Our first Virtual Workshop

Led by percussionist and workshop leader Jez Wiles from the Heart n Soul Foundation, 6 of our young musicians gathered together via Zoom to compose music together in a remote online environment. Two compositional tools were used as the framework of the day – ‘Musical Consequences’ and a ‘Harmonic Map’.

Musical Consequences took place first, as a sort of game where the musicians had 40 minutes to compose something individually, without discussion, loosely based on harmony from a pre-recorded track. Then all six parts were compiled together by Jez with a harmonious, if slightly chaotic, result.

In the afternoon, the young musicians gathered into two groups – one who would focus on harmonies, the other on melodies – to formulate a structure for composing using a Harmonic Map, which was written by another talented Future Talent awardee, Peter.

One of the participants, drummer Tom, said:

"The most useful part of the workshop was writing a part without knowing what everyone else would be playing... and then, after reflecting on the results, having another try with an idea of other people's parts so we could learn from what went wrong."

It was interesting to observe the conversations as the afternoon progressed about how difficult it is to know how something would sound, without being able to play in the same room together. Communication and conversation are fundamental to music-making and the consequences of COVID-19 on the musical world moving to an online platform were so prevalent in this workshop. However, the young musicians produced some great results.

Check out the final result of the workshop below...