Inclusive Music Making – 2 approaches
“I am preparing a music project for young people with additional needs. I am not sure what to expect, what success looks like, or how to plan sessions. I have […]
Ben Sellers’s blog
Top 5 iPad Apps for accessible music making
Great apps for use in music-making, opening up access to music.
‘Inspire, support, agitate and share’: Reflections on Drake Music & Exchanging Notes
The first year of our Youth Music funded Exchanging Notes project was ambitious, involved many unknowns and experiments, yet was a real success in terms of participant enjoyment, learning outcomes, […]
Sharing Practice Fast: DIY Video Lesson Plans
My time at Drake Music, visiting schools of all shapes and sizes, has consistently demonstrated the following: 1. There is always something to learn from watching a classroom teacher or […]
#DM20 Commission – The Day of the Music
As a musician and workshop leader with an understanding of music as a process, a state of mind, and a tool for growth, I believe that focussing too much on the ‘final product’ of a project can sometimes be counter-productive.
#DM20 Commission: Finding the Participants
This #DM20 commission- a new composition written by deaf people for deaf people (and everyone else) – is the first time I have been responsible for the complete planning and delivery of a project of this scale.
Exchanging Notes: Balancing Formal and Non-formal Outcomes, Delivery and Assessment
“ Conflict, difference of opinion, is the very essence of music: in the balance, in the dynamic, in the way that the music is written… Music teaches us our capacity to bring all the different elements together in a sense of proportion so that they lead to a sense of a whole, and this is what I feel in my own subjective way is one of the main lessons that I have learned from music” – Daniel Barenboim
#DM20 Commission – Roots
The seed of the idea for my #DM20 commission came during a conversation in a music workshop with a girl who used cochlear implants.
Chance Composition in a RampItUp!
A happy accident meant that Belvue School in Ealing started DM’s classic RampItUp! programme at the same time as enrolling six of its students on our Introduction to Music course
Symphonic Surfing
The Open Orchestra project- a collaboration between Drake Music and the BBC that brings together six schools to compose for the BBC Symphony Orchestra- has provided a platform to road test some new assistive music technologies that aim to get to the heart of harmonic composition.
