23 02 2008 - Second Song-writing workshop

Matt Hales (aka Aqualung) inspires a group of young people to help him complete a song, started at the first workshop for Fareham in Harmony to add to their growing repertoire.

You can hear a rough mix of their  combined work here
(Fareham in Harmony part 2)

Workshop report - Week 2                                                 

Eleven young people between the ages of 8 and 14 had booked in for the second songwriting workshop, run by Matt Hales (Aqualung) for Fareham in Harmony.

They were joined for the afternoon by three music teachers associated with Wicor Primary School and a budding songwriter (and aqualung fan) Andy Ruddy who, through a bizarre set of coincidences found himself able to attend.  The adults had intended to come as observers but soon found themselves fully engaged!

The task for the afternoon was to  learn the song that the  first group had half-completed last week - and then to write a second verse, record the second half of the song and add some more instrumental tracks.  A daunting workload for a single afternoon!

Andy Ruddy has written a blog for the afternoom that gives a good idea of the atmosphere and activity during the afternoon.  You can read it all here.  and we had the excitement of a photo-call from the 'News' who published a short article on the workskop here.

Having learned the first half of the song and made recordings to enhance the final production, the group of young singers were asked to suggest themes or ideas that they could include in the second verse - concentrating on singing, being in a choir, that sort of thing.  They came up with 4 different ideas - the fact that singing can bring us peace, the camaraderie and bonding that happens in  a choir, the fact that singing and music-making are world-wide activities and, finally, the idea that the second verse could be about our musical director who contributes so much to the enjoyment of singing.

The group then divided into 4 working parties to work on the themes.  Quite amazingly after ony 20 minutes each group came back with a fully formed, rhyming verse that fitted the music and decorated their chosen theme fantastically well.  All four verses were then recorded by their writers and the session rounded off with recordings of guitar, recorder, flute, xylophone and rhythmic noises to add to the percussion and instrumentals recorded last week.

Matt now has the problem of how to assemble the recorded material into some final 'finished' recordings for everyone to share and enjoy - how to handle the 4 second-verses - how to get all of the instrumental bits to sound good together - we await, with interest, his final decisions and the finished product.

You might enjoy, in the meanwhile, reading and contemplating on the four second-verse texts that the young singers produced - I think it is fair to say that all the adults present were completely amazed at the quality of their thinking - totally gob-smacked in fact!


So - after 4 hours hard work - what did the group think ...... some comments from the feedback .......

I particularly enjoyed:

• 'Recording in the little groups when we wrote our own verse'
  
• 'Recording the singing, writing our verse and when the news man came in to take pictures'
• 'Singing and making up the verses'
• 'Recording my guitar'
• 'Everything!  The whole session!  All of it!   Singing!'

I would like to do more:

• 'How to work the recording stuff'
• 'More of this! It was very much fun!'
• 'Record other songs'
• 'add more to this song - but be careful not to spoil it!'
• 'More solo singing'

The session might have been better if:

• 'We had more time' (everyone)
  
• 'The recording equipment had worked better' (there were one or two technical problems with the computer!
  

'it was a privilege to observe and assist during the workshop. I was incredibly impressed by the choir and their positive attitude'