Chris has been hosting and producing The Music Education Podcast since september 2020. Brought to you by SoundStorm and sponsored by Longy School of Music. The podcast has been growing exponentially and according to Podcast Host now has episodes regularly putting it in the top 25 percent of podcasts on earth. The Podcast has recently joined forces with Music Teacher Magazine, welcoming them as a media partner. You can read more by clicking the image.
A new commission to create a composition for guitar ensemble. Performed in and using an outdoor space.Now part of a fantastic Elixir Strings marketing campaign.
A new series of videos performed and recorded live and outdoors using the Boss Cube Street II.
Chris’ second book with publisher Hal Leonard is now available from all the usual places and music stores across the globe. Wanna find out more or buy a copy? Click the image or here.
This blog is about choosing the right ‘space’ and some of that more ‘human’ stuff, which you might have started to forget about, you know?.. Like, interactions with real people, in real life.
A huge thank you to Elixir Strings for making this all possible.
The 19th of July, in the UK, was being dubbed freedom day. It was also the day, or in fact the morning, of filming ‘Music for Surprising Spaces’. The venue ‘Boscombe Pier’ in Bournemouth was looking stunning, the sun was shinning, the wind was as subtle as a calm breath…. and crucially everyone who was playing or working on this had turned up.
Have a listen to the space… (thanks to Dan Henry video and audio guru for this audio and many of the pics.)
A quick interjection….If this is the first of the project you’ve read.. here’s a summary…
‘Music For Surprising Spaces’ is a series of compositions I wanted to create based on and using the sounds of the surrounding spaces. A composition for guitar ensemble, performed in the space, including the space and taking into account the space. My first one has been commissioned by the amazing Elixir Strings.
When I took on this project and once I had worked through some of the more obvious logistics like how on earth can I amplify this band? See the previous ‘blog’ for an insight into that and the wonderful ‘Boss Cube Street II’. I had to get to work on choosing the venue and in turn choosing the players…
The two go hand in hand, firstly choosing players from Edinburgh whilst filming in Penzance is pretty silly for everyone involved and secondly; the space, the place, the people are all part of the same package. So recruiting people who are connected to the space is important…
Bournemouth is a very special place to me. I see it as my home, even though it’s not right now. The beach there is a picture of perfection, it’s the stereo typical image of ‘beachness’. The pier has a British seaside town identity. It’s a space with character and vibe. The sound?… well if you have ever closed your eyes on a beach you’ll know that the mix of waves, sea gulls, and that human hubbub are something that has a nostalgia like no other.
I’ll get more into how that sound incorporated into the music another time… but the scene is set, its the perfect venue, choice made.
Now challenge number two is getting permission to film, yup you have to do that ya know, and permission to have access.
Why? Well aside from the boring admin bit which you just have to do, I needed the space relatively to ourselves. Picture this… ‘Dave and Sandra on holiday from Hertfordshire talking loudly about Brexit’, its not what I want to capture as they walk past our field recorders. Ambient human hubab is good, but loud Brexit rants or family fallouts, not so cool, it really spoils the vibe man… So the pier needs to be shut when we film… simple, but not so simple.
After some helpful friends pointing me in the right direction, an extra special thank you to Andrea Francis here, I ended up liaising with BCP (thats Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole for those who care) Council. Jess on the events team, was an absolute star and made the process as painless as possible. A fair few quid for a licence later, a risk assessment and then another risk assessment, or two, later and we have exclusive access and permission. Yipeeee.
I chose four of the finest guitar players, who all love Elixir Strings, from the surrounding area. Some of whom are my closest friends some of whom it was the first time I ever met them in real life. But each and everyone of them played their part wonderfully and brought bucket loads of personality and joy to the performance. I of course didn’t know truly if that would be the case on the day, but it was. The first play through was the best, having that connection of ‘playing together’ was so amazing after so long and the mix of ‘new’ and ‘old’ friends made it even more special and human. It was a beautiful experience.
A sincere and heartfelt thank you to all them for every note they played. Thank you. … also thank you for arriving on time when every second counts… asking musicians to get to the beach before 6am is a tall order and if a single one was late or had over slept it would have been a genuine disaster.
This ladies and gents is ‘The Chris Woods Groove Orchestra’ line up for this rather wonderful project… Check em out.
Guitarist Meryl Hamilton from the rock band Voodoo Vegas, has performed in 15 countries around the world, supporting notable acts such as Joe Satriani, Status Quo, Gilby Clarke (Guns ‘n’ Roses), Glenn Hughes (Deep Purple), Y&T and many more. Meryl is a full-time guitar teacher, teaching 200 students across 6 schools on the south coast of England. Sponsored by Blackstar, Orange Amps and PRS Guitars. Voodoo Vegas have released 3 albums, recorded at the legendary Rockfield Studios and Los Rosales Studio near Madrid.
