Music Performance & Appreciation

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Music Camp 2009 at Brastagi, Medan

Music Camp 2009, Organised by Medan Musik in collaboration with Rhythm MP (Malaysia) at Brastagi, Medan
19-20 July 2009

This article was contributed by Ms. Ivy Syamsir, Education Manager of Medan Musik.
For the first time, a Music Camp was organized by Medan Musik through the support and encouragement given by Rhythm MP. The Music Camp was held at a nearby hill resort in Northern Sumatera, at Hotel Mutiara in Brastagi over the weekend of 19 and 20 of July 2009.
The trip began with 150 enthusiastic students of ages 6 to 22 years gathering at Medan Musik at 8am. 3 buses were required to transport the participants to Brastagi. The Music Camp was packed with 2 full days of most interesting and informative music activities.
Mr. Wilson Quah from Rhythm MP kicked start the event by making the students very excited about performing in an ensemble using homemade percussion instruments. The homemade instrument was a project that was initiated to prepare the students for the camp. The ensemble sounded interesting with a varied concoction of homemade percussion instruments, performed to the tune of ‘Good Morning”. Teachers and staff of Medan Musik also participated in the ensemble performance.

This event was followed by a more sober story telling session after teatime. Mr Wilson Quah took students and teachers on an eye-opening journey on the history, development and appreciation of jazz music. From Wilson’s illustrations and explanations, many of the students were busy taking down notes demonstrating their keenness and interests in understand how contemporary music, especially jazz has developed over the last century.
All the students did very well to answer the quiz at the end of the session. During dinner prior to the concert, some of the students were still excited that they were able to answer the quiz questions at the last session. While some students were busy preparing and dressing up in their very best for the evening’s concert, a handful of students were rehearsing concert/performing protocols that they had learned from Wilson before going back to their rooms to get ready.

At around 7:30pm, though it was running a little late, the audience and performers were finally settled down for the evening’s concert that was held in the resort’s foyer. We can see excited parents and performers eager for the evening’s concert to begin. Piano duets, violin with piano accompaniment, and solo piano performances were featured during the concert. The evening concluded with Wilson giving an appraisal of the performances, awarding certificates to all participants, performing for the audience and a photo session with the students. Everyone retired for the night feeling happy and excited after an eventful day.

The following day, more outdoor activities were organized for and it was another day of fun and laughs for the teachers, staff, students and parents. The camp concluded with a visit to a nearby fruit farm, just to pick and eat fresh strawberries.

The buses arrived back in Medan at 5:00pm. The feedback from parents and students were very encouraging with much positive comments and suggestions. There were requests for future music camps to be held over more days, as this inaugural event was a bit too short. There were also requests to have the camp held at other venues, like the resorts at Danau Toba and even overseas in Penang.

The management, teachers and staff of Medan Muzik were very pleased with this recent music camp and are setting their sights on the next Music Camp…perhaps in Penang!?!

My MPA Recipe


Music Performance & Appreciation (MPA) – Conducted by Michael Kay

If you would like to organise MPA at your studio, please click here.

Dates: Any date convenient to your music school
Days: Any day from Monday to Friday
Time: Any time from 9am to 3pm
Duration: Two Hours per session
Class size: 20 to maximum of 25 students per session
Age: 6 to 12 years old
Levels: Beginner levels and Intermediate levels

Part 1
In Part 1 of MPA, each student will be required to play One song from the pre-prescribed list. The song can be any of the current songs that they are learning or songs that they have previously learnt. We will have a brief discussion based on the three areas.

Presentation
Music presentation is about how students show or perform or entertain their audience with their music. A well rehearsed presentation will help develop true confidence and character in a student. Here we will discuss about different aspects and etiquettes of performance at the beginner level.

Articulation
In music, articulation refers to the performance technique which affects the music being played. Many times, we have seen that students especially the younger learner tend to forget about techniques learnt during lessons. These problems will be addressed here.

