Sound Swimmers 2: Figurenotes as a shared language

Sound Swimmers is project 1 of a 3 part Youth Music funded SEN school project programme. The project took place at Hazel Court SEN school in Eastbourne 04/22 - 06/22. Each project shares the aim of trialing innovative ways of engaging SEN schools in project work utilising music, film and inclusive music teaching aids and tools. The brief for Sound Swimmers was to work with the school over 10 weeks to create an interactive sound installation. This blog highlights some of the milestones along the journey. 

After establishing a way of starting our sessions covered in Sound Swimmers 1. We introduced the class groups to figurenotes, an accessible musical teaching aid/notation system that utilises colours and shapes to enable an accessible way into group playing, musical composition and individual instrument playing. Pupils would take turns to locate colours on an instrument and play notes. In the process simple melodic motifs are discovered and recorded using a whiteboard and figurenote symbols. Framed as a challenge and with suppoprt from facilitators the pupils responded well to the task and were able to support one another by encouraging each other to come up and play the instrument. Figurenotes would become our shared language throughout the project. We would use it to create and record melodies, bass lines, chords etc. We very quickly built up a library of original ideas generated through a mixture of decision making and chance by using a coloured dice.