There are thousands of recent debates about music and the arts being dropped in schools but perhaps the bigger issue is the fact that children often don’t understand what music actually is. I always thought that music was time signatures, clefs, crotchets and semi-quavers. When I struggled to learn how to play the piano at age 6, I originally pinned that down as ‘not being musical’. Music can be anything. I learned to express myself musically in other ways and now I sing, write songs and play multiple instruments (a little!). Although we still hugely value the musical background most of us have, the main thing we relish as a group is our ability to be creative, improvise and be instinctive. Practice makes perfect…the cliché really is true! However, first you really need that passion for it; that inspiration and ambition has to come from somewhere. That’s why we do workshops.

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It doesn’t stop at attempting to inspire young people, we also like to embarrass adults! Our improvisation skills when arranging and writing music transfers to our workshops. Singers who are much better than we are can be thrown out of their comfort zone when we ask them to come up with a new bassline on the spot, or to instantly imitate a clarinet - there are no rules in our style of music! Some of the sounds we make sound like a dying moose on their own, but put them into a musical context and it can really work…most of the time. No boundaries, no pressure, just your voice and an open creative mind. That’s how we come up with our best material and that’s what we encourage in our workshops.

 

We have run workshops for staff and students at schools, corporate staff, youth groups, community groups, choirs and more. We really hope we can continue to inspire people to use that voice!