School Spirit

It may be halfway through the year already, but tonight we held our first official Instrumental Music Program Concert. The School Band has played at a few school functions and assemblies throughout the year already, but this was the first time all of the kids involved in the instrumental music program had the chance to perform as one group in one place. Ten of the seventeen kids involved had never played in front of an audience before.

The short story -  it was fantastic. Fifteen families were involved but we still managed to pull a crowd of nearly sixty people, and raised $67 in gold coin donations at the door as well. That’ll go nicely towards maybe some new music for the beginners, or towards servicing some of the instruments.

While it only lasted just over an hour, the hype and excitement on the kids’ faces was great, particularly the beginners. The band kids are just about all old hands at this and took it all in their stride, but it appears the program is in good shape for what was supposed to be a rebuilding year. The immediate future looks particularly bright.

Highlight of the night? The band was playing to close the show at the very end and performed their two pieces well, but to cap it all off, we brought all of the kids together to play a finale blues piece, without music, that the beginners had only learnt with one practice this afternoon. Add some adlib solos from three of the band kids in the middle and we had a strong, loud, brash and bold seventeen piece band blasting away, two thirds of them having only picked up their instruments three months ago.

Yeah, I’m just a little stoked at the moment!

A few weeks ago we started on an initiative known as the Trivia Challenge, organised through schools by the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria. The aim is to increase the kids’ awareness and understanding of epilepsy as well as give them a challenging, fun activity in regards to working in teams to answer various trivia questions. We took part last year and a team of our Grade Four kids got through the the final in Melbourne, which was a fantastic result. This year, we’re taking part again.

First, we warmed them up a few days earlier with a grade challenge of 25 questions, and gave them some ideas on epilepsy, how it’s caused, what it does, and how to help someone who has it, etc. Then we split the kids into teams of four and gave them an hour in the afternoon to answer as many of the 100 questions as they could. Our highest scoring teams from each Grade level will then move on to the next level of competition. As of yet we haven’t announced those teams.

Great idea, but part of participation in the Challenge is the obligation to donate money to the Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria, which is where Stripes Day comes in. One of the questions asked whether wearing striped socks could cause a seizure. The answer, clearly, is no. But this made us think of holding a Stripes Day to raise the money to be donated. So tomorrow, everybody wears striped clothes instead of school uniform and makes a gold coin donation. All money collected is passed on to the Foundation. Great idea.

Except it meant me spending this afternoon hitting the shops looking for pants with stripes on them…

Tomorrow will cost the kids $1 each… tomorrow will cost me $35…

All in a good cause though, eh?

And now for a quick band update.

Great success was our first performance of the year earlier this week, which gave the kids a nice little top up of confidence going into this afternoon’s rehearsal. With five of them, it’s somewhat light hearted and easy going, but that just makes it a fun half hour or so for me after work as well.

We tried another song we hadn’t touched for a while and it seemed to come together pretty well - a few more run throughs and it’ll be up to performing standard - when they started asking for something from a particular movie.

The new Indiana Jones movie starts today, so it was in the kids’ heads at the time. Seems they wanted to play something from the Indy movies. Well, last year we had a quick look at ‘Raider’s March‘, the theme from the movies. They couldn’t play it too well at all last year, but we brought it out this afternoon and the five of them had a run through with myself topping up the brass line.

Fair dinkum, we could almost play it next week if we had to, they read through it that well. There’s a few holes to fill with instruments we haven’t got, and a few bits that are tricky and need work, but nothing the five of them couldn’t pull off. They’re demanding another assembly performance as soon as possible, and a gig outside of the school immediately now too! Looks like Indy’s gonna get a run somewhere soon, no matter how few times we’ve ever played it!

So looks like we’ll be fronting the assembly in two Monday’s time to blast ‘Raider’s March‘ throughout the multipurpose room, and they don’t know it yet, but a local Arts Festival has just sent us a request to play there later on too…

Indy rides again, eh?

No, the little picture alongside this post has nothing much to do with the content today. The last time any of the kids from the School Spirit webcomic where I take these pictures from held an instrument of any sort was about four years ago. A band was supposed to feature irregularly through the strip, but that idea quickly died because drawing kids with instruments is only slightly better than having a ferret down your trousers.

So you get Casper sitting quietly by the fence post instead. Be happy and read, eh?

I’m the music coordinator at school. That probably conjures up images of spending my days sitting in front of grades of children singing songs, handing out the percussion instruments, hyping them all up with dancing games and silly songs and then sending them off again as the next grade trundles in. No.

That’s a sure fire way to make me lose the plot, blow a foofle valve and quite possibly burn the school down.

Give me my own grade of kids I can get to know and enjoy over teaching the entire school for forty five minutes every week or two any day. I’d much rather get to know 25 kids really well than entertain 400 kids and know them barely by name only. That’s not my idea of teaching, although I credit those who can work that way.

But I am still considered the music coordinator. Because I’m the bloke who knows how to play music and stand in front of the school band (as little as possible - I start them off then slink to the side - they don’t need me waving a finger or clicking in time) when they perform anywhere. Yes, I do a little classroom music with the 3/4 Unit, but I can deal with that because I get my own kids back again the next morning. I’m also the bloke who teaches the brass instruments (well, trumpet this year - no kid was brave enough to try the trombone - which is probably fair enough, it weighs a lot when you’re nine) and bass guitar (I just have to make sure I know more than the kid, eh?).

Well… this year’s band had their first performance yesterday - at the school assembly to start Education Week. There’s only five of them this year. We had 10 last year, but six of them went to highschool, leaving four behind. One of their brothers jumped in this year to play drums for us, which now meant our original drummer could have a break and bring in his electric guitar. Which I find really refreshing because now we can add a little bit of grunt to our songs - even if the original scores never called for an electric guitar solo to cut sick through the middle.

So here were our five kids sitting in the corner featuring a drum kit, a bass guitar, the electric guitar (will be a great rhythm section before the year is out), with a flute and trumpet to carry the melody. Not a large group, and missing clarinets and saxophones and a few more flutes (they’re not as loud as they think they are!), but you can only play the cards you’re dealt, eh?

Only one question though.

What sort of deck has five Jokers??

To be fair to them though, they enjoy their music, have fun with it, and for a group of five all aged 10 to 12, they give a good little show. From the moment we started with our Aussie Mozzie song and the trumpeter stood up with only his mouthpiece and buzzed a mosquito sound out across the hall, we pretty well had the school in our hands. The Preps in particular went right off their collective faces and couldn’t stop giggling. After two quick, simple little pieces to start the morning off, we let the assembly continue. Our trump card was still to come.

After sitting through the assembly and resisting the urge to blow our trumpets and flutes, tap our drums or pluck our strings (the guitar in particular was plugged into the same speaker as the microphone the principal was speaking through), the kids made a deliberate scene of turning their music stands around to make sure everyone realised we were playing this piece without music and we launched into a nice little blues piece. It was a simple riff repeating itself, but the were tight and the crowd started clapping in time (if only they were as tight!). Then we pulled out the big guns.

First our trumpeter and then our guitarist broke into improvised solos, making up their piece as they went along. For the trumpeter, it was his first ever solo, and something he’d only learnt how to do two weeks ago. For the guitarist, who’s an old hand at this, he just cut sick and played.

There might just be five of them, but I reckon they’d give most any other primary school band a right run for their money. They may not look as professional and neat and tidy and well drilled as most, but they’ll take an audience along for the ride.