Our TY Workshops keep us extremely busy throughout the year! Our Let’s Drum workshops are normally our most popular TY workshops, and this year has been no exception. On Thursday, 31st May we were delighted to head to St Joseph’s Community College in Charlestown in Mayo. Here, we delivered 2×80 minutes Let’s Drum workshops. MMS tutor Paul led the workshops, with one first year group, and one TY group. Read on below to learn about what Paul covered with the groups!
TY Workshops- Let’s Drum
Each group received an 80 minutes, energetic and hands on music making session. All of our music tutors make every effort to ensure that each session is interactive and engaging, and that each student feels comfortable to express themselves, and contribute to each session. As part of these sessions, Paul incorporated four different kinds of percussion instruments, setting up a ‘work station’ at each instrument. Paul demonstrated how each instrument was played, and gave an introduction to each instrument. Each student then got a turn on each instrument, rotating down the different work stations.
What was involved in each station?
First, the students developed their concept of the beat, along with some simple notation. When the beat was developed, they moved on to some more challenging rhythm patterns.
The group then moved on to some African rhythm patterns, such as call and response. Paul led the group by playing a rhythm, and the group copied the rhythm back to him on their individual instruments, like an echo. The rhythms gradually became more complex, and Paul added in dynamics and increased the tempo when the class group became more comfortable.
Thirdly, the group moved on to an exercise where they layered rhythm patterns over one another. One group began playing the rhythm pattern, and the following groups joined in one by one. The class did this exercises with many different rhythm patterns, changing the rhythm patterns each time.
Lastly, the pupils moved to the final set of instruments. Each group was assigned a rhythm, with each subsequent group joining in. Once all the groups had joined in, each group passed their rhythm from group to group. Paul added in solos to this exercise, while the rest of the group continued to play the rhythm patterns. The speed increased as the group became more comfortable. At the end, the group combined all the different rhythm sections they had learnt.
We had a blast in St Joseph’s Community College, and were delighted to have been asked down!
If you are interested in one of our TY workshops for your school, why not get in touch here.