Musicianship
Musicianship to music is what sportsmanship is to any sport. In a basic sense it is obeying the rules of the subject. It can also be considered the character of music. In music class you are expected to follow the guidelines as to what is expected of every musician.
Musicianship is not about competing with other fellow students. It is about the positive attitude that students are supposed to show in their music.

Part 2

Melody Writing
Before writing a piece of music, it's critical to feed your mind with inspiration. Inspiration comes from all around us: our emotions, relationships, nature, people and experiences. A big part of finding inspiration is putting your own self in situations that rouse inspiration and then recognize it when it comes.

In Part 2 of MPA, we will get the students to move into this area of self-inspiration and to help them identify that inspiration when it comes and prepare themselves to write simple melodies.


FAQ
Why Should I Let My Students Join MPA
Quite often we get music teachers who ask this question. Well, it is a good question. To fully understand this point, it would be useful to place ourselves in a young child’s situation.

The following is a typical breakdown of a child’s daily routine. In a full day of 24 hours, the typical breakdown of time taken up by other activities is:
Sleep ............. 10 hours
School ........... 6 hours
Tuition ........... 3 hours
Homework .... 3 hours
This means there are still two hours left in a day, which makes it a total of 14 hours in one week. From 14 hours, if we take away 1 hour for the music lessons, there would still be 13 hours left.

Out of the 13 hours left, we need to ask ourselves if our students are doing anything musically creative. Understandably, a music teacher’s time is also very limited and given the expectations from parents to have their children achieve the highest grade in the shortest of time, there is practically not much musicality or creativity left in the students’ achievements. In the end, it is just a normal paper chase.

That is why Rhythm MP has created this MPA activity to help teachers to do what cannot be done in the normal music lesson class. Although we do not guarantee that students who attend MPA will be magically transformed to become more creative but more importantly, it will at the very least help stimulate the creative process. Besides, MPA will benefit students later on when they start going into their examination syllabus.

Benefits of Music Creativity
Children have the ability to respond naturally to music. Music Creativity allows the individual child to participate in a non stressful environment where each child responds NATURALLY to music.

Each of us thrives on a very high self esteem. Music Creativity allows us to use individual skills to relate, remember and respond to specific learning experiences. These experiences become lifetime lessons because Music Creativity allows us to create from within.

Music Performance and Appreciation

MPA at Sweet Harmony (Farlim)

Date: Friday O5 June 2009

This is the second time that Rhythm MP is conducting Music Performance and Appreciation (MPA) at Sweet Harmony. The ages of the participants range from 6 to 11 although we also had some who were five years old. We started out the first part of the





activity with all the children performing one piece of their music from the book Piano Lesson Made Easy series by Lina Ng. Generally the playing was quite impressive but with a few minor hitches on presentation. A summary of these are described below:

1)Posture and sitting position. This is an important aspect of a performance and also a part of a musician’s general outlook and appearance. A musician with good posture presents himself with confidence and the audience will be able to enjoy listening to him and also watching him perform because he is an interesting person. The sitting position should be with the body about 20cm away from the edge of the piano keys. If you are a smaller person, then you may adjust your sitting position a bit nearer, but not to an extent where some children sit just 4 or 5 cm away. Once you get the distance right, your elbows should be bent at around slightly less than a 45 degree angle with your hand above the piano. Remember to sit with your back straight and not hunched over.


2) Remember to sit with your legs slightly apart and both feet firmly on the floor. If your feet cannot reach the floor, use a small stool to place your feet on. I still see some children hook their legs to one of the piano stool legs to try to maintain balance. Remember to use a small stool. The aim here is to get a firm and balanced sitting position. If the body is not sitting stably on the piano stool, you cannot be in a position to control your playing as you will be constantly trying focus on not falling off the chair. Always remember not to swing your legs. Swing of the legs will only serve to confuse your body’s natural rhythm.

3) Remember to keep the wrists up and not resting on the ledge of the piano keys.

