A Brief Overview of Don's Year 2000 Workshops

My goal in these workshops is to help the students feel music as I feel it - as a flow or expression, from the inside flowing out into the world, rather than something outside themselves on a CD or a piece of written music. I want them to feel the fun and the joy that I feel doing this, as well as experience the challenge and the discipline involved and the concentration necessary to do it well.

I start out by asking the students why they feel that human beings ever felt the need to come up with such a thing as music. We discuss music's function as an expression of emotion and its place in early man's celebrations and rituals, as well as its communicative aspects in the passing on of oral histories in early cultures. I then point out to them that this expression came first, then came all the rules, structure, and notation that they might learn about in school music classes. All the rules and structure came into being to serve the expression and communication - that expression is primary. We then do a little expression vocally and with a foot-hand rhythm, just to feel what it's like, envisioning first a sad occasion in our "tribe" and then a happy one. I spend a few minutes talking about how it feels somewhat awkward to do these sorts of things, and how any time we create anything or do anything we face possible criticism and ridicule from others. I ask the students to pleas help make this a "safe space" where we can have fun and create. We then do some communicative conversation exercises on a keyboard with two students "talking" to each other, expressing various emotions or states to each other.

Next we move on to the creation and recording of sounds in the classroom, using first ordinary objects in the classroom (non-instruments) and later working our way to using some of the instruments that I have brought in.

I bring in a fairly full-featured computer based recording studio into the classroom with microphones, mixer, processors and all the software necessary to make professional sounding recordings of anything we choose to do. I think of it as sort of a "high-tech/low-tech" approach. We use some very low-tech objects to create sound - banging on desks, bouncing balls, zippers, velcro, water fountains, chalk on chalkboard, pencil shaprpeners, basically anything we can find - and then record it and manipulate it using some very sophisticated software on the computer. The main software packages I am using are both from the company Sonic Foundry. One is a program designed for the creation of modern rap and hip-hop muscial backgrounds using short pieces of audio called "loops", called ACID. The other program is a general 2-track sound editor I use to actually record the loops, called Sound Forge. Once the loops are recorded the ACID program alows us to very easily arrange and rearrange them in any way we choose using an easily grasped graphic interface.

The reason I like to start out using non-instruments is because the students are not intimidated by them. The first thing a student will think when I hand them an instrument is "I can't play this." They don't think that about banging on a box or tapping on the chalkboard. Yet they find that even these "instruments" need to be played with focus and concentration to get the desired results. Then when we get to making some sounds on "real" instruments I encourage them to adopt the same attitude of play and experimentation combined with focused concentration and repetition to get the part right.

We use some very general terms to categorize our sounds - rhythm, texture, melody, and decoration. As possible sound sources or instruments are suggested, we talk about what category of sound this might be used for. If we are working with standard instruments, the student is asked to come up and experiment with making some sounds with it. I then suggest a possible part (if necessary) and then we set out to learn to play, then record the part. The advantage of using loops is the student generally only has to correctly play the figure once, and the extraneous notes are edited away in the computer.

Address: Don Richmond P.O. Box 825 Alamosa CO 81101

Info, contact and order hotline: 800-689-7786

Email - DonRichmond@worldnet.att.net

Other websites - www.howlindogrecords.com www.hired-hands.com www.rifters.net www.gymptf.com