some rock pics

Sharing the drum kit

Guitar section

working on the keyboard parts

Bass guitars

working together

rock'n'roll

concentrating

A good team on the electronic kit

Star trainee!

star trainee too!

James and Martyn leading

getting into the groove

vocals - the finished song

Here's some snapshots of our rock band workshop.....thanks to SRYP's Soundscapes team James and Paul....

Tonight

Tonight! - Rock Band workshop, 7 - 9, with James Brookes from SRYP.......

Alex's new drum

Here's Alex showing everyone his new Udu drum .... great sound.

Interim reports done!

Yes, all those rainy days of form filling, evidence gathering, teeth grinding, spreadsheets, tea drinking and general evaluating have been bundled up and submitted in one big information cloud to Youth Music..... phew.
Cheers, team.

Rrrrrooooock band evening!

On October 11th our Heart Beats session will be different.
James and Paul from Soundscapes - our partner project - will be coming with loads of new stuff to run a 'rock band' evening for us.
Everyone can have a go at playing electric music together, with drum kit too.
The times are different too - 7 o'clock to 9 o'clock.
Woo hoo.

New trainees!

Hi Elin and Ros - great to have you both on board. Welcome to Heart Beats!
Here's what our new trainees have to say....

More percussion, less discussion

Thanks to Rod Paton, and everyone who came and contributed to a day of Lifemusic yesterday.
We explored the concepts of Lifemusic; experienced a variety of approaches to establishing improvised pieces; had fun with sounds, our voices, and words; worked with storytelling and sound (thanks Vicki Ross from Openstorytellers for the story!); shared lunch and had a good old fashioned chat.
More days like that would be good!
Rod gave us lots of little things to consider and take away ..... ranging from Edward Lear (B was a bat) to John Cage (if it's boring, just repeat it) to Pythagoras (pentatonic scales) to the Higgs Bosun particle (!), to Frank Zappa:

 We remembered how much Lifemusic informs our work, and what fun it is to have the luck to work with music.

Lifemusic

Here we are, gathering lots of bits and bobs for tomorrows' Lifemusic day. Can't think of a better way to spend a Monday ...... bring it on.

Heart Beats - lots of new things coming up soon.

What some people may not know is that Heart Beats is a project in two phases. We're excited that when we come back from our summer break there will be lots of things going on in the Heart Beats universe!

We'll be starting our autumn sessions on September 13th - usual place (Wells Museum) and usual time (6.00 - 8.00). Don't forget to come if you're part of our gang - or, if you're not, but you'd like to join us, email info@heartbeats.org.uk for some information.

We'll be welcoming our new trainees too - Elin and Ros.

One session this autumn will be run by James Brookes, from Somerset Rural Youth project, who has promised us a rock band workshop. And we'll be going to Jame's project, Soundscapes, to run a  workshop for them.

This autumn we will be running a 'little Heart Beats' project at Critchill school in Somerset, to reach some new participants - this will be an after school club.

Next year we'll carry on. In 2013 we'll concentrate on helping our Heart Beats crew to take turns to lead the music.
So - when 'phase two' starts, we'll be taking Heart Beats out on the road. Next summer we can offer music workshops with our own Heart Beats music leaders, in schools and communities across the SW region. Do get in touch if you'd like to book a workshop or you want more information.

Behind the scenes....rainy day work

Sessions may have stopped for the summer but the work hasn't! Preparing piles of paperwork / bundles of field notes in advance of an evaluation meeting with our evaluator Nell Farrally : saving the interim budget reports for another day... probably, another rainy day.