­cal per­for­mance built from the ground up, coope­ra­ti­ve­ly, by the chil­dren them­selves. In the end, our class­room resem­bled a fan­tas­ti­cal scene akin to some­thing out of a Dr. Zeuss book, with colour­ful home­made ins­tru­ments han­ging from the cei­ling, stret­ched from wall to wall, and balan­ced on chairs. The per­for­mers were assi­gned an ini­tial sta­tion equip­ped with an ins­tru­ment to make sound with and then each child rota­ted through the sta­tions and took turns at the conductor’s “podium.” When at the helm, so to speak, the conduc­tor could use any means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion they wan­ted to convey the sounds they desi­red from the per­for­mers. All in all, we had a blast making impro­vi­sed music in the moment and exer­ci­sing our crea­tive minds. The chil­dren gai­ned so much from the expe­rience and came away from their final per­for­mance glo­wing with exci­te­ment and a sense of accom­plish­ment as a group.

A co crea­tion pro­ject with adults faced with men­tal defi­cien­cy and autism issues through the rein­ven­tion of Car­men. With work­shops on ope­ra, mee­ting with crea­tors, and trai­ners hel­ping them pro­du­cing it as well.

For many years, Opé­ra de Mont­réal has offe­red inclu­sive com­mu­ni­ty-enga­ged acti­vi­ties with the objec­tive of ini­tia­ting under­re­pre­sen­ted and under­pri­vi­le­ged publics to ope­ra. Seve­ral co-crea­tion pro­jects have been led, such as YO’péra for men­tal health, in col­la­bo­ra­tion with Espace Tran­si­tion (CHU Saint-Jus­tine) and La Gang à Ram­brou for this with intel­lec­tual disa­bi­li­ties. In col­la­bo­ra­tion with the Conseil des arts de Mont­réal, Pierre Vachon, our Direc­tor for Com­mu­ni­ty Enga­ge­ment and Edu­ca­tion, has deve­lo­ped in col­la­bo­ra­tion four videos explai­ning the prin­ci­pal stages of a pro­ject in part­ner­ship with non artis­tic orga­ni­za­tions and with groups that are under-represented. 

Cap­sule #1 : How to find and part­ner with organizations

• Unders­tan­ding the mis­sion and objec­tives of the artis­tic organization

• Iden­ti­fying an orga­ni­za­tion with whom to build a partnership

• Ini­tia­ting contact

• Explo­ra­to­ry mee­tings : unders­tan­ding the values and social fac­tors for the orga­ni­za­tion and poten­tial collaborations

Cap­sule #2 : Defi­ning the project

After iden­ti­fying the orga­ni­za­tion you want to work with, it is the moment to deter­mine the nature of the pro­ject. Pierre Vachon, Direc­tor of Com­mu­ni­ty Enga­ge­ment and Edu­ca­tion at the Opé­ra de Mont­réal, and Suzanne Beau­lieu, Direc­tor of La Gang à Ram­brou, explain the foun­da­tio­nal pre­mises of their collaboration.

• Idea­tion : the project

• Roles : artis­tic team, faci­li­ta­tors, and participants

• Contri­bu­tions : (finan­cial, human, resources, etc.)

• Bud­get : invest­ment by partners

Cap­sule #3 : Pro­ject realization

Now is the time to take action and esta­blish time­lines, plan work­shops, let your crea­ti­vi­ty take wings, write the plot, in brief, put the pro­ject together !

• Objec­tives

• Pro­ject fra­me­work : sche­du­ling, roles, work­shop content

• Pro­duc­tion modalities

• Taking par­ti­ci­pants’ sto­ries into account

• Flexi­bi­li­ty and production

Cap­sule #4 : An decei­vin­gly simple but essen­tial step : Eva­lua­ting impact !

You will want to col­lect obser­va­tions from par­ti­ci­pants, part­ner orga­ni­za­tion and mem­bers of the public. Often, we deal with this infor­ma­tion quan­ti­ta­ti­ve­ly. It’s also impor­tant to eva­luate the effects on par­ti­ci­pants’ per­so­nal deve­lop­ment. Dis­co­ver how La Gang à Ram­brou and their team has led this stage of the project.

• Eva­lua­tion : unders­tan­ding impact (artis­tic, per­so­nal, professional)

• Mea­su­red and ‘felt’ results

• Research : contri­bute to the metho­do­lo­gy for eva­lua­tion of the impact of social action on orga­ni­za­tions and participants

Here is an approach to col­la­bo­ra­tive music making based on using exis­ting reper­toire, where a group samples and repur­poses mate­rial and ideas for use as a Star­ting Point.

A. PREPARATION – Choose the Feature

Pre­pare by choo­sing one or more fea­tures direct­ly rela­ted to the reper­toire com­po­si­tion and inten­ded to use as a Star­ting Point.  You can also do this with the class, depen­ding on the “depth of engagement”.

Examples :

Musi­cal Buil­ding Blocks

• Meters (odd meters of various tra­di­tio­nal music)

• Rhyth­mic pat­terns (focus on syn­co­pa­tion, genre-spe­ci­fic beats)

• Cadences (tra­di­tio­nal and as a broa­der concept)

Concep­tual

• Cross-dis­ci­pli­na­ry (Debussy’s La Mer ins­pi­red by Hokusai)

• Ins­pi­ra­tion from nature (Bee­tho­ven Sym­pho­ny No 6)

• Contem­po­ra­ry sam­pling techniques

Socio-his­to­ri­cal context and other knowledges

• Indi­ge­nous knowledge

• Ori­gins of Afri­can (per­cus­sion) ins­tru­ments in the Ame­ri­cas (various contem­po­ra­ry jazz and latinx composers)

• Inter­in­fluence of Asian and Euro­pean music tra­di­tions (mul­tiple composers/pieces)

B. The Workshop(s)

1. Warm-up

Warm-ups are inten­ded to bring a group into an opti­mal psy­cho-emo­tio­nal state for crea­ting music toge­ther. I like to run com­ple­te­ly unfa­mi­liar acti­vi­ties which “reset” the stu­dents’ usual band room mind­set. When desi­gning the warm-up, keep in mind the cho­sen Feature.

Examples :

• For com­plex rhyth­mic pat­terns, warm-up by run­ning some simple clap­ping riffs with pha­sing effect (3/4 4/4 5/4 star­ting together)

• Fun phy­si­cal ice-brea­ker acti­vi­ty with some space for impro­vi­sa­tion, gui­ded towards the Feature

2. Engage with the Feature

The Faci­li­ta­tor can be crea­tive with the man­ner of pre­sen­ting the Fea­ture. For the stu­dents, this expe­rience should be slight­ly chal­len­ging, a stretch into the “less known”.

Examples :

• Ver­ba­li­za­tion of an odd meter (do-you wa-nna ba-na-na = 7/8)

• Gra­phic nota­tion of com­plex rhythms

• Learn melody/riff/motif (late­ral rote, decons­truc­tion of buil­ding blocks, etc)

• Fast visual brains­torm of concepts on whi­te­board and identify/discuss connections

3. Gene­rate Mate­rial in Break-out Groups 

Assi­gn smal­ler groups and give them a task for explo­ra­tion and expe­ri­men­ta­tion, based on the Fea­ture (and its parts).

Sug­ges­tions :

• Define clear deli­ve­rables and keep a tight dead­line (<20 min)

• Walk around and offer artis­tic assis­tance (lis­te­ning, curio­si­ty, appreciation)

• Sug­gest ways a stuck group could move forward

• Pro­vide some socio-emo­tio­nal gui­dance for resol­ving conflicts, assu­ring stu­dents that unu­sed ideas are valuable and can be used in ano­ther context, etc

4. Share – Dis­cuss – Combine 

The brea­kout groups share the musi­cal mate­rial they came up with. After some dis­cus­sion, the idea is to try put­ting things together.

Sug­ges­tions :

• Lis­te­ning groups pay atten­tion to details and make connec­tions with their own music material

• The Faci­li­ta­tor can get the ball rol­ling by direc­ting the mix/match process

• The Faci­li­ta­tor can suggest/direct varia­tions in tem­po, dyna­mics, octaves, extending/shortening bits

• Rather than ver­bal­ly dis­cus­sing what parts may or may not fit toge­ther, have the groups try out their ideas and lis­ten to how they respond

*For more musi­cal mate­rial, repeat steps 3 and 4

5. Rehearse – Perform/Record

You know what to do !

Sug­ges­tions :

• Stu­dents’ self-esteem from crea­ting an ori­gi­nal com­po­si­tion results in dee­per focus – praise them for it !

• Ask stu­dents which sec­tions need fixing

• Assi­gn conduc­tors for spe­ci­fic sec­tions and transitions

• Limit the num­ber of run-throughs before per­for­mance. Avoid ear/mind/soul fatigue !

6. Debrief – Appre­ciate – Celebrate

• Stu­dents can share some­thing posi­tive they’ve obser­ved about one or more of their col­la­bo­ra­tors. Ask them to be specific !

• If you have time, run some fun cele­bra­to­ry games !

GENERAL SUGGESTIONS :

• Be ALERT and FLEXIBLE : stu­dents will unex­pec­ted­ly come up with new ideas, which often redi­rect the work­shop. Let go of your ini­tial plan and fol­low the music !

• Consi­der adjus­ting the “depth” of enga­ge­ment to your stu­dents’ experience/skillset (also in real-time, during the workshops!)

• Think about making this an aural expe­rience. If nota­tion is neces­sa­ry, you can get stu­dents to create gra­phic nota­tion or other alter­na­tive (student-crea­ted sculptures).

• Arrange the chairs into a large circle

• Please consi­der the ideas in this docu­ment as just a few from an infi­nite num­ber of pos­si­bi­li­ties. In the spi­rit of this approach, this docu­ment can be chop­ped up and rear­ran­ged. Please feel free to be as crea­tive as you like with these ideas !

Case Stu­dy :

Edu­ca­tio­nal outreach for Saa­ria­ho Fes­ti­val, orga­ni­zed my New Euro­pean Ensemble

• the pro­ject invol­ved music classes from three dif­ferent schools (Inter­na­tio­nal School in The Hague, Deutsche Inter­na­tio­nale Schule Den Haag, Haags Mon­tes­so­ri Lyceum)

• each class had a dif­ferent lead faci­li­ta­tor and dif­ferent approach

• the Star­ting Point was Kai­ja Saariaho’s com­po­si­tion Licht­bo­gen (Nor­thern Lights)

• the Deutsche Schule class focu­sed on resear­ching and dis­cus­sing the natu­ral phe­no­me­non, and then crea­ted sound­scapes based on timbre expe­ri­men­ta­tion with their ins­tru­ments. They then dis­co­ve­red notes/scales/patterns which they super­im­po­sed on the soundscapes.

• the final com­po­si­tions were pre­sen­ted as a pre-show per­for­mance during the main Festival

The beat or pulse could be consi­de­red the foun­da­tion of what we do, as music-makers.  It is often the struc­ture within which we tell a sto­ry through melo­dy, rhythm, timbre, dyna­mics and even lyrics.  As a music the­ra­pist, I have been wit­nes­sing the power of the beat in the form of heart­beat recor­dings.  I work in an acute care set­ting, with both pal­lia­tive and pae­dia­tric patients.  Heart­beat recor­dings were intro­du­ced to me by work col­leagues who had come across the work of Louis­ville music the­ra­pist Brian Schreck.  Brian’s work with indi­vi­duals with can­cer focuses on the pro­cess of recor­ding individual’s heart­beats, and com­po­sing a song to com­pa­nion that recor­ding.  The resul­ting pro­cess and pro­duct is one that empha­sizes crea­ti­vi­ty, beau­ty and lega­cy.  In the work that I do, heart­beat recor­dings are used in work with patients, young and old, as a form of lega­cy for those whose diag­no­sis may be life-limiting. 

