Youngsters Making a First Step Towards Professional Musicianship
A blog by George, the Music Assistant at Templesprings.
In essence, the Teen Sounds Project was a two-day set of activities where the students prepared, performed, and recorded a song together as a band. The project was designed to make our students at Online Music Academy feel the experience of a live studio session, which was also professionally mixed afterwards by our Events & Band manager Luke. This required a huge amount of effort and preparation from both the students and the teachers.
Firstly, the teachers’ team collaboratively came up with different sets of bands for students, where each band included a keyboardist, a drummer, and a guitarist. The singing was split between our Chair of Trustees Bidemi, and one of our star students Yvonne. Secondly, the tutors prepared their individual students a couple of weeks in advance of the performance, teaching them the chords, the drumbeats, and the lyrics of the song that they were about to perform at the Teen Sounds project. Our song choice fell on “You Say” by Lauren Daigle; a song that has a very emotional and intimate message about believing in yourself and knowing that there are always people around you who are ready to give you love and support. It is especially important for young people to acknowledge the meaning of the song as they often need that boost of confidence to help them with any little worries or anxieties that they might have.
After the tutors did their part in teaching, the students’ target was to practise independently as much as possible to get their playing up to a standard. The next step was the practice of the students right before the studio session at Templesprings. We played some musical games with them at first to relieve some of the tension and nervousness that young people often feel while performing. Then, we went through the song with each student individually, to make sure that they are ready to perform as a part of a band with other young musicians.
The result of all the hard work was a fantastic performance from all 4 student bands, as well as a great performance from the teacher’s band! It was so heartwarming to see all the young musicians coming out of their shells of shyness and blossoming as confident and passionate musicians that make great music. Our students Yvonne, Trishika and Alicia have done especially well since it was their first performance after the long period of lockdown and online lessons, and for Trishika it was her first performance ever!
Overall, it was a pleasure to participate in this project as a teacher. Seeing your students perform well with other young musicians in bands is a truly inspiring experience. The students then also observed how the teachers performed the song, which also had a huge motivational effect on them, as they saw the level that they can grow up to with the help of their tutors. As Templesprings Team we are looking forward to doing more of these amazing performances in future, and getting as many young people as possible involved in them!