Will has performed relentlessly throughout his career and has given concerts up and down the UK and abroad. Whether it be headlining his own solo shows, performing at festivals, or supporting world-renowned artists such as Pierre Bensusan, Clive Carroll, Jon Gomm, Martin Simpson and Mumford and Sons amongst others, his performances have been described as “beautifully flawless” and “magical” by the music press. Having toured, performed, workshopped and given masterclasses in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Zimbabwe and China, Will has also made appearances including multiple concerts and workshops at one of Africa’s biggest music festivals – The Harare International Festival of Arts.
Tom Power is a Dorset-based singer/songwriter and acoustic guitarist with a passion for writing and performing his own music. He takes inspiration from the world around him and enjoys creating music around the themes of nature, optimism and introspective experience.
https://paulfrancisbass.webs.com/
Paul Francis is an Electric/Upright Bass player and backing vocalist and Teacher from Camden Town North London. His Cv includes: Paul Weller Midge Ure London Beat,The James Taylor Quartet Omar,Ian Hunter Paul Gilbert Bernie Marsden and many more.
TV appearances have included Top of the Pops & various others around the Globe. He is currently putting the finishing touches to the 2nd CD for his fusion band. Paul also continues playing live both as a dep for other projects including “Kind of Blue The Miles Davis story” and as Band Leader for The Blues Associates and The Capricon 1 fusion Band, in venues across the U.K. as well as composing for various online music libraries and teaching.
I’ve had this idea bouncing round my brain for a long time now. Music For Surprising Spaces…
A composition for a guitar ensemble that is performed for, and, in, a space. So the sounds from that space are part of the composition.
I’m very happy to say Elixir Strings have commissioned the project. It’s unique in so many ways making this composition; making the film, finding the artists, performing and recording outside even… finding the right space, getting the permission. Over the next few weeks I will be sharing some of the challenges, the cool bits, the frustrating bits… a kind of ‘this is how I did it’. I hope you enjoy reading.
Part 1… The Gear and Rehearsal.
First off… its important to grasp what this project is about. The composition, which you’ll eventually hear, is written to include the sounds of the surrounding space. Get it?.. so the ‘noises’ that occur naturally. At this point I don’t want to reveal the venue/space just yet, but Im sure you can understand every space has a sound… sometimes the sound is obvious… a river, a busy coffee house for example, or sometimes its more subtle. That sound is part of the music in this project, and it also inspires the parts I compose.
So, with all that in mind… it’s important that we avoid anything that isn’t fully authentic, as much as possible i.e. miming, or in fact just taking a DI, which tends to be the go to for most of those ‘outdoor videos’. Put simply we need to actually perform in the space to capture the energy and sound of that space.
This comes with logistical issues… many, in fact more than you’d think. Getting the best out of the performers in this situation is one challenge and I’ll cover that in a bit…but, firstly getting power for amps, and even getting the gear to the venue. It seems simple, but acoustic isn’t an option when working with electric guitars and thats not as easy as it seems. In the case of the venue I have chosen, time is of the essence, we need to arrive, film and be gone in a few hours… Thats a lot of people and stuff to get to a space, set up, perform, and set down. Baring in mind no one playing this piece has ever met before…
The solution…. The Boss Cube Street 2. This amp is the answer to my prayers, and to be honest will probably be an answer for many peoples. Its disturbingly light, disturbingly loud and the sounds are incredible – oh yeah, and it can be powered by 6 AA batteries for a gazillion years, problem solved. So I have one each lined up for the guitar ensemble and yes that includes bass.
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For me with two outputs coming from my guitar it works a treat too… The red lead is my mic in the guitar and the black is the pickup. All part of my Mimesis Kudos by Mike Vanden.
As mentioned the artists performing the piece have never met before… (I’ll be introducing you to each of them soon). Each artist will be using their axe of choice strung with Elixir’s and going through the Cube. It gives some uniformity of sound and crucial consistency in playing too, we are filming in the morning and that morning moisture is gonna make most strings feel pretty weird, so its cool to know everyone’s going to be picking up their guitars and it feeling like it did at their last rehearsal… when I say rehearsal… I mean, them on their own practicing.
This stuff is important, seriously. However well rehearsed we are when we are put into a different physical space everything changes. If you’ve ever rehearsed more than enough and then stepped onto stage at a festival on a humid day you’ll know everything can change in seconds, your guitar can feel alien and thats down to strings. So strings that can handle that play a big part, I want every player to have a consistent feel on their instrument – And for me… yeah, thats Elixirs.