Mate­rials : ipad or recor­ding device, ste­tho­scope, lapel mic

These mate­rials are not pro­hi­bi­ti­ve­ly expen­sive, as iPads are com­mon tools, and the other sup­plies (Rode lapel mic and ste­tho­scope) total ~$350.00.  Other indi­vi­duals have suc­cess in using digi­tal ste­tho­scopes like the Eko Core which may have a stee­per lear­ning curve, but is rough­ly the same price, with some com­pa­tible smart tools (app, etc) that make it equal­ly easy to use. 

Consi­de­ra­tions : When doing a heart­beat recor­ding, it is impor­tant to deter­mine the best place on the chest in order to cap­ture the stron­gest sound of the beat.  There are lots of great resources online that pro­vide a good over­view, along with dia­grams that give an idea of placement.

When using equip­ment that is sen­si­tive, it is good to try to have as quiet of an envi­ron­ment as pos­sible – to put a sign on the door indi­ca­ting that a recor­ding is in pro­cess, etc.

It is impor­tant to put the indi­vi­dual at ease, as they may be uncer­tain about a new expe­rience, even when fee­ling posi­tive about making the recor­ding. Many people with health chal­lenges often have changes to their bodies that can make them feel self-conscious. This can be done by easy conver­sa­tion lea­ding up to the recor­ding, by war­ming the ste­tho­scope, etc.

There are other consi­de­ra­tions that may make it dif­fi­cult to obtain a clear recor­ding.  If someone’s heart­beat is very weak, it may be chal­len­ging to get a recor­ding that sounds like a heart­beat.  This is also the case with indi­vi­duals who have expe­rien­ced extreme weight loss due to disease.  The most impor­tant thing would be to be      able to have a pres­sure-free time of trying to find a clear heart­beat that will deter­mine whe­ther pro­cee­ding with a recor­ding is a good idea.

Consent : It is impor­tant to have consent for the pro­cess and the recor­ding, whe­ther it be for art, research, treatment/therapy, etc.  Ensu­ring that the indi­vi­dual clear­ly unders­tands what is taking place, and what the recor­ding will be used for is cri­ti­cal.  I use the consent forms for recor­ding as well as com­mu­ni­ca­ting elec­tro­ni­cal­ly (to deli­ver the final recor­ding) in my work with patients.  I put the ori­gi­nal in the chart, keep a copy for my records, and then pro­vide the indi­vi­dual with a copy of the consent as well.  It is a straight­for­ward pro­cess in my work, as the recor­dings are sole­ly for the use of the patients, as they see fit.

Pic­ture a muted video of a per­son wal­king inside a house. Ima­gine what the foots­teps might sound like going up crea­ky steps or slight­ly drag­ging on the floor. Turn up the sound and become com­ple­te­ly diso­rien­ted as you hear foots­teps wal­king in crun­chy snow, birds and a sym­pho­ny of frogs. Sound artist Guillaume Jab­bour demons­trates how to use an iphone to shoot and edit a short video in iMo­vie and cap­ture, edit and mix real sounds in Gara­ge­Band. The sounds are then syn­ced with video to create a sur­real expe­rience. The pro­cess offers insight into how movie sound effects are made by Foley artists.

Mate­rials : iPhone or iPad with Voice Memo, Gara­ge­Band and iMovie

Tar­get Audience : 10 years old +

Group Size : indi­vi­dual or pairs

Intro­duc­tion (15 min.)

• Watch the sample videos below with music AND without music.

• Dis­cus­sion :

  • What do you notice ? (e.g. the audio does not match the visual, sounds like snow, nature).

    • ADAPTATION : The dis­cus­sion could be direc­ted by asking “Com­plete these sta­te­ments, “I see… I hear…”

  • How do you think this was done ? (e.g. audio was made sepa­ra­te­ly from video, eve­ry­thing was glued toge­ther after).

• Watch the Foley Artists video below.

• Dis­cus­sion :

  • What does a Foley Artist do ?

Step 1 : Cap­tu­ring and Edi­ting the Video (30 – 60 min.)

• Open the came­ra app on your iPad or iPhone. Choose Video.

• Choose a loca­tion indoors where you can walk for at least 1 min. without interruption.

• Use your device to film a short scene (1 min. max). You can film a lon­ger scene later but for now, keep it short. Film your own legs if you are wor­king alone or take turns fil­ming each other walking.

• Don’t wor­ry if there is extra foo­tage at the begin­ning and end of your video ; you can trim that out afterwards.

• Watch your video and ans­wer these questions :

  • Does the video look good ?

  • Is the ligh­ting even ? Is any­thing blown out (very bright and dif­fi­cult to look at) or too dark ?

  • Is the image stea­dy or is there lots of unwan­ted movement ?

• Consi­der the ans­wer to these ques­tions and decide whe­ther you need to reshoot your video or not to make it look as good as possible.

• Once you are hap­py with the qua­li­ty of your video, open the iMo­vie app, select new pro­ject > Movie > choose the video you just shot and click on the + sign to add it to your iMo­vie project.

• Tap the video in your iMo­vie pro­ject and at the bot­tom Tap Detach to detach the audio. Remem­ber, you will be over­laying a dif­ferent audio track later.

• When you see the sepa­rate audio track below your video, tap and hold down to select it and press the delete key or flick it towards the top of your screen to delete it.

• Trim the video to the desi­red length, cut­ting out any unne­ces­sa­ry footage.

• To remove parts of your video in the middle of the clip, place your cur­sor close to where you want to cut, tap the video region and choose the “Split” option. Then pull the lit­tle scis­sors down to split your clip into two regions. You can now trim out any unne­ces­sa­ry foo­tage on either side of the split.

