IfCM Collective Tour '13: Upstate!

I'm feeling a little less like a sleep deprived troll so here's a bit if a recap of the first part of the IfCM Collective tour to upstate New York:

Mike and I teleported Matthew up from Buenos Aires early, heading to Ithaca for all of our first performance at the Gates. We stretched out on a completely improvised night of music for the small but appreciative crowd, washing electronic manipulation with spoken word.

**Discovery of the day--Short Stop Subs***

Nick and Chris Z took an overnight bus from NYC to arrive just in time to start the first sessions of our two day residency at the Harley school. We worked with Kristy Houston's 6th grade general music class on both days on learning Radiohead's Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box  by ear--moving, singing, playing, and improvising with enthusiasm. The class created a new "what does your community sound like" piece, riffing on dog relationships, angry parents, Black Friday, and the cold of Rochester:


The Harley upper school string ensemble premiered Matthew's new piece, Southern Castellano featuring adventurous solos from Henry Smith (violin) Andrew Wang (cello) while the wind ensemble gave a strong performance of Louis Steps and a percussion-driven, poly tonal happy birthday for two of the students. Our friend and head of the Harley Lower School, Terry Fonda Smith, wrote a comprehensive overview of the week with pictures.

Wednesday put the IfCM Collective in front of what we thought would be our largest group of students with Eileen Yu's Franklin Middle School:  

The students brought Louis' Steps to life and ended the morning swinging by learning Blues by Five by ear. One of the students wasn't sure how he would remember the melody that we'd learned without sheet music but there's a very good chance that if we catch up with him in a year or two those riffs will still be under his fingers...

After a quick nap and a bucket of coffee the band reconvened for a jazz performance at Fairport High School. Bill Tiberio and the students asked some great questions about our compositions and use of electronic manipulation to expand out sonic palate. 

A full day at Rochester's School of the Arts packed an average of 80 students per period into Doug Stone's classroom, getting 100 people playing together at one point. As the name states, SOTA immerses their students to a wide range of musical styles, drama, dance, and visual art so we had the opportunity to see the impact that the arts has on students, teachers and guests . Some of the students even knew the words to sardines! We are extremely excited to involve these amazing schools in our project at the Chesonis Commons in March--more to come shortly!

 Part two of our Rochester/Buffalo tour up shortly...

Success Through Comfortable Failure - Come Join the Band Wrapup

Come Join the Band - 2013 Wrap up (Success through Comfortable Failure)

For the past 3 years I have had the opportunity to coach a class on starting your own band through the University of Rochester’s Pre-College summer session.  Alan Murphy and I always have a great experience working with the high school students for “Come Join the Band: Creative Music Making for Everyone.” It’s always a great learning opportunity for us as teachers and performers to revisit our own formative learning time. Looking back on how we experienced learning an instrument for the first time or interacting with new band members is a great way to check in on how comfortable we are as professional performers and educators.  Facilitating the formative process of learning instruments and working as a band (in this case with members who have never even met and may have little to no music performance experience) is really profound. This step in the learning process (failure!) is something that can be really discouraging if you’re not used to it.  I know that I’ve had plenty of good and terrible experiences evaluating my drumming, composing, and singing (either as it happens or from a recording), and I think it was helpful to the students to know that everyone else in the band was there to support them. We all got to the point where we were comfortable talking about what was awesome and what could use some improvement--a big step than not even a lot of professional groups get to!

We kicked off the first of two weeks by learning a simple tune by ear. Everyone sang the bass line, lyrical melody, and patted/tapped the basic beat and beat division in our heels and hands--all at the same time!  You can see an example of this process on Radiohead’s “Packt Like Sardines In A Crusht Tin Box” in the IfCM video here from Montana (starts around 30 seconds in):

I demonstrated how the rhythm patterns directly related to playing a basic beat on the drum set and everyone tried it out.  This is usually learning “through failure moment #1”--drums are uncomfortably foreign at first, but then they get easier. Now that all of the students have a task that they currently are unable to do (play a rock beat on the drum set with all 4 limbs) we all practice it together with one person rotating to the drum set and the rest of us patting on our legs and tapping our heels on the ground. Everyone did a fantastic job listening to the pattern that they were playing and gradually making it more steady by the time they tried it on the drum set. Getting used to practicing rhythmic coordination away from an instrument like this is really dependent on your ability to listen carefully to the weight of your limbs and adjust them to the way that your ears perceive the groove. Listening critically to rhythmic interaction without the amplified sonic bombast of drums, cymbals, or even drum sticks, is really important in the learning sequence of becoming a competent musician.  It was great to see the students improve their listening skills as an ensemble through the weeks, and I think that their willingness to practice rhythmic coordination away from the instruments contributed to that.

We followed this presentation with similar hands-on demos by Alan (piano), special guest Kyle Vock (bass), and IfCM intern Ben Fang (guitar).

 [pic of Kyle with boys] We all worked with them on singing as a group and Alan, Kyle, and I had a chance to perform music that we regularly play as the Mighty High and Dry. The students shared a song or two that we pooled together to chose what we’d like to learn based on the difficulty, instruments available, and overall familiarity with the song.  We listened to a wide range of styles and artists including the Ben Folds Five, Muse, Los Lobos, contemporary gospel, and video game soundtrack music and settled on two songs to start:  “No One” by Alicia Keys and “Crushcrushcrush” by Paramour.  Lots of workshopping about how to listen for different instruments and building parts out of what you hear. 

Here's the completed result from a field trip session to GFI Music, a great professional recording studio in Rochester:

We are looking to stay involved with the students creative lives and hopefully offering a regular class to get them together with other like-minded musicians.  Stay tuned for more exciting youth creativity around Rochester!

- Chris Teal