Musical bicycle

Check out this demonstration of collaborative creativity:

What if you would be able to generate music by the simple act of riding your bike? This project started with that question. We have build the first prototype and thanks to Jeffry Sol and Vincent Beijersbergen we were able to do so in a month. And yes it was pretty difficult, but loads of fun.... the idea is pretty simple; basically, a wheel and dynamo work the same way as a record player. But it was not as easy as it looks. First, we had to come up with a solution for the wheels; how can we change the records? The forfork was blocking the wheel. That's why we changed a 30 year old bike into a lefty bike; and build a construction that would still support the weight and would be strong enough for people to ride on it. The biggest challenge of all was to make sure that the needles would stick to the record and follow the grooves, without skipping too much. Therefor we bought two vertical record players and took them apart, to see how they worked. Also; we wanted our bike to be as low tech as possible; that's why the only "extra" energy we used was a 9 volt battery to support the amplifier. In order for the records to run smoothly, we also had to change the crank of the bike and the chain. After that, we build our own horn, to have some extra volume, and we sprayed the whole bike black. We had some sponsors like bikestores, handy people and DJ's and that's how our dream in progress turned out to be real... Here's to the crazy ones; thank you guys, you rock. - Merel, Pieter and Liat

www.featsperminute.com

Wall of Sound

Thanks to Seb for reminding me about this great website. I think we should make one of these about the existing Thomas Tallis School.

What do you think?

Anne-Mette, one of our colleagues in Denmark, just sent me a link to this website. It's a series of YouTube videos that feature a range of instruments playing and sounds created. The visitor can create their own mix of the various sounds, each person generating a unique composition. It kept me amused and delighted for ages!

I wonder if we could borrow this idea to create our own interactive music website for Tallis, featuring our own musicians, instruments and sounds? We could try to incorporate the sounds of the building and film each musician in a variety of recognisable Tallis locations. This might then be projected during the 'Past, Present & Future' showcase events on 15th and 16th July so that visitors can make their own soundtracks. It can also be one of the artistic legacies of the old building, continuing to be played in the new one.

What do you think?

Tree Dressing 2009

This year's tree dressing celebrations on the Ferrier Estate had a musical theme. The Tallis Year 8 steel band played to an appreciative crowd in Telemann Square, following a lantern parade around the estate led by a jazz band. The fireworks orchestrated by Emergency Exit Arts were spectacular, as was Rosa's soup served up free for everyone from the Community Hall. Listen to the festive sounds of the band as people gathered together out of the cold.



We hope to create a website this year celebrating the sights and sounds of this special occasion. Thanks to everyone who took part, to the artists, technicians, cooks, police officers and organisers, and especially our very own Creative Communities Development Officer, Lisa Sproat, who sadly missed the event that she had worked so hard to help organise because of a dodgy tooth! Get well soon Lisa.

British Music Experience at the O2

On Thursday the 28^th of May I went to the British Music Experience at the O2 Bubble.

The British Music Experience is an Exhibition that lets you experience and learn about Music from different decades. It’s also a completely interactive exhibition, combining cutting edge audio and visual technology with some of the most coveted music memorabilia of all time.

When you get there your shown into a small Cinema room with 1 row of seats, Lauren Laverne is presenting the video and she explains what to do when we get into the Core and how to use our ticket, the ticket is not just to get you into the exhibition but also to use in it, The ticket is known as a “smarticket” that ticket allows you to swipe it on a card reader next to the displays that you like so that when you get home you can go onto the website and register, which lets you continue your British Music Experience. Once your logged in to your own personal area you then type the code that’s on your ticket in and it sows you all the displays that you swiped your card on and more about them, which I thought was very clever,

After the preview in the small cinema room you walk through this corridor into “the core” (a circular shape) which had small touch screens with the latest head phones connected to them and you select a time zone from 1945-2008 and it will tell you what’s hot and some facts about music in that time. Also in that room there were 2 glass boxes, both with a time line ant the top, 1 of the boxes had different radios from different times and in the correct place in the time line the other box had record players to stereos again they were under the point in time in which the were made. In another part of the room there was a table with a map projected onto it, with a scroll ball you scroll the cursor to different parts of the world and it will tell you an artist that came from that part of the world and with headphones it would tell you some facts about that artist. There was also a small room inside the core were you would select a type of dance music and have a lesson on how to dance to a song, then you can watch a video of you making a right fool out of your self lol.

Around the room there were other open doors leading into other rooms all the rooms were set on a time line so one room would be 1945 to 1962 when another room would be 1993 to 2009 in each of these rooms were items of clothing or instruments belonging to famous artists from that time, also you can watch interviews of musicians talking about musicians from the time in which the room is set. In one of the rooms there was also a screen were you can select and album and learn all about it.

Before all of those rooms was one other room called the “Gibson Interactive Studio” and inside it were lots of guitars, basses, drum sets, pianos, a microphone and a mixing desk, some of the guitars, basses and drums had a touch screen next to them with interactive lessons with the musicians that play that instrument in the song that you choose the lessons range from beginner to advanced and then pro so any one can do it, some of the instruments didn’t have lessons on them and were just free play which was great fun. There was another room at the end of the time line rooms and this room was called “the future” I’m not quite shore what this room was all about but I think it was trying to tell people that nobody knows what music will be like or how we will listen to it in the future.

Over all I had so much fun, the whole exhibition was interactive and very factual, it’s great for learning all about how music changed through time and I advise every one to go and have a look tickets are £12 - £15 and it’s so worth it (but I would advise you not to go on your own to get more out of it)

Thanks for reading.

Felix's School of Rock

Over the second week of half term I was working for Felix School of Rock which is a week course where kids can go and join with some other kids to form a band and they learn 3 or 4 songs to perform in a gig at the end of the week, which I think is a wicked idea. Anyway I was working there as an assistant so basically I had to help teach some stuff a bit and set up the rooms for the bands and I had to set up the stage for the gig. When I got there Felix said I would have to play for a band because they didn't have a Drummer which was wicked! Seriously I had so much fun and I got to play at the gig and do the Drumageddon which is where each drummer comes up on stage and does a 1 minute drum solo (I was the best of course!) Check out my my Drum Solo in the video at the bottom of the post. Check out my behind the scenes photos on Flickr. This doesn't have much relevance to what we were talking about but I just wanted to tell you what I got up to during the holidays. What about you?