• Click on the Gear to access set­tings and toggle the sli­der to add a Fade in and out to your video to make it look smoother.

• Once you have deci­ded on the final ver­sion of your video, you are rea­dy to begin wor­king on the audio.

Step 2 : Cap­tu­ring and Expor­ting the Audio (30 min.)

• Open the Voice Memo app on your iPhone or iPad – this app allows you to record even if you leave the app to watch your iMo­vie video at the same time. This is impor­tant for syn­cing the audio with the visual.

• Figure out where you will walk to create a dra­ma­tic mis­match with the video foo­tage. Crun­chy snow, leaves or shal­low water are great options.

• When you are rea­dy, start recor­ding in Voice Memo, then leave the app and open your iMo­vie pro­ject. Hit play in iMo­vie and fol­low the video so that the audio cap­ture of your foots­teps matches your video. Do this as many times as you need to, until you are happy.

• Go back to the Voice Memo app and stop the recording.

• Rename the file to a name that makes sense so that you can find it easi­ly later on if neces­sa­ry – e.g. Foots­teps crun­chy snow

• From the file­list in Voice Memo, click and hold down on your file, click Share > Save File > Gara­ge­Band > Gara­ge­Band File Transfer.

• This is how you will access your file in Gara­ge­Band so that you can mix the audio adding effects, pan­ning, EQ and compression.

Step 3 : Mixing the Audio (30 – 60 min.)

• Open the Gara­ge­Band app, then tap new pro­ject > microphone

• At the top right, tap the loops symbol

• Tap Files > Gara­ge­Band File Trans­fer > drag the file you just expor­ted to the Gara­ge­band workspace

• Wear ear buds, air pods or head­phones and use your ears to edit the track until you are happy.

• Use Track Pan to send your audio signal to the left or right.

• Use the EQ func­tion to bring out the high, middle and low fre­quen­cies of your audio track.

• Use the Com­pres­sor to reduce the dif­fe­rence bet­ween your lou­dest and quie­test sounds.

• Use Effects (Reverb, Echo) to enhance your track.

• Once you are hap­py with your track, tap Pro­jects at the top left, then rename your pro­ject to some­thing that makes sense like before (e.g. AV Mis­match Foots­teps). Then tap Done.

Step 4 : Adding the Audio to the Video and Expor­ting (15 – 30 min.)

• In Gara­ge­band, tap and hold down on your pro­ject then select Share > Song > High Qua­li­ty > Share > Open in… (this may take a few moments as your pro­ject must be expor­ted) > Tap Open in iMo­vie > Choose your iMo­vie project

• You will now see the audio and video in the same project

• Place the audio where you want it.

• You can add other audio tracks using the same process

• You can also use Gara­ge­Band to create music to use as a sound­track for your video.

• Tap Done.

• Tap the Share arrow.

• Decide how you want to export the file. A good option if you have access to a Mac­book or iMac is to Air Drop the Movie file to that and watch it there. Once the movie file is on a com­pu­ter, you can also upload it to your You­tube account.

Taking it Further

What other audio­vi­sual mis­matches can you ima­gine ? Here are some examples :

• Birds chir­ping during a scene of a spa­ce­ship lan­ding on the moon

• A lizard wal­king with foots­teps that sound like pia­no keys

• Sounds of springs and saws during a scene of a doc­tor exa­mi­ning a patient 

Hap­py edi­ting and have fun !

The Pros and Cons Pri­son Music Pro­gram was ini­tia­ted as a res­ponse to the clo­sure of the agri­cul­tu­ral pro­grams in Cana­dian pri­sons, and from the out­set was run with the inten­tion of ser­ving a popu­la­tion that was not only lacking in resources, but was also being acti­ve­ly marginalized.

My expe­riences have led me to unders­tand many sen­si­ti­vi­ties of wor­king with convicts, and the ways in which conflict and poli­ti­ci­za­tion can be avoided.

I have also lear­ned that it is of great advan­tage to create tools for inmates. Your work can have a mul­ti­plier effect by means of open source lear­ning, and the focu­sing of other­wise neglec­ted ener­gies of those behind bars. (Let me dis­tin­guish that last sen­tence from the use of inmates for capi­tal gain, which is other­wise known as sla­ve­ry) We are inter­es­ted in humans buil­ding skill and a know­ledge base that can help them be more self-deter­mi­ned, making choices of bet­ter ser­vice to them­selves and their socie­ties, inside and out­side of institutions.

The three videos shown hear dis­cuss three major aspects of buil­ding mea­ning­ful pro­gram­ming in cor­rec­tio­nal institutions :

Part One : Get­ting Inside

Part Two : The Music Process

Part Three : The Lega­cy Effect

For more music, inter­views , and contact information :

https://wolfeislandrecords.com/theprosandconsprogram/

Lis­te­ning, tou­ching, fee­ling and soun­ding acti­vi­ties using your voice, hands, whole body, ins­tru­ments, or spea­kers (e.g. on phone, com­pu­ter, ear­phones). These sound acti­vi­ties are for people of all —inclu­ding hea­ring and non-hea­ring— abilities.

Note : To help prevent germ trans­mis­sion, wash and/or disin­fect your hands, other body parts, and objects used before, in bet­ween, and after the acti­vi­ties des­cri­bed here !

INTRODUCTION

Your music tou­ched me —I was moved.

The meta­phors we use reveal our lived expe­rience : we feel sound all over our bodies ! Feel the music… feel the bass !

Our uni­verse is filled with ongoing motion, resul­ting in touch that trans­fers ener­gy. The ener­gy of this touch can cause more move­ment, such as vibra­tions. Vibra­tions are back and forth oscil­la­tions of mat­ter that rever­be­rate and tra­vel as waves. When vibra­tions reach our bodies they touch and move us, our skin, bones, joints, blood ves­sels, and organs, like our ears.

