Year 10 Steel Pan week 7

This week, year 10 worked on the final sections of 'Winter Wonderland' as well as spending a lesson coming up with musical ideas for their own winter steel pan compositions.

In your blog this week, you should write about:

- How you found the final sections of Winter Wonderland - what were you able to play well, and what was more difficult? What do you need to do after half term to improve your performance?

- What were the decisions that we made as a group about coming up with musical ideas? For example - what did we decide about tonality, and themes?

- How did you go about coming up with musical ideas? Did you focus on melodic or harmonic ideas? Did you start by playing chords, or did you improvise until you found something that sounded good?

- What were the ideas like that you came up with? Were they melodies? Chord sequences? How did you write them down?

Year 11 Week 6 - DJing exams

This week, year 11 completed their DJ course, which finished with two tests on the decks (drop-mixing and beat-matching, and acoustic mix) as well as a written exam. This week, in your blog, you should write about:

- How well you did in the DJ assessments. Did you pass? If you didn't pass, are you going to try again?

- Whether you passed or not, you should try to write a paragraph about what you've learnt through completing the DJ course, and what new skills you now have

- How much did you enjoy the DJ course? What were the best bits? What was the most difficult? Were there any boring parts?

- Will you carry on using your DJ skills? Do you feel ready to create a mix for the Diploma Festival next term?

Not sure what to write in your blog?

If you're not sure what to write, here's a few ideas...

Explain what your task was in music lesson this week

Who did you work with? Did you work individually or did you help and practise with others?

Did you complete the task? Did you achieve everything that you set out to do?

Did you share any work with others? Perform anything?

How did you feel about your own work and progress this week?

How could you improve your work in future lessons?

What did you do best this week?

How did you feel about the work of others that you saw?

How could they improve?

Is this work ongoing? What will you be doing next week to continue your work?

Remember, the point of your blog is both to keep a record of what you've done, and to show the examiner that you have made progress throughout the year - so make sure you highlight all the new skills that you've learnt, or when you've got better at something.

Year 10 Week 5 (4-8 October): Steel Pan

This week year 10 have continued work on Winter Wonderland - perfecting the introduction and section A, and working on section B. All of the sections have had to learn new techniques, such as:

- Performing a chromatic scale (one using all the notes, such as G-A-Bb-B-C) - all the pans did this

- Playing off-beat, syncopated rhythms (all the pans did this)

- Playing double rolls (the guitar, cello and seconds did this in the harmony of section B)

- Playing chords along with the melody (tenor pans did this)

- Using words and rhymes to rehearse and remember rhythms (such as 'I don't like fish and chips...')

In your blog this week, you should describe some of the new techniques that you have used and learnt this week.

Next week, we will continue to work on Winter Wonderland as well as start coming up with some ideas for our own winter pieces. You need to start thinking about how you might create a winter song for steel pans. Would you use bits of existing winter tunes (e.g. jingle bells) to make the piece recognisably wintry? Or would you add more percussion, such as sleigh bells?

Year 11: DJing, 5th October

Today's session was spent almost entirely on beat-matching, and on practising.

When you're blogging about today's session, you might want to mention:

- How easy do you find beat-matching? What is easiest/hardest about it? Do you feel you are doing enough practice?

- What were the choices that you made today about your DJ name, logo, favourite tracks, etc?

- How do you feel your DJ skills are progressing so far? What techniques have you really understood, and which do you still need to work on? How are you going to address any difficulties that you've had so far?

Year 10: Steel pan workshops week two

This week year 10 worked on a new piece for steel pans - Winter Wonderland. You decided to perform a Christmassy version of Whatcha Talkin Bout at the Winter roadshow, as well as Winter Wonderland and another piece which you will be composing after half term.

Use your blogs this week to talk about...
- How you found the new piece, Winter Wonderland. What were the challenges and what was easy?
- What you're starting to learn about music for your own pan - do you tend to play chords? Melodies? A bassline? Do you tend to have long, held notes? Or upbeat rhythms? All this will help you when you're creating your own steel pan piece next term.

Year 11: Week 3 of DJing

This week was year 11's third week of DJing workshops. You worked on beat-matching, and learnt about how to use the computer programme Serato to create mixes. Nigel, our DJ tutor, gave us a demonstration of a mix using Serato - and the decks have now been set up in the back of the Music Dept for you to practise on in your spare time...