Finished teaching for 2010...

21st Dec and my last student braved the snow to get here! Such dedication.

Bring on the Christmas/Boxing Day/NYE celebrations & see you all in 2011!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year :)

Cinderella Rehearsals underway

So rehearsals have started for next years panto of "Cinderella". Woop! The kids are doing well, working hard learning song lyrics and going over steps for the dances.
We have some lovely songs as well, such as a beautiful solo number Cinderella sings from the epic musical 'Wicked'.

Teaching Overview November 2010

My teaching is all going very successfully! A parent of a boy I teach at Towcester Rock School has asked to have private lessons with me, she is doing very well :)

In other news of my students in South-East London: I have one lady I teach clarinet as well as piano. She is flying through her repertoire, techniques coming back to her from when she learnt as a teenager. She will be due to take ABRSM grade 8 next year, we are in process of looking at a new mouth piece and ligature to further her tone quality. She also has piano lessons with me and will be shortly taking ABRSM grade 5.
The other girl I teach is digging out all her old piano sheet music to film soundtracks such as 'The Nightmare Before Christmas' "Lord of the Rings' and 'Finding Nemo'(!) she is just wanting to play for pleasure.

New students at Towc Rock School

Since the start of the new academic year I have had a couple more children start lessons, all going very well! We had a lovely family day for new people to come and register, where already established bands could perform some of their songs on stage to an audience of friends and family. The weather was stunning so it was a very enjoyable day on the grass listening to them all perform their sets

Starting song writing workshops in primary schools

Express yourself...

I'm putting together a program to deliver songwriting workshops for children. Primarily it would be for use in primary schools, a class would be mentored for the whole day.
Firstly, the children draw a mind map of a theme for the song and come up with ideas for lyrics. Then, after some funky, upbeat warm ups they start developing ideas for the song. Whether they want to sing, say or rap the words, it is left totally up to the children. Beat boxing is also quite popular :-)
The end product from the day would be a professional cd of their pop song recording making use of every single child’s voice. It would be recorded, mixed and mastered entirely by me.
The second track on the cd is an instrumental version which can be used if the children want to perform their song singing live.

(All parts and tracks for the songs are inputted, written and recorded on Logic Pro 9)
Exciting! Watch this space...

First song I've remixed for Beatbullying is on iTunes!

Exciting news... I have remixed a song that we wrote with the children of Rockliffe Manor Primary, Greenwich and it's now on iTunes to download for free :)

Internship at Beatbullying

I have recently been accepted to do an internship at Beatbullying, a registered charity situated in South London, concerned with empowering young people in the schools all around London, preventing bullying and actively sourcing ways in which to overcome this universal problem.
I will be assisting in the musical aspect of this, by using exciting and interactive forms of activity, to help the children to engage in writing their own songs based on the themes of pro-friendship and anti-bullying. Exciting times!

http://beatbullying.org/dox/what-we-do/bbmusic.html