Sound touches us, cau­sing and also com­pel­ling us to move in dif­ferent ways. This is power­ful. Sound and music are inti­mate : they touch the entire body, out­side and inside. Vibra­tions tra­vel and touch us, from across dis­tances. Eve­ry­bo­dy has sounds they want or don’t want to touch. Can you think of some ?

LET’S TOUCH SOUND !

Sing a conti­nuous sound (e.g. a vowel). Can you feel your mouth, neck, and other body parts vibra­ting ? Conti­nue sin­ging the same sound and gent­ly touch toge­ther your upper and lower lips. Then try tou­ching toge­ther your upper and lower teeth —the front teeth and then the back. What changes do you feel ?

Slow­ly shift back and forth bet­ween two sung sounds (e.g. two vowels like “ah-oo-ah-oo”). Can you feel what move­ments in your body cause the sound to change ? Sing and hold the palm of your hand just in front of your mouth. What do you feel on your hand and face ?

Now sing and use your hands to gent­ly touch dif­ferent areas of your body (e.g. your nose, lips, throat, back, or chest). How do vibra­tions of dif­ferent sounds feel in dif­ferent parts of your body ? Gra­dual­ly change the sound (e.g.: to a dif­ferent vowel, conso­nant or sono­rant, to a dif­ferent octave, or to a dif­ferent loud­ness). Do cer­tain sounds feel distinct ?

Explore tou­ching sounds while your ears are plug­ged (or while wea­ring head­phones that are playing white noise). How does this change your sen­sa­tion of vibrations ?

Explore vibra­tions with objects in your home : a musi­cal ins­tru­ment or a spoon tap­ping and sli­ding along a metal bowl or table. How do the vibra­tions of these dif­ferent motions feel ? Try gent­ly dam­pe­ning the vibra­tions of the bowl on dif­ferent parts of your arm or foot. Fill the bowl with water and conti­nue… can you see the vibra­tions rip­pling on the water ? Sing dif­ferent vowels into the bowl until you find one that real­ly reso­nates ! Make music by explo­ring the sen­sa­tions of vibra­tions —try plug­ging your ears and also clo­sing your eyes.

Sound is touch. When we hear sound, we are vibra­ting —moving— toge­ther with this sound. This is powerful.

Like the tiny parts inside the ear, a micro­phone contains thin and sen­si­tive com­po­nents that vibrate simi­lar­ly to the sounds that touch it. The microphone’s vibra­tions are conver­ted into varia­tions of elec­tri­cal ener­gy which get trans­mit­ted to other devices and, even­tual­ly, back into vibra­tions of a spea­ker… at a concert or in your phone or com­pu­ter. Explore the vibra­tions of spea­kers. Inflate a bal­loon and explore how its thin mem­brane vibrates with dif­ferent sounds. What does your favou­rite music feel like to touch ? Would you reco­gnize it with your ears plugged ?

Can you tell if someone you know is fee­ling sad, joy­ful, angry, or ano­ther emo­tion, by the sounds they make when they come home ? Do you feel their vibe-rations ?

Maybe your friend will explore vibra­tion with you ? Make sound toge­ther, per­haps taking turns care­ful­ly and gent­ly tou­ching agreed upon parts of each other’s bodies or musi­cal ins­tru­ments. Where do you feel motion and vibra­tion when your friend plays a recor­der or gui­tar ? If you’re explo­ring through a phone or com­pu­ter connec­tion, take turns soun­ding and fee­ling the spea­ker vibra­tions against your bodies.

Dis­co­ver which types of sounds your dif­ferent body parts are sen­si­tive to. What parts of your body feel more sen­si­tive in dis­tin­gui­shing higher, mid, or lower-range fre­quen­cies (pitches), and bet­ween more and less intense vibra­tions ? What vibra­tions com­pel you to move and dance ?

When you hear a sound, notice and explore your sen­sa­tions of vibra­tions and your ins­tincts to move your body.

Let sound touch us ! 

FURTHER VARIATIONS & IDEAS :

How does tou­ching a sound with your hand, alter the sound ? Fli­cking the tongue while voca­li­zing or fli­cking the hand in front of the voca­li­zing mouth is an ancient tech­nique and has an ono­ma­to­poeic term in English : ‘ulu­la­tion’ (which is also used to refer to wai­ling). In fact, dif­ferent lan­guages seem to use com­pa­rable “l‑l” sounds to des­cribe this sound-fli­cking tech­nique. Some theo­ries sug­gest that the first part of the word “hallelu+ja” (Hebrew “praise/shout to + G‑d”) ori­gi­na­ted from such prai­se­ful, trilling ulu­la­tion. Dif­ferent reli­gions des­cribe God and God’s crea­tive power as sound and vibration.

(Clean your phone!) Cup your hand around the phone spea­ker and then gent­ly move your fin­gers and palm to change the reso­nance fre­quen­cy. You can also do this with the spea­ker pla­ced near your mouth and move your mouth as though you are saying “wow wow” (but without using your voice). You are chan­ging the vowel shape of your mouth a bit like a “wah wah” mute on a brass ins­tru­ment or elec­tric pedal. Remem­ber ear­lier we explo­red shif­ting back-and-forth bet­ween sounds, like “oo-ah-oo” —”wow”?!

Run your fin­ger along dif­ferent objects (e.g. a plas­tic contai­ner, a drin­king glass, a wall, a table). Can you guess the vibra­to­ry qua­li­ty of a sur­face by mere­ly hol­ding it, without moving your skin along its sur­face ? Can you infer the tex­tu­ral rhythm of an object just by loo­king at it ? Use a pen­cil and paper to draw ima­gi­na­ry shapes and tex­tures (not objects), and give your page of dra­wings to a friend for them to create the sound of each tex­ture (per­haps as you indi­cate the pres­sure and rate of motion with your hand). Guess which of your images your friend is soni­fying ! Adapt the “Eye Spy…” game : “I touch with my lit­tle fin­ger some­thing that feels like [make the sound of the tex­ture with your mouth]!” (Cf. “Opta­con”.)

