The Virtual World of Music

“An inversion?” “Yes, an inversion! It’s a fun compositional technique where a melody is essentially turned upside down! If the pitches went up in the original, they now go down. A mirror image if you like!” As I was saying this to a class of talented GCSE composers, it dawned on me that this rather effectively summed up how it has felt solving the new logistical conundrums that COVID has presented KES Music. To get it to all work, you need to turn everything you normally do upside down!   

So much has been achieved through everyone’s willingness try new things, not least organising for 400+ vocal and instrumental weekly lessons to take place from day one of the Autumn Term!  Who could have foreseen that in order to create more large, well-ventilated, COVID-safe teaching spaces we’d be taking over the Wroughton Theatre from our friends in the Drama Department and later asking the maintenance team to convert changing rooms in the Sports Hall into superbly resonant temporary musical spaces?! 

By the fourth week of term we’d solved the problem of how to create live music ensembles in Year Group bubbles! Whereas before we had always aimed to inspire as many pupils as we could to join in a particular orchestra, choir, band or ensemble, now we had to break them up. By utilising as many music staff as possible, in just about every gap in the instrumental/vocal teaching timetable that presented itself, performing in just about every suitable venue we could dream up within the school (including a foyer!), each Year Group bubble could enjoy the provision of a string ensemble, a wind ensemble, a Popular Instrumental ensemble and a Popular Vocal ensemble! Who needs one string orchestra when you can create 6 all learning movements from the same piece?! All we have to do now is weld them together to perform! Hmmm! Better pick up the School’s video camera!  

We’ve certainly become good friends with the camera and honed our audio recording skills. If you can’t bring the audience to school ……. video each pupil in turn, edit and send it the audience! Working thus, our revered annual Autumn Term performances such as the Autumn Colours Concert and the Carol Service have potentially reached more members of the wider KES community than ever before!  Everyone now gets a front row seat, and if you wear headphones to watch it, all the better!

Safe to say, having demonstrated KES’s musical and technical ability this Autumn, we have exciting and even more ambitious plans for the Spring Term, but in truth, whilst pupils and staff alike have enjoyed developing new skills in a recording studio setting, wouldn’t it be just great to be in the middle of one of KES’s 55-60 member strong orchestras and choirs again? Still, these months of restrictions have certainly helped KES tap into what musicians out in the wider world are renowned for in the work place – CREATIVITY!
 

Mr Drury, Director of Music