Urban Artist School - Trainee Practitioner Reflective Diary

Bristol Plays Music (BPM), the Music Education Hub for Bristol, and Urban Development, a London based talent development organisation, worked in partnership over August 2016 to deliver a week-long residential, called the ‘Urban Artist School - Summer Academy’. The project was designed for talented young people who are drawn to less formal musical genres and activities such as Pop, Hip-Hop, R’n’B (as opposed to Jazz and Classical) and was facilitated by a team of experienced Music Leaders and industry professionals, all of whom are active in the local music scene. The aim was to inspire, provide career insights and support the young people to realise their musical potential through simulating real world experiences relating to the ‘journey of a track’ process; from conception through to creation, recording and on to release.

Our Trainee Practitioner, Naomi Jeremy, has written this reflective diary as a day-to-day account of her first hand experience being part of a delivery team in this environment.

The tracks produced over this week can be listened to here: https://soundcloud.com/urbanartistschool/sets/summer-academy-bristol

Day 1 – 'Your Personal Track'

Day 1 has been an enjoyable and eye opening start to the project. The young musicians are all really hungry and enthusiastic to learn so this made the initial getting to know process easy. It was particularly useful to observe how the other leaders work and to see how the project naturally flowed throughout the day without the pressure to take a leading role straight away.

I loved breaking off into teams for the remix activity and enjoyed getting the chance to lead and work on vocals and harmony with a smaller group of dedicated singers. I was blown away by how quickly the group picked out key features of their chosen track and translated those into some wicked vocal ideas for their accapella version.

I felt apprehensive to begin with as my production skills aren’t as advanced as I’d like them to be. However, throughout the day I instead focused on the areas musically I am most confident to teach and supported the rest of the team in delivering the main focus of the day to all participants. Talking to the young people individually helped me to find out what they would like to develop over the week and participating in the warm up activity helped me to piece together in my mind what areas I could best offer up my expertise.

Using the opinion scale as an initial ice breaker activity worked really well as a fun tool to understand and gain a quick insight into the young peoples tastes, knowledge of the industry and straight away got them talking and connecting with each other. This activity is definitely a tool that I with take away with me today and use in any future projects I work on.

So far day 1 has been a great experience as a trainee on the project. I was nervous at first to see how I would fit into the general teaching but have found it really useful to meet before and at the end of each day to evaluate how best to run the day, what did and didn’t work and discuss the group dynamic in terms of songwriting teams.

 

Day 2 -  'The Journey of a Track'

It was nice to welcome the group back after an awesome first day of the project and start day 2 in the main performance hall ready the masterclass session. I felt really excited for the day ahead as personally in my own practice I love to explore the process of developing lyrical and musical ideas letting them flow and seeing where it can take you.

It is always an inspiring process to see into the head of another artist’s creative journey and I loved how Tanya and Tony performed a live version of their track and then played the group snippets of initial ideas breaking down what the song was about and how these ideas developed into the final finished product. I thought this was a really interesting way to get the group thinking about themes and to get a sense of how a track can grow from ideas recorded on a phone to a live finished piece of music. It was great to see the group starting to open up and become more confident around each other getting in that creative head space for the afternoon where they would be writing in the studio.

Since training to be an Arts Award advisor a year ago I hadn’t yet had the chance to guide a group through the award process. Today I got the chance to document the groups thoughts on attending a live event that will go towards them gaining a Bronze award. Taking a lead on doing this helped me to familiarise myself with each part and got me thinking about different ways in which I could run this alongside a project with young people in the future.

 

Day 3 – 'Creating a Track'

To kick the morning off I had the opportunity to lead a warm up which was a lot of fun and allowed me to try out a few different ideas with the group. I wanted the warm up to be something everyone would feel comfortable having a go at as there was a varied mix of producers, rappers, singers and instrumentalists. I decided to focus on a waking up their bodies and minds with body stretches and a rhythm game which got them working as a team.  

Once the warm up was finished we moved the young people into their writing groups and it was great to see everyone open to collaborating with each other and keen to try their hands at different roles in the studio including some of the young female vocalists who were up for getting involved in the beat making side of things.

I loved having the freedom to move around each songwriting group and observe how everyone’s individual ideas were adding to the creation. I originally thought the young people might be into more current urban sounds but it was cool to hear that they were listening to an eclectic mix. Everything from R&B, Grime and Dubstep to more classic Funk and Soul and old Jazz tracks amongst their inspiration and were keen to bring some of those classic elements into their own tracks.

There was complete concentration and professionalism shown by all the young people whilst creating in the studio. It was nice for all the leaders to have time to focus support solely on the music making process rather than having to spend extra time behaviour managing individuals. A couple of the young female singers needed some help developing ideas for lyrics and top line melodies. I enjoyed getting to work alongside them to help get them thinking how they could delve deeper into the main message behind the song.

 

Day 4 – 'Recording a Track'

Creation day felt really successful yesterday with two out of the three groups ready with their tracks to start recording first thing. As leaders we felt confident we could get the young people through recording but knew it was going to be a busy day if we were to get all the parts recorded and mixed by Friday afternoon to be aired live on Ujima radio. Revealing to the group that their tracks were getting played live on local radio as well as getting interviewed was exciting for all the young people and got them focused for the day ahead.

I enjoyed working one on one with some of the singers focusing on breathing techniques, and getting them prepped and comfortable with their harmony and melody parts before heading off into the studio. Because some of the singers didn’t have a lot of experience in the studio myself and some of the other vocal leaders were on hand to record guide vocals which helped keep their pitch and timing on point when recording the main vocal sections. This way of working helped us to keep to time so that we didn’t run over.  

The day itself was really enjoyable and I loved getting to observe how the experienced leaders lead the session and worked with the three writing groups especially Tanya who had loads of great expertise in singing/songwriting. It was also amazing to witness the growth and new found confidence all the participants were displaying and this really started to show in the tracks they were producing.

 

Day 5 – 'Play that Track!'

Final day and a definite feeling of excitement in the air but also sad to be the last session of the project. The group used today to tie up any last bits of recording, mixing and mastering with Tony and Duppy and rotated around a masterclass on marketing. One focus of mine was to help capture the final part of evidence for the Bronze Arts Award documenting the group sharing a musical skill or technique with their peers. I thought this part of the award came at a really good point in the project as it was a chance for the young people to share knowledge they had gained and also gave them time to reflect on how far they had come in a week. 

Jules from Ujima Radio welcomed the groups onto his show to talk about their musical inspirations and played each finished track. Being able to take the tunes on local radio created an amazing atmosphere amongst the young artists and made the experience for them even more real world. I encouraged one of the more timid vocalists to step up for her group and speak live on radio and was impressed with how well she did.

Inviting friends and family in to have a first listen of the tracks was a really nice way to celebrate all the hard work and dedication each young person showed during the week. It was a lovely experience to see the young people’s reaction to their original songs and was the perfect way for the group to reflect on their own personal journey and new found confidence as musicians, writer’s and collaborators.

I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of my time working as a trainee on the project and the opportunity it gave me to connect with other music leaders. As a result, I have come away feeling inspired having learnt lots of new ideas and ways of working with young musicians that I will use in any future music projects I lead on. I feel really proud of what we as a team were able to deliver in a week and just how positive the end results were in terms of the finished tracks and the overall confidence level of all the young artists.