Logistically we really cant rehearse together, but is that a problem?
Well, if you’ve taken an interest in one one of my ensemble projects before you’ll know I like to work in a way that doesn’t challenge a player too much. Its not because Im just super nice and want to give people an easy ride its because I believe we do our best playing when we are within out comfort zone. In this case when we come together to play together for the first time theres a ‘magic’ in the air. Not ‘panic’ and ‘stress’ everyone knows what they are doing, they focus on detail and on ‘enjoying’ playing the piece.
Everyone has bounced over a recording to me ahead of time so I can feedback and actually make changes to any parts if needed, so there’s plenty of ground work gone in. But the actual getting together to play… thats being held off to the last minute. It’s the big reveal.
I’ll be back next week with more…
A new five part series. A new loop idea every friday. Free tab and all videos can be found here…https://chriswoodsgroove.co.uk/bossrc10r/
New live video of a CWGO composition. A guitar orchestra of all ages and abilities, meeting together for one rehearsal and then performing…
This is a Music Education Hub initiative produced by SoundStorm, supported using funds from Arts Council England.
Every year I teach the history of music at a school in the UK. It’s a subject that comes with some serious responsibility.
Students are now more ‘global’ than ever and us musicians and music educators who grew up in a far less global land, are providing information and ideas that may shape the views of these truly international citizens. So, we best bloody get it right…
In this blog, I’m going to share my thoughts and experiences on this quite frankly serious subject, they’ve evolved over some time to get here…
I will let you know why I think the bias towards western classical music, in teaching the history of music, is basically a massive porkie pie and needs to go. How our obsession with that familiar western classical historical timeline is actually just silly – and how now is the time to move on and get it ruddy right. If, of course, you haven’t already.
I’m gonna show you my approach and offer some tools for you to use, if you like it of course – you might hate it, you might love it – who knows, you might want to offer me your tools, I’d be happy to consider adding it in. At the very least I hope it starts a debate between us. This is an opinion piece and Im open to changing it.
Lets lay the cards on the table…
Music history is not a linear development. It is a multifaceted and global collection of individual and unique puzzles. (woh there!)
Some schools Ive had the pleasure of working with are developing and adjusting to this idea in a big way, offering an enriched mix, working with hubs and more to bring an inspiring curriculum and context alongside those ‘wig wearing, rather good at music, dead chaps from Europe’. They, against the odds, are vibrant and provide music with context in their day to day running.
However…
Sadly some are not so lucky, many schools still suffer from a stale music department, devoid of vision, and still offers music history completely at odds with the global and abstract reality (blimey that’s a bit heavy! Sorry).
Often completely biased to ‘western classical’ and presenting this in a linear timeline, whilst occasionally referencing a token Paul McCartney…
You know…like ‘today’s lesson is the history of music’ followed by ‘Renaissance (1400–1600)’ then boom ‘Mozart blah blah’…oh and ‘here’s the Beatles’.
Ultimately the end result of offering a western classical timeline without global, or indeed wider context, teaches children an understanding of musical culture and heritage that is in principal not truthful, and one that is unintentionally contributing to negative attitudes towards culture, class and even race. So, this stuff is important!
Of course, teaching about western classical is fantastic and crucial, and please don’t mistake this as an attack on the music or teaching about it. If you teach the western classical musical era’s, I think its’ wonderful (how could you not!?), but my question would be, have you provided context? If not, why should it be aired more than something else? Context in history, is everything.
I’m currently of the belief that music history in schools when biased towards western classical, holding it in higher regard or prioritising it, is wrong and contributes to building a world view that is unintentionally imperialistic and can help prop up misguided and racist viewpoints, and we haven’t even begun to talk about gender… Are you angry yet?…
Sorry, before anyone gets too excited, I did say unintentionally. I don’t believe any are doing this intentionally, as I’ll mention later, us music educators are products of our own education. But its time to step back and to break the mould.
If you leave school only learning about western classical music for your historical knowledge, would you unintentionally hold a belief that western classical music is of higher value than another type of music?… What about Asian musicians or African musicians?… did they get music from the europeans?…weird how those country folk in europe didn’t ever do any music too? did Africans need to be brutally dragged to the US to create the blues? Is a kora a type of fruit?
I know these are extremes, and please if you are a teacher who currently delivers ‘that’ timeline without a global context insight, please be assured I’m not accusing you of ‘racism’, or indeed ‘being’ anything. But I think its an amazing time to change approach, now is an opportunity to provide a truly global approach to music history, for your truly global students.
Our social media accounts, our newspapers, our TV, quite frankly all media is throwing biased information at our busy brains, and the arts are a last bastion of truth.
