Notivate
Listen to our finished piece!
On 7th and 8th April a group of Kic.in2.study students spent two days at The Stables in Wavendon, near Milton Keynes, to take part in the Notivate music programme.
We arrived bright and early on the first day and were met by John who was the programme leader. He took us to the Green Room which was our home base for the two days - that was where we left our belongings and ate our lunch. It was also where we returned to for chill out time on the Play Station between music activities.
John showed us round the building. We saw the auditorium, the recording studio, where we also met Andy, the mixing deck at the back of the auditorium for live concerts, the instrument room where we did most of our work, the Second Stage which was a smaller room for performances, the main entrance and ticket sales desk and the shop. One of the students said the inside was much bigger than it looked from the outside - like a Tardis.
We all liked the instrument room best as we were allowed to try out the instruments and we were able to play the drums, the keyboard and different types of guitar. If we wore the headphones we could hear what Andy was saying to us from his place in the recording studio.
The plan was for us to put together words and music to create a piece of music which we would eventually have as a CD. One person already had a rap she’d written so we started with that, adding drums and keyboard. Sometimes we had to do a piece several times before we had something everyone was satisfied with. Each section was recorded separately and then John and Andy worked in the recording studio to put it all together. When we were in the recording studio it was possible to hear what was going on in the instrument room because of the microphones. John told us that it was possible to record things taking place all over the building because of all the microphone links.
Two people wrote the words to their own song, typing it up on the laptop. Then they worked with John to put a tune to it, before recording it.
Another task which we started was to think about the design of our CD cover. We had a choice of doing the design on the laptop, or drawing it on paper and scanning it into the computer at a later stage.
At the end of the first day we had a music quiz with three rounds of questions about songs and singers. The young people did much better than the not so young! The Killers beat The Rockers.
Day Two
We began the second day by chilling out in the Green Room and John told us aboutthe Lee Evans concert at the Stables the night before.
Today’s task was to write a song together - collaborative working. We decided on a theme of friends and John talked about the best structure for a song. He suggested we should have two or three verses and a chorus. We started with the chorus because that’s the part of the song that everyone remembers. We jotted down words and phrases about friends and what they meant to us, what we did with them and so on.
Then we worked together to put them into lines that made sense and had a rhythm to them. We tried to speak them rhythmically, and sometimes had to change a word, add something or take something out. When we were fairly happy with that, John used his guitar to help us find a tune for what we’d written. We sang the tune a few times, then when we thought it was okay we made a rough recording so we wouldn’t forget it. We went through the same process with each verse.
While we had lunch John went away and laid down a backing track for our song. After lunch we practised singing the song to the backing track, then we broke into
two groups to record the singing. 
Those who were singing were in the instrument room with John, whilst Andy was in the recording studio. John and Andy made us record lots of versions, singing one by one, singing together, repeating particular parts a few times. It got a bit boring when you weren’t the ones singing, but we understood that it had to be done to get it right in the end.
Finally we recorded some keyboard, drums and guitar to be added to the final recording.
Towards the end of the afternoon we chilled out in the green room whilst John and Andy did some technical wizardry, and Val got us to do some evaluations of the two days. Then we went into the recording studio to listen to the rough recordings of the three songs we’d done over the two days. We were given a rough copy to take home, but we’ll get a polished version in the next few weeks. We’re hoping to put a link to the finished version on this website soon.
- Student evaluations for the two days were very positive with scores from 8.75 - 10 out of a possible 10.
- Words used to describe the programme included fun, exciting, wicked, rocking, excellent, brilliant, best ever.
- The activities identified as the best included drumming, putting the song together, singing, playing keyboard, playing guitar and Play Station 2.
- Other comments included:
“The best thing I’ve ever been to”
“Brilliantly fantastico”
“The best thing in the whole wide world”
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