IBO Musical Voyage
  • Home
  • Musical Voyage Blog
  • Process Journals
  • Posters & Graphics
  • Assessments & Rubrics
  • Unit Outlines
  • DP Music
  • MYP Units
  • Differentiation
  • Personal Project
  • xBlock Music
  • Just Play
  • Extended Essay
  • PYP Music
  • PYP Planning
  • Cool Ideas
  • Technology
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Disclaimer

Thinking out loud...

iPad Orchestra

10/19/2019

1 Comment

 
You know that feeling, in the pit of your gut, that things are on the verge of going pear-shaped? That was me last Thursday night.  It was the Learning2 conference at Nanjing International School and two of my grade 11s were about to learn a student iPad Orchestra. 

Back story... we decided to do the Doctor Who theme song back in April. Bought the score and got some general ideas on how to set it up.  The school had recently bought QLab and so we could match the theatre lights to the live music.  We had the iPads from the Design Centre. It looked really do-able. 

Come August, and we couldn't figure out what software to use. Everybody else who had used it was just using GarageBand or other free programs. The other option was iSymphonic, which is several hundred dollars.  We finally found WoodwindSS and Heavy Brass. Bought 22 leads to run to a mixer on stage. It seemed like it was all going well.

The first rehearsal was a complete disaster. We didn't have the mixer, so the kids couldn't hear themselves well.  Being in Asia, most of our kids either knew traditional Asian notation (numbers and dots) or solfeggi, and the iPads were all Western alphabet notes.  Lastly... um... yeah, we forgot to transpose the music! Sure, we had kids playing French horn on the iPad with French horn music, but the iPads were not transposed and the sheet music was! After a long time of tweaking, we finally got it done. 

The rehearsals were amazing.  We had a smoke machine.  We had an explosion machine.  We had a fantastic video, made by one of the grade 11s, that featured a TARDIS spinning through a vortex with the school and Learning2 logos.  The lights flew across the sides of the stage in time with the music.  The disco ball put stars all over the auditorium.  The kids had come in for a weekend rehearsal and were totally killing it.

It was a lot of hard work, particularly the week of.  The student leaders (the conductor and performer/sound technician), theatre manager, and I stayed at school until 7 p.m. during the days leading up to it, fining tuning everything.  The performance was only 1:40 seconds long, but we wanted it to be perfect.

On the day of, I started getting butterflies in my tummy. One student skipped the tech warm-up. Another showed up without concert clothes. Another kept nagging me to wear super sparkly Converse on stage.  I got a last minute tech change just as we were walking on stage. One student forgot their iPad and RAN off stage to get it.  I was worried. And then it happened... disaster...

The video didn't come on.  The students and I (I was doing the Dalek voice in the back) were sitting awkwardly on stage, engulfed in blue lights, with a silent audience before us. The student conductor was in the wings, desperately chatting into a walkie-talkie about the video not working. The student technician forgot to turn on the sound board and quickly walked back to the mixer beside me to do so.  We waited... and waited... the computer rebooted in the soundbooth and the audience laughed. When the video finally came on, it was only showing half the screen and the titles were all cut off. The kids were so discombobulated that they played poorly - wrong notes and sloppy.  The tech kids running the smoke machines didn't know the new cues and didn't put much smoke in.  The explosion machines didn't go off until 5 seconds after the performance was done. It was such a bad performance that the PA Organization WeChat immediately started chatting about how horrible the performance was. 

I cried. 

​But the funny thing is, the audience loved it. 
Picture
Picture
The visiting teachers said they were amazed that nobody from NIS jumped up to save the students. It was very clear that this performance was being run by two upper years students who were conducting their peers, and when the crap-hit-the-fan, they had to figure it out for themselves. The visitors said they loved that there was an awkward silence, because the kids on stage learned that sometimes things are awkward and you just have to sit through it. They were very sympathetic about the tech problems. 

We started getting tweets about the performance being "amazing."  The two student organisers and I are cynical about this.  We had a debrief with the theatre manager the next day and have already booked the next school assembly to redo it.  For our own peace-of-mind, we need to prove to ourselves that we can do it super. 

​Anyhow, what I love about NIS is there's definitely a culture of failing-forward. Kids are given the freedom to experiment and to push / challenge themselves.  When things go pear-shaped, the kids are allowed the pain of figuring things out... and then are given chances to try again.

That's what's amazing. 
1 Comment
rushmyessay link
4/19/2020 02:59:26 am

I can never go on a trip without proper music, it is just who I am. I think that it is always better to enjoy music rather than to just sit idly. There are those who do not think that it is fun to do that, but I think it is. Music can really change the mood that you are feeling. I hope that more people can go and use music to evolve from the stone cold feelings that they have.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    My name is Amy Keus. I teach MYP and DP music at Nanjing International School. I used to teach Early Years and PYP, before the fabulous Bonnie joined me. If you enjoy my blog, would you please go to Facebook and Pinterest and like / follow my pages?

    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    September 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    March 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    March 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    March 2012

    Categories

    All
    Developmental Workbook
    Differentiation
    DP
    Drumming
    Game
    Guitars
    Kahoot
    Lead Sheets
    Musical Futures
    Musings
    MYP
    Non-Traditional Notation
    OCC
    PD
    PLT
    Process Journal
    Professional Development
    Professional Learning Teams
    PYP
    Theory
    Tools
    Transdisciplinary
    Vasily
    Veracross
    Website
    Workshop

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly