Will Hay

Tag: student compositions

  • Creatures Great and Small

    My Piano Tuition theme this term is “Creatures Great and Small”. For the studio composition project however, I will not be making a video. Instead you must choose three contrasting animals from either Pets, Farmyard, or Jungle categories and compose either a suite of three short pieces featuring the three animals or one piece which features the three animals in relating themes.

    I was really pleased to hear that one of my youngest students had already pre-empted this composition project when she showed me her dinosaur composition yesterday, having chosen to represent three different dinosaurs, two of which I’d never even heard of before!

    Watch out for the weekly listening task in the Evernote listening folder following Saint-Saens’ famous “Carnival of the Animals” suite.

    The term will culminate with  the Summer Charity Concert which will take place at All Saint’s Church, Hoole on Saturday 30th June at 11am concluding with another “multimedia spectacular” which is currently in preparation!

     

  • Sea Idylls Composition Project 2012

    The composition project this term has a nautical theme. Students must compose a backing track to the associated video which is 1 minute and 21 seconds in length. A template score has been provided in Noteflight which already has the correct number of empty bars laid out for each section. Providing the tempo remains unchanged and the number and position of bars are left as they are then notes input onto this score should fit in with the video.

    The piece must be in rondo form, taking as the three themes, the poetic ideas of “Waves”, “Pebbles & Shells” and “Lighhouses”. The closing date for completion of the project is 24th March, 2012 which is a week before the next concert.

    (Please note that at this stage it is not possible to hear the notes composed AND playback the video within noteflight, it has to be one or the other. If you open the video in a seperate browser window to the one in which you are running noteflight then it is almost possible to synchronise the two!)

    Students taking piano and keyboard lessons in school will have been organised into groups to work on this project in their own time with tutorial guidance during lessons.

    More information about the project along with links to some more sample scores have been posted on my noteflight forum

  • Concert raises funds as Autumn Leaves fall


    The Autumn Leaves project has now concluded and a number of students have taken part. The completed videos can be found on the playlist below and have also been shared on the Noteflight Studio. A particularly interesting contribution came from Justus, who is our new bursary student at Kampala Music School.

    Justus’ and Maya’s videos were played back at the recent “Playing Together” concert along with some great performances from my students. Certificates presented at the concert included a Distinction in Grade 1 Theory for Ruth along with a number of merits for piano exams. For quite a number of my students, it was the first time they had performed in a concert and one trio even played a piece they had put together themselves.

    The concert raised another £130 towards the bursary fund which this year has already provided a Zoom Q3HD Handy Video/Audio Recorder for use at Kampala Music School. This fund will also continue to provide piano lessons for Justus at the school. I have put together a “Concert Moments” video below featuring a few of the performances. Credit must go to David Woods for the excellent still images used.

     AUTUMN LEAVES PLAYLIST

    “CONCERT MOMENTS” VIDEO

    [powerpress]

  • Justus – New Bursary Student

    As Betina is no longer able to have violin lessons we are now pleased to be able to support Justus Archangel Mugumnya who is 22 years old and has been playing the piano since 2007.

    He was born in Nairobi but came back to Uganda at the age of four and has done all his schooling in Uganda. He is studying piano and having taken exams with the ABRSM, is working towards Grade 8.

    He also plays the violin and cello with the Kampala Symphony Orchestra and has taken part in concerts at Kampala Music School. He has played cello with one of the most well known artists in Uganda Maurice Kirya.

    Outside the music school, he is studying for a diploma in Information Technology at Uganda Institute of Information and Communications Technology.

    Shown below is his contribution to my 2011 Autumn Leaves Composition Project

  • Autumn Leaves Composition Project

    Over the next half term I am running a composition project in which all my students are entitled to take part.

    The composition entitled “Autumn Leaves” must fit with the video and could take the form of a backing track or a song. There is a score of the appropriate length already set up on my noteflight studio with the associated video.

    The composition does not necessarily have to be realised in notational form within noteflight however it must be able to be performed in synchronisation with the video.

    It must be in ternary form, having two contrasting themes (prompted on the video template by the Autumn Leaf and the three trees).

    It must be completed and submitted by December 1st. The winning composition(s) will be shown/performed at the next concert on Saturday 3rd December, 11am at All Saint’s Church, Hoole.

    An example score with synchronised video by A. Student is shown below: