Art of Sound

One of our experienced Music Leaders gives his insight into our Art of Sound Project and some reflections on his own learning during the process...

The past year has been very busy with teaching, studio and live work and in particular I have found myself taking more interest in working with young people with Autism and Aspergers Syndrome. This was initially sparked from working on the Art Of Sound project, where we worked with a group of children on the ASD spectrum. Throughout the project I really appreciated how the group involved themselves in artistic activities and the creativity in the work they produced was outstanding. There was a real focus in the group and in many ways they were more successful from an artistic point of view than other projects we have done. The end performance was truly inspiring and the feedback from the audience was incredible. Conversations I had with this group of young people really helped my workshop practice and ideas brought up within the group opened up new areas of composition that have then been developed for other workshops. From this experience I found myself wanting to understand the ASD spectrum on a deeper level. I decided to educate myself further on the subject and began reading up on the subject (The Complete Guide to Autism,  Attwood 2006 Jessica Kingsley Publishers), signed up to the National Autistic Society newsletter and attended a training session for working with people with Autism/Aspergers. Since then I feel my work in this area has improved greatly and my skills are now of more benefit to more people, especially as more workshops are now aimed at young people with disabilities.

Watch a clip of the Art of Sound Project here . We partnered with Turner Contemporary to delivery this particular project

Maschine Music Production Interface

Another area I have been developing myself in is with the Maschine music production interface. Having a background in Hip Hop and turntablism I have long been looking at interfaces that for fill both a need to be technically innovative and provide a platform that is suitable for young people in a workshop environment.

This particular piece of kit has really helped as it encourages playing the instrument in real time but with an exciting sound set that can both be sampled and synthesised. I find a lot of young people without experience of playing a musical instrument are lot less intimidated than with a piano type interface. People know what a piano should sound like so if it's played wrong everyone knows, with Maschine, it's a new instrument and has new sounds so young people are much more forward in interacting with it. The flashing lights also help!

We have used Maschine in several performances with young people, including The Art Of Sound and Broadstairs folk week, where we combined sampled sounds played alongside traditional instruments, all live with no programmed parts. Long term it would be very cool to develop a performance group that performed 100% electronic music 100% live.