Wednesday 9th January
This morning was the first workshop session with 10 students. The first hour or so I taught them how to make their own contact mic. It was relatively straightforward because it was a simple piece of electronics, but a couple of them had never soldered before, which took a little longer. Thankfully all the microphones worked at the end, so we spent the second half of the session playing around with the mics and deciding what groups they will be performing in, in two weeks’ time. I am doing a group improvised piece where six groups perform consecutively. I will be sampling elements of each performance to leave a running sound in the background. I have divided the students into three groups of sound-based music, and three of note-based music. They will have the morning of the performance to rehearse, but it’s going to be hilarious trying to organise 30 students at once, each with a different instrument…