We live in a world of mis-information, educators lay the foundations, on which future information will sit. I think it is important they are ones of global context and not ones of unintentional bias – they can be fertile ground for some pretty nasty outlooks. In other words, we have a grave responsibility now more than ever.
The music curriculum in the UK is actually helpfully vague, so to purely blame the curriculum here would be silly, even though in GCSE’S for example the bias is still hugely obvious. This is often a cultural choice amongst us educators, again sometimes by accident. Many of us, in fact, anyone who went to school, were most likely brought up on a staple diet of ‘Renaissance to Romantic’ an obsession with ‘ the composers’ and western classical music, so its logical that it would still be endemic in schools as we are now the teachers.
But why is it a problem? Surely Beethoven trumps Bob Dylan? Or the Romantic Era trumps Flamenco? (does anyone use the term ‘trumps’ anymore?… has Donald ruined it?)
I imagine everyone’s answers to be different. But really any comparison is, well, pointless. What’s important is why we learn about these musicians in the first place. In fact why we feel it’s important to teach students about music history at all.
Most agree its undoubtedly good for children of all ages to learn about the history of music; to be introduced to new sounds, to have an understanding of music from around the world and how it developed, how it symbiotically developed alongside cultural, technological and personal developments.
But WHY!!!??? well music history has a wider benefit for all of us. For me the aim in teaching it is to help make sense of the world, to nurture an enquiring and empathetic mind, and to help present old ideas to new minds in the hope they might reach new conclusions.
So, I think I can safely summarise and say…
‘The purpose of learning the history of music is to understand the world we live in.’
The ‘world we live in’, is a crucial statement. Not Western Europe, or the United Kingdom. ‘The world’.
So when we learn about ‘the world’ its probably safe to suggest we might need to explore beyond the walls of the EU. Actually, ladies and gentlemen, there is a whole world of culturally rich musical heritages which have enriched our own personal musical lives far more directly than Handel or Bach, and its a teachers responsibility to ensure that is explained.
So to sign things off before I get stuck into in my humble offerings of approaches. I want to say this…
Of course Western Classical Music is relevant. Its a fantastically crucial piece of the puzzle. In a puzzle the pieces come in different shapes and sizes. They are interlocking, they are a part of a whole.
In music education giving children one piece of the puzzle, without demonstrating equal value to the other pieces, or in fact informing them there are other pieces out there, is a massive failure to culture and children.
We can not present every part and piece, nor should we, but we can offer a variety of pieces, show them how they fit together and encourage enquiry to find more.
If we do this we help students to continue a life long approach to enquiry, we show them that culture is intertwined and not hierarchical. We crucially have the opportunity to show them they too are a piece of a puzzle.
Here’s several key points I think are really helpful in explaining musical history to all ages, some are completely original some have been inspired by many of the amazing teachers I have had the pleasure of working with. You can obviously use your initiative on whats suitable for what age, but the principals will remain the same. At the very least it might be good brain food.
yup, even for the little ones. Because music didn’t develop in a straight line, anything other than that is a lie. Of course when looking at one specific culture you will find a relatively linear development. But when we present musical history its likely in a school you will have to do so i a short timeframe, you’ll want to give an overview and make it simple… the danger is in your attempt to simplify it, you will completely miscommunicate the idea of how music developed.
Instead focus on small elements within music. And of course offer specific timelines within that. For example a lesson on a specific instrument. Looking at the guitar for example, we can see it develop in various different countries simultaneously and at different times. Or in fact looking at one genre of music, or one specific technology that developed music.
The Person
The Society
The Technology
The Art
These four points or aspects of study are fantastic lines of enquiry to offer to older students, or in fact use to underpin or choose the area you are teaching for all ages. These four categories are the most obvious umbrella terms of development in musical history. For example you could look at the personal/emotional life of a specific musician. The affects of recording technology on folk music. The scales in Hungarian folk.
Its a tried and tested technique of history teachers. History is all around us. It makes us what we are today. My first lesson is to examine our own personal musical histories. Getting students to speak to parents, grandparents, examine their own musical experiences, if technology, politics, personal circumstances and feelings etc played a roll in who they are today, musically.
I can’t say for sure, but it’s very very likely that like me and everyone I have ever met, you are purely a product of your limited experience. You have your own musical history which informs what you believe should be taught as ‘important’. Don’t listen to yourself. Try to offer inspiration to enquire for the older children and inspiration to experience for the younger, rather than facts which you think are key.
So that’s all from me. It’s just ideas. Offerings. But whatever you’re opinion, the responsibility of teaching a cultural history is real and I hope somehow this blog at least made you question how you teach it as an educator or indeed how you respond to it as a student.
Thanks for listening.
C