Are mecha­no, ther­mo, pho­to, and chemo–reception each a form of touch ?

Sing a sound and ima­gine your toes or other extre­mi­ties vibra­ting or reso­na­ting with your voice. Do you feel some­thing ? How and why ?

Micro­phones reso­nate with sounds that touch their sen­si­tive com­po­nents. Do other objects also “feel” each other’s vibra­tions and reso­nate toge­ther ? Expe­riment with or watch videos of pen­du­lum clocks or mecha­ni­cal metro­nomes syn­chro­ni­zing when they are pla­ced on a com­mon sur­face. (Cf. “Entrain­ment or Mode Locking”.)

ABOUT THE SENSATION OF MECHANICAL VIBRATION :

“Mecha­no­re­cep­tors” are dis­tri­bu­ted across our body to sense dif­ferent qua­li­ties of touch, vibra­tion, and pressure.

If a vibra­tion oscil­lates regu­lar­ly (“per­io­di­cal­ly” retur­ning to the same condi­tion at equal incre­ments of time) bet­ween 20 to 20,000 Hz (cycles per second) and is intense (loud) enough, the ear fuses the sepa­rate oscil­la­tions into an expe­rience of conti­nuous pit­ched tone. The lowest note on a pia­no is 27.5 Hz, and a lit­tle below that, from 25 down to 20 Hz, pitches sound more wob­bly and indis­tinct, and from 20 Hz down (known as “infra­pitch”) to about 0.5 Hz (one cycle eve­ry two seconds), each oscil­la­tion is heard as a dis­crete click (a “pulse”) within a stea­di­ly repea­ting rhythm. Dif­ferent oscil­la­tions can also be expe­rien­ced as vibra­tion and pres­sure changes by mecha­no­re­cep­tors all over our body. And even fre­quen­cies that we can’t feel as dis­tinct vibra­tion or pres­sure changes, may still affect our bodies.  

RELATED TERMS & RESOURCES TO EXPLORE (HYPERLINKED)

YOUTUBE PLAYLIST : https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-rkS6BcMVyt-94SaOujtKJm_vJa0IBa

Mecha­no­re­cep­tors : 

• Lamel­lar corpuscle

• Tac­tile corpuscle

• Mer­kel nerve ending

• Bul­bous corpuscle

Tado­ma

Vibra­tese Language

Opta­con

Pho­non

Cyma­tics

Essen­tic and Sen­tic Forms (See Clynes, in book & docu­ment list below)

Entrain­ment or mode locking

Ves­ti­bu­lar Self-Motion (See Bha­ru­cha, in book & docu­ment list below)

CREDITS

Concept — Daniel Oore

Text — Daniel Oore

Nar­ra­tion — Daniel Oore

Video Demons­tra­tion — Jona­than Oore & Daniel Oore

Video­gra­phy — Sta­cy Smith, Jona­than Oore, Daniel Oore

Video & Audio edi­ting — Daniel Oore

Ori­gi­nal Music & Sound­scape — Daniel Oore

Consul­tants — Dr. Mor­de­cai Oore, P. Eng (IMP Aeros­pace) & Dr. Jona­than Oore, MD (McGill Uni­ver­si­ty) 

WARNINGS :

To help prevent germ trans­mis­sion, wash and/or disin­fect your hands, other body parts, and objects used before, in bet­ween, and after the acti­vi­ties des­cri­bed. 

The demons­tra­tions in this video have been sped up to allow a higher num­ber of ideas to be pre­sen­ted in an enter­tai­ning man­ner. Trying these acti­vi­ties at such a fast paces is not recom­men­ded (and could even result in inju­ry…). If you want to watch the acti­vi­ties slow­ly, select a slo­wer play­back speed in the You­Tube video pre­fe­rences. 

BOOKS & DOCUMENTS WITH INFORMATION & IDEAS ABOUT SOUND, VIBRATION, TOUCH, AND HEARING

Ball, Phi­lip. The Music Ins­tinct : How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do Without It. New York : Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2010.

Bash­wi­ner, David Michael. “Musi­cal Emo­tion : Toward a Bio­lo­gi­cal­ly Groun­ded Theo­ry.” The Uni­ver­si­ty of Chi­ca­go, 2010.

Bea­ment, James. How We Hear Music : The Rela­tion­ship Bet­ween Music and the Hea­ring Mecha­nism. Boy­dell Press, 2003.

Berendt, Joa­chim-Ernst. Nada Brah­ma, the World Is Sound : Music and the Land­scape of Conscious­ness. Des­ti­ny Books, 1987.

Berg, Jere­my M., John L. Tymocz­ko, and Lubert Stryer. “Hea­ring Depends on the Spee­dy Detec­tion of Mecha­ni­cal Sti­mu­li.” Bio­che­mis­try. 5th Edi­tion, 2002. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22542/.

Bha­ru­cha, Jam­shed J., Mea­gan Cur­tis, and Kai­von Paroo. “Varie­ties of Musi­cal Expe­rience.” Cog­ni­tion 100, no. 1 (May 2006): 131–72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.008.

Blauert, Jens, ed. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Acous­tics. Ber­lin : Sprin­ger-Ver­lag, 2005.

Boom­sli­ter, Paul, and War­ren Creel. “The Long Pat­tern Hypo­the­sis in Har­mo­ny and Hea­ring.” Jour­nal of Music Theo­ry 5, no. 1 (1961): 2. https://doi.org/10.2307/842868.

Bra­con­nier, Debo­rah. “Woman Can Lite­ral­ly Feel the Noise.” Medi­cal Xpress, May 30, 2011. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011–05-woman-literally-noise.html.

