Dooooooh Doo Doo Dooooh

I’ve been doing quite a lot of work with young people over the last couple of years. This mostly involves introducing them to new ways of making and thinking about music. I have continued to do this work during my sabbatical as I hope it might go some way towards creating a more enriched future.

The latest event I attended was the “Change Day” held at Billesley Primary School in Birmingham. I spent between 45 minutes and an hour with groups of 15 kids, showing them how sampling and looping works and then writing a short tune using this technique to form the basis. Given the short period of time available I was really pleased with the results. As well as creating the rhythm and the “bassline” the kids also wrote and sang the lyrics.

Here is the catchy ditty year 6 created:

[audio:https://www.mrunderwood.co.uk/audio/Yr6_I_Want_My_School_To_Be.mp3]

I would like to thank everyone involved for helping make this inspiring day happen. The other creative practitioners were really great and I think the goals of the day were exceeded.

For Trish

Broadcast singer Trish Keenan died this morning. I spent this afternoon writing her a piece of music to say goodbye (right-click to download)

I didn’t know Trish well personally, although I spoke with her a few times after gigs during the short time I lived in Birmingham. Her influence on me musically is very strong and I will definitely miss that. Most of all though it just hurts when one so young dies. R.I.P.

Grin Scab is alive…

Back in September 2009 (!) I briefly mentioned a new project I was involved in called GypScab, with my friends Grinner and Seamus (with Justin doing the artwork – above). As part of that I did a liveset about a year ago as a test. It went well but then I got busy with other things.

In the meantime I have worked on some really interesting sounding stuff as part of this project but nothing will be formally release until next year.

Recently though Seamus and Grinner got fed up with waiting for me, took the live recording I did and fleshed it out into a fully-fledged 39 minute long tune! They also got scared of offending travellers, so we are now named Grin Scab. Behold…

Grin Scab on SoundCloud