MUSIC AND COMBINED ARTS WSHOP

In this workshop we co-create works of art that are the result of the combination of different techniques.

If children normally explore storytelling, drawing, painting, etc, with a sense of ease and freedom, why don’t they do the same with music?

This question drove me to look for ways to include music in the natural artistic explorations  children often embark themselves in.

In Example 1 we combined storytelling, computer illustration, music composition and keyboard interpretation.

In Example 2 we combined music improvisation (which meant we had to go over basic harmonic rules), guitar and piano interpretation, synthetic music creation and music production. Since we combined the efforts of two different talents, of course we had to find a name for our band!

Works like these often take many hours to complete, although I have done some much shorter and simpler exercises.

1 – Las aventuras de Pingo 1 (Pingo´s adventures 1)

Pingo´s adventures is a story written and illustrated by an 8 year-old girl called Andrea, who composed and recorded different songs to act as background to her story.
The process went like this. I gave her a book containing many illustrations and asked her to select a few of the characters that appear on it, and assign them names and personalities.
The following class we outlined a storyline, and after that we identified different situations that we tagged DANGER / ACTION / ETC
We then spent a few classes choosing sounds and writing scores for each part. Here´s an image of our scores:

Once we had all the songs written, we spent a few classes practicing and recording them. I have a portable studio so we could do this in her house. I then took the material home and produced it.

You can have a listen by clicking here

Here´s an illustration of Pingo and friends Andrea and I co-created using Photoshop:

Andrea has been my student for many years, and we have produced three episodes of Pingo´s adventures, plus other works.

2 – Feliz Navidad by Fun Brothers

Whenever I have siblings as students I suggest that we try to make music together. This is the case of Fun Brothers, a duet composed by Guillem and Paula, ages 10 and 11.
In this case, we covered José Feliciano´s Christmas classic. Guillem played both the melody and bass lines with his guitar and Paula did chords and trumpet improvs with her keyboards. In this case, each produced their own parts using Cubase, and we also used a loop program to create the drum sections.
We recorded the material using my Smartphone; sound quality was not so important, it was mostly about the focus and fun one has  when trying over and over to get the parts right!

You can have a listen clicking here.