Bur­rows, David L. Time and the Warm Body a Musi­cal Pers­pec­tive on the Construc­tion of Time. Lei­den ; Bos­ton : Brill, 2007.

Caria­ni, Peter. “Tem­po­ral Codes, Timing Nets, and Music Per­cep­tion.” Jour­nal of New Music Research 30, no. 2 (2001): 107–135.

Chan­gi­zi, M.A. Har­nes­sed : How Lan­guage and Music Mimi­cked Nature and Trans­for­med Ape to Man. Kindle edi­tion. Ben­Bel­la Books, 2011.

Clynes, Man­fred. “Time-Forms, Nature’s Gene­ra­tors and Com­mu­ni­ca­tors of Emo­tion.” In Robot and Human Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, 1992. Pro­cee­dings., IEEE Inter­na­tio­nal Work­shop On, 18–31. IEEE, 1992. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=253908.

Clynes, Man­fred, and Yehu­di Menu­hin. Sen­tics : The Touch of Emo­tions. Anchor Press Gar­den City, NY, 1977. http://senticcycles.org/home/sentics/articles/sentics.pdf.

Fra­ser, J. T. “The Art of the Audible ‘Now.’” Music Theo­ry Spec­trum 7 (April 1985): 181–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/745887.

Gau­lon, C., C. Derec, T. Com­briat, P. Mar­mot­tant, and F. Elias. “Sound and Vision : Visua­li­za­tion of Music with a Soap Film.” Euro­pean Jour­nal of Phy­sics 38, no. 4 (July 1, 2017): 045804. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361–6404/aa7147. (https://www-liphy.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/pagesperso/marmottant/Publications_files/Gaulon2017EJP.pdf)

God­win, Jos­ce­lyn. Har­mo­nies of Hea­ven and Earth : Mys­ti­cism in Music from Anti­qui­ty to the Avant-Garde. Simon and Schus­ter, 1987.

———. The Mys­te­ry of the Seven Vowels : In Theo­ry and Prac­tice. Grand Rapids, MI, USA : Phanes Press, 1991.

Gold­stein, E. Bruce, Glyn W. Hum­phreys, Mar­ga­ret Shif­frar, and William A. Yost, eds. Bla­ck­well Hand­book of Sen­sa­tion and Per­cep­tion. Bla­ck­well Hand­books of Expe­ri­men­tal Psy­cho­lo­gy 1. Oxford, UK ; Mal­den, MA : Bla­ck­well Pub, 2005.

Han­del, Ste­phen. Per­cep­tual Cohe­rence : Hea­ring and Seeing. Oxford ; New York : Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2006.

Hud­speth, A. J. “How Hea­ring Hap­pens.” Neu­ron 19, no. 5 (1997): 947–950.

Hugill, Andrew. The Digi­tal Musi­cian. New York : Rout­ledge, 2008.

Kei­del, W. “The Sen­so­ry Detec­tion of Vibra­tions.” In Foun­da­tions of Sen­so­ry Science, edi­ted by W.W. Daw­son and J.M. Enoch, 465–512. Ber­lin : Sprin­ger-Ver­lag, 1984.

Lund­borg, Göran. The Hand and the Brain. Lon­don : Sprin­ger Lon­don, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–1‑4471–5334‑4.

Mayr, Albert. “Sketches for a Low-Fre­quen­cy Sol­fège.” Music Theo­ry Spec­trum 7 (April 1985): 107–13. https://doi.org/10.2307/745882.

Mazur, Joseph. The Motion Para­dox the 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle Behind All the Mys­te­ries of Time and Space. New York : Dut­ton, 2007.

Mer­chel, Sebas­tian, and M. Ercan Altin­soy. “Audi­to­ry-Tac­tile Expe­rience of Music.” In Musi­cal Hap­tics, edi­ted by Ste­fa­no Papet­ti and Cha­ra­lam­pos Sai­tis, 123–48. Sprin­ger Series on Touch and Hap­tic Sys­tems. Cham : Sprin­ger Inter­na­tio­nal Publi­shing, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/978–3‑319–58316-7_7.

Nuss­baum, Charles O. The Musi­cal Repre­sen­ta­tion : Mea­ning, Onto­lo­gy, and Emo­tion. A Brad­ford Book. Cam­bridge, Mass : MIT Press, 2007.

Research Fea­tures. “Over­lap­ping Senses : Hea­ring and Touch Share Cir­cuits in the Brain,” April 5, 2018. https://researchfeatures.com/2018/04/05/hearing-and-touch-share-circuits-in-the-brain/.

Pareyón, Gabriel. On Musi­cal Self-Simi­la­ri­ty : Inter­se­mio­sis as Synec­doche and Ana­lo­gy. Ima­tra ; [Hel­sin­ki]: Inter­na­tio­nal Semio­tics Ins­ti­tute ; Semio­tic Socie­ty of Fin­land, 2011.

Pari­si, David. Archaeo­lo­gies of Touch : Inter­fa­cing with Hap­tics from Elec­tri­ci­ty to Com­pu­ting. U of Min­ne­so­ta Press, 2018.

Pater­son, Mark. The Senses of Touch : Hap­tics, Affects, and Tech­no­lo­gies. Oxford ; New York : Berg, 2007.

Pie­chows­ki, Michael M. “The Logi­cal and the Empi­ri­cal Form of Fee­ling.” Jour­nal of Aes­the­tic Edu­ca­tion 15, no. 1 (Janua­ry 1981): 31. https://doi.org/10.2307/3332208.

Plomp, Rei­nier. The Intel­li­gent Ear : On the Nature of Sound Per­cep­tion. Mah­wah, N.J : Law­rence Erl­baum Asso­ciates, 2002.

Pogo­ri­lows­ki, Andrei. The Music of the Tem­po­ra­lists. Bucha­rest, Roma­nia : André Pogo­ri­loff­ski, 2012.

