Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

Being a huge fan of TED and having reflected & written before about attention span, I was interested to see this post on the TED Blog.

Former NBHS pupil, Robin Hiley – of The Simple Touch fame – popped into school today with posters for a song recital he is putting on - Sunday 28 September at 7:30 in Haddington’s Town House. Appearing along with Robin (baritone) will be Maria Martinez Gabaldon (soprano). They will be accompanied on the piano by former PT Music at Knox Academy, Fergus Malcolm. The programme includes:

A Shropshire Lad – George Butterworth

Seven Spanish Folk Songs – Manuel de Falla

Solos & Duets from Mozart’s The Magic Flute & The Marriage of Figaro.

The concert is in aid of The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and tickets (£6 & £4) will be available at the door – or in advance from Kesley’s Bookshop (Haddington tel. 01620 826725).

As someone who spends 5.5 hours-a-week in Meadowbank Stadium (though you’d never guess it), I know that its forthcoming diminution will affect many pupils from our schools – because I see them there. However, I hadn’t realised that young people travel from much further afield than East Lothian. Chris Hoy explains:

At this time of year the formal timetable often yields to entertainment, liaison and evangelism. Apart from the obvious benefits, this removes the incongruity of final lessons where no homework is given and no sense of urgency obtains.

Here are a few examples of recent and pending events:

Fri 13^th

The Big Gig @ MGS. This event always involves self-taught pupil bands, dance groups, staff performances (usually comical) and a staff-student band. This year a new element was included in the staff-student House Band which had interesting consequences – a horn section. As the horn parts had to be arranged and written out, this meant that the band had to adhere to and memorise the structure. The rehearsals were definitely a little more fraught than usual as there was clearly more discipline than some would have liked in their spare time, but the results made it all worthwhile and I feel sure that all involved felt that they’d raised their game.

Mon 16^th

Campie PS – guitarists from P5-P7 put on a concert of ensemble and solo music for P4 pupils. The audience contained next years new guitar players, and I was bowled over by their rapt attention. The situation also includes an opportunity for the P4s to question the existing players about what is involved in learning an instrument at school.

Tue 17^th

Four S3 guitar pupils from NBHS will accompany me on a trip to Law PS to play for the P7s. This coincides with the eve of the P7 pupils’ visit to the High School and so there should be an extra edge to the transitional feel of things. The P7s eduBuzzers plan to podcast the event so keep an eye on the Law PS blog. There will also be time for questions at this event.

Thu 19^th

MGS Summer Concert. There should be a doubly transitional feel to our Guitar Group this year. We are to be joined by two extremely enthusiastic P7 pupils from Wallyford PS and also by two former pupils who, as they are coming in to lend a hand with sound-mixing, will no doubt join the ensemble. This means the age gap between youngest and eldest will be 8 years (I’m not including myself in this equation). In addition to playing in our own ensemble, some of the pupils play in the orchestra, jazz band and a new traditional music ensemble.

Wed 25^th

P7 Leaving Assembly @ Wallyford. I can’t be at this event as I’ll be in another school but will be present in digital form – on a CD to accompany the pupils. This will be a new discipline for them as a CD can’t jump to their aid like a teacher.

Fri 27^th

Retirement Assembly @ Wallyford for a much loved member of staff. The plan is to bring six former pupils across from MGS so that, along with the P7s we can play, for the pupils and staff at this send-off. I can’t think of a nicer way to end the school year.

My ears pricked up this morning at the mention of the Street Vibe Festival of Sound which takes place today in London’s The Scoop. The idea of the event is to highlight the appeal of science through music and other arts. The short report on Radio 4’s Today included efforts by Stephen Mesure (Director of The Creative Science Consultancy) and South African percussionist and composer, Eugene Skeef to produce music from carved instruments. The most convincing of these was a carrot built on the whole tone scale.

The report grabbed my attention, not because I plan to race down to London to take part, but because I have been thinking along similar lines. Discussions are to be opened up in a school I visit with a view to pupils and staff playing a more active role in assemblies. The possibilities for cross curricular links seem huge and I see music as being able to play a big part e.g. music & maths; music & science; music & languages – in addition to the more obvious pairings like words & music or music and dance.

The idea which immediately sprang to mind is a piece based on the harmonic series – the physical and mathematical reality which underpins the evolution of Western harmony and instruments over the last 1,000 years. Yes, start small – that’s my motto.

One of the bonuses of keeping this blog is that searching for useful hyperlinks – such as the one for the whole tone scale (above) leads me to interesting resources for pupils. From the same source come this short, interesting video about chord construction.

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been added to the Knox Academy page.

Thanks to Ewan McIntosh for pointing me in the direction of this post by Donald Clark. Citing 1976 research by A. H Johnstone and F. Percival into attention span in 90 Chemistry lectures, with 12 different lecturers, it describes the highs and lows of attention in a 60-minute lecture.

• 2-3 minutes to settle down
• 10-18 minutes of attention
• progressively shorter attention periods, dropping to 3-4 minutes towards end

These conclusions were not formed by an impression of attention but by the subjects’ ability to recall content.

The reason this grabbed my attention is that, following a long period of evolution, all my lessons across a 5-school orbit, last 30 minutes. Allowing time for pupils to travel from the previous class, unpack and then reverse these features in order to return punctually, the hands on instrument time must be around 22 minutes. For many pupils, this feels about the right time.

All Guitar Group rehearsals, except those of the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble*, last 30 minutes. If pupils arrive on time, set up quickly, engage and play well it’s not unknown for them to be released in 15-20 minutes – particularly as the concert approaches and the spectre of staleness taps at the window (where the luxury of a window exists).

Yet, curiously, the reason we migrated from 35- or 40-minute lessons to 30 minutes, is that general school timetabling has gone in the opposite direction – all periods in the secondary schools I visit are now 60 minutes long. Apart from this simply being too long for an instrumental lesson and too long for pupils to be out of class, this would permit only six instrumental lessons per day and so it seemed natural to opt for 12 x 30-minute lessons-per-day – so natural in fact that I can’t recall discussion seeming necessary in any school.

Does this mean that we have been blessed with the ideal length by virtue of our colleagues veering blindly in the wrong direction? Well, only if it was still 1976 and if school teaching resembled the kind of university lecture where one person was active while the others listened in reverential silence, their most dynamic input being the taking of notes**.

Donald Clark writes interestingly about Tyrannies of Time one of which rings a bell with me – the dip in performance which some pupils seem to experience when their lesson immediately follows lunch. In such cases, I ask the pupils if they’d mind my asking what they had for lunch, and my fears that a matrix of E-numbers has brought about the cognitive dip are usually groundless.

* Contrastingly, and for purely practical reasons the six annual East Lothian Guitar Ensemble rehearsals take place from 1:30 – 3:30 – minus time for pupils, transported from distant schools to walk from the drop-off point to the venue – minus tidying up time – minus a break in the middle – well it is a Friday afternoon, after all.

** During my five years at music college, my note-taking habits changed from the frenzied assembly of a wretched, illegible and barely revisited scrawl, to simply listening, empty-handed. In the end, I could no longer see the point in inaccurately recreating what already existed in the library, at the cost of my ability to concentrate and enjoy the lecture.

New Pupil Performance mp3s have been added to the North Berwick High School page.

This simple, interactive tiredness test might be an interesting thing for staff and pupils alike - courtesy of one of my favourite places to visit - The Wellcome Collection

 I’ve posted mp3 files of performances in the East Lothian Showcase Concerts 2006-08 on the East Lothian Guitar Ensemble page. It’s strange to think that a few individuals who took part in all three concerts are now only finishing S3!