Shelter from the Storm

Last week I was working with a group of PGCE students at Birmingham Central University [BCU]. One of the activities centred around the use of Brian Eno's app - Bloom.

Last week I was working with a group of PGCE students at Birmingham Central University [BCU]. One of the activities centred around the use of Brian Eno's app - Bloom. The way this app works is very simple: there is a wash or drone of ambient sound going on in the background and warm sounding, gentle tunes can be played over the top simply by touching the screen in different ways. Following a short demonstration, my question to the students was “How might you use this effectively in typical classroom situations?” The answers they gave included working with improvisation, call & response, graphic notation etc..... All good points, but there was one answer in particular which I found interesting:

“it's good for pupils to have opportunities to make beautiful sounds”

This got me thinking. So often in music departments in particular, and schools in general, the sounds we are surrounded with tend to be harsh, loud and ugly. Teachers barking in corridors or addressing classes in a shouting style voice; the yelling and screaming in playgrounds and sports fields; the clash and clang of the dining hall. And in our own departments classroom percussion/samba/taiko; rock pop instruments being played insensitively; classroom singing....we seem to have got into a mindset where we think if it's loud the kids will enjoy it. Well, sure they will – but they also need moments of calm and repose. Think of those scenes in “Educating Yorkshire” - the cacophony of a typical school day, in contrast to the calm oasis of the head teacher's office or the pastoral centre.

And in music, we all like to hear contrasts. Think of the “sitting in an English garden” section of “I am the Walrus” [especially in the Spooky Tooth version] or the middle section of Radiohead's Paranoid Android. And of course all those larger scale classical works with  obligatory central Adagio sections.

So how do we bring peace and calm into our music lessons? Well a good place to start is with technology. A cheap keyboard playing  synth pad sounds, for example. Make sure to plug the keyboard into an amplifier – not to make it especially louder, but to help bring out those rich timbral colours. Low sustained chords can be used as a background wash, providing a base for adding other sounds to be added sensitively and appropriately. Or consider using one of the many synth apps for smartphones and tablets which will do the job just as well.....