Reed, C. M., N. I. Dur­lach, L. D. Brai­da, and M. C. Schultz. “Ana­ly­tic Stu­dy of the Tado­ma Method : Effects of Hand Posi­tion on Seg­men­tal Speech Per­cep­tion.” Jour­nal of Speech and Hea­ring Research 32, no. 4 (Decem­ber 1989): 921–29. https://doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3204.921.

Reed, C. M., W. M. Rabi­no­witz, N. I. Dur­lach, L. D. Brai­da, S. Conway-Fithian, and M. C. Schultz. “Research on the Tado­ma Method of Speech Com­mu­ni­ca­tion.” The Jour­nal of the Acous­ti­cal Socie­ty of Ame­ri­ca 77, no. 1 (Janua­ry 1985): 247–57. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.392266.

Ro, Tony, Joha­nan Hsu, Nafi Yasar, Cait­lin Elmore, and Michael Beau­champ. “Sound Enhances Touch Per­cep­tion.” Expe­ri­men­tal Brain Research. Expe­ri­men­telle Hirn­for­schung. Expé­ri­men­ta­tion Céré­brale 195 (April 1, 2009): 135–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-009‑1759‑8.

Shus­ter­man, Richard. Body Conscious­ness : A Phi­lo­so­phy of Mind­ful­ness and Somaes­the­tics. Cam­bridge ; New York : Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2008.

Stein, Debo­rah Kent. “The Opta­con : Past, Present, and Future.” nfb.org. Acces­sed July 2, 2020. https://www.nfb.org/sites/www.nfb.org/files/images/nfb/publications/bm/bm98/bm980506.htm.

Sterne, Jona­than, ed. The Sound Stu­dies Rea­der. New York : Rout­ledge, 2012.

Truax, Bar­ry. Acous­tic Com­mu­ni­ca­tion. West­port, Conn.: Ablex, 2001.

Van­He­mert, Kyle. “Cos­mic Visuals Made With Light, Sound, and … Soap?” Wired, March 27, 2014. https://www.wired.com/2014/03/cosmic-visuals-made-light-sound-soap/.

Von Helm­holtz, Her­mann. On the Sen­sa­tions of Tone as a Phy­sio­lo­gi­cal Basis for the Theo­ry of Music. Lon­don : Long­mans, Green, 1875.

Zbi­kows­ki, Law­rence Michael. Concep­tua­li­zing Music : Cog­ni­tive Struc­ture, Theo­ry, and Ana­ly­sis. AMS Stu­dies in Music. Oxford ; New York : Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2002.

Hel­lo !  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pa­red for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am living the expe­rience in a way.  When eve­ryone invol­ved is open and willing to par­ti­ci­pate, then it feels like we are all in this toge­ther.  We receive and give in this very direct and deli­be­rate way that I think is an honest exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy !

Swirl

Pre­pa­ra­tion :

1. Gather some metal salad bowls with your friends and place them on the floor.

2. Fill each bowl with 3 to 4 marbles.  Remem­ber to count the total num­ber before and after to ensure you don’t lose any marbles.  We don’t want anyone to acci­den­tal­ly slip on them.

3. Before we play, let’s prac­tice.  Swirl the marbles inside the metal salad bowl.

Let’s Play !

Swirl marbles in the bowl and place bowls back onto the floor.  While marbles are in motion, conti­nue this action to keep the sounds going.  (Ah !  Lis­ten to these beau­ti­ful sounds.)

Impor­tant

Be on the loo­kout for jum­ping marbles.  Pick them up qui­ck­ly and place them back into the bowl.  Explore this as long as you like.

Hel­lo !  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pa­red for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am living the expe­rience in a way.  When eve­ryone invol­ved is open and willing to par­ti­ci­pate, then it feels like we are all in this toge­ther.  We receive and give in this very direct and deli­be­rate way that I think is an honest exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy !

Keys Chain for Jesse Stewart

Pre­pa­ra­tion :

Gather a bunch of unwan­ted keys from friends, neigh­bours or your local hard­ward store.

If you are playing on the floor you don’t want to scratch, use a piece of ply­wood instead.

Let’s prac­tice : play the key by hol­ding the long part of the key and brin­ging the large flat part of the key fall onto the floor.

Let’s play !

1. Choose a promp­ter for your game of 2 or more players

2. The promp­ter directs a slow heart beat for all the players to follow

3. Let’s use fruit names to sub­di­vide the heart beat star­ting with peach.

4. You can also use apple (for a sub­di­vi­sion of 2), pineapple (for 3) or water­me­lon (for 4).

5. The promp­ter can also use their fin­gers to indi­cate the sub­di­vi­sions of the heart­beat (1, 2, 3 or 4).

6. Thumb up indi­cates the ending.

Hel­lo !  My  name is Ger­maine.  I have pre­pa­red for you some task-based games you can share and play with your friends.  I love task-based games because I feel like I am living the expe­rience in a way.  When eve­ryone invol­ved is open and willing to par­ti­ci­pate, then it feels like we are all in this toge­ther.  We receive and give in this very direct and deli­be­rate way that I think is an honest exchange for all of us.  Have fun, enjoy !

Take Flight

Pre­pa­ra­tion :

Find a piece of tis­sue paper that is just for you !

Let’s play !

1. Create wind with your body to lift the tis­sue paper off the ground

2. Play with the paper freely

3. Come to stan­ding and toss the tis­sue paper, observe the paper sculp­tures in the air.

4. Get into a natu­ral tos­sing pulse, let’s call it heartbeat

5. Sub­di­vide this heart­beat (For example : 123, 123, etc.).  If you are playing with a friend or in a group, try tos­sing the paper to each other.  Remem­ber, try to keep the tis­sue paper in the air.

6. Even­tual­ly, allow the paper to come into contact with dif­ferent parts of the body.

7. Allow the game to come to a natu­ral end.

Feel free to do a part­ner ver­sion while sitting !