4) Fingering. Some of the children play with fingers too curved to the point that they look like the legs of a spider walking. This will not be able to get you powerful finger strength. Try curving a bit less. One of the ways I find that helps is to practice scales in different speeds starting with a very, very slow speed. If the fingers still curve too much, then decrease the speed even further until they curve naturally. When the fingers curve naturally, they should look as if the hand is holding a basketball and not a tennis ball. Some of the children’s hands look like they are holding a ping-pong or table tennis ball which over-exaggerates the hand curvature.

5) The other observation is about self confidence. Some of these children are playing for the first time in their lives in front of a large audience. So it is natural that they are nervous. But when that happens, their playing becomes extremely fast. They also tend to look away from the piano. When they end their performance or even before they end their performance, they have half of their body almost away from the chair. One way to overcome this problem is to build their performance experience and overcome what most musicians term as “stage-fright”. To do this, parents can help, by organising more small “home performances” for their children in front of their school friends.

I did not mention the names of the people who made the above errors because I feel that even if you did not make these mistakes, all students need to be aware of these problems in order that you do not make the same mistake. This then, is the end of the first part of MPA.

The second part of MPA is centred on developing creativity.

To achieve this, rhythm MP believes in putting head knowledge into practice. Whatever knowledge students learn during music lessons are just tools. What they need to do is to take this knowledge or tools and begin to create. So we started by taking two exercises from page 18 of Lina Ng’s Piano Lesson Made Easy Level 1 worksheet 2 to begin on rhythm clapping. Once the students were familiar with the rhythm, they began to put music notation to the rhythm and began to create their own music. The following are their own creations:

Chloe Ch’ng Pey En Age: 7 Song title: My Little boat
This is a very well written song with a very nice flowing melody. The notes harmonise quite well with the bass clef. Very good work. Keep it up.

















Kang Jia Yang Age: 10 Song title: Do Re Mi
This song although has a very simple melody which moves scale-like but harmonises very well with the bass clef. Jia Yang has obviously written his song with the sound of the accompanying bass clef taken into consideration. Very good effort.

















Yong Gent Hoong Age: 6 Song title: Rainbow
Although Gent Hoong is still six, he has made a very good effort in creating his own melody. there is still much room for improvement. Since this song is in the key of C major, you can try to end with either a C or E note which is most safest.
















Lillian Au Xin Hui Age: 7 Song title: On the flower
Another good effort by Lilian but quite a number of notes do not harmonise quite well here but still is a good effort. Again here you could either end with a C or E note.




Heap Sen Li Age: 6 Song title: Twinkle twinkle
Sen Li has written a very nice melody. Unfortunately, some of the notes do not quite blend with the harmony in the bass clef. By itself, the melody sounds very very lively but if you have a bass clef given, you might need to try to hear the harmony. One way to do this would be to try to play each bar that you have written and try to find the notes that you think will sound nice when they are played together.

















Darren Khoo Kai Jie Age: 8 Song title: The Engle fish
Darren, maybe "Engel" should be spelt "Angel" but if you are writing your own song, it is OK! Your song is very nice and you should continue to write more. Your notes harmonise very well with the bass clef. Don't stop writing.
















Derrick Khoo Age: 5 Song title: Mother
Although Derrick is only 5, still this is a good attempt by him to write his own song. Keep it up!

















Khoo Ming Jing Age: 11 Song title: Skateting time
Your first line is very impressive and the melody is nice and sweet. The second line sounds a little bit off when played together with the bass clef. You will be able to write better if you can play the bass clef and listen to how it sounds and then write the notes that you think will sound nice when played together with the bass clef.

















Sim Ch’ng Vee Ter Age: 8 Song title: Robot
Ver Tee's song is very nice and he likes to play with scale notes. This is a very good effort by Ver Tee and the music sounds quite in harmony with the bass clef.


















Cray Ch’ng Kai Juan Age: 9 Song title: My tree and me
A good effort by Cray. You could also try not to make the notes skip too much. Bar 2 to 3, and within bar 3, you have a lot of big skips. You can m,ake it better if you try to play out what you have written and then make the necessary changes of you hear the notes "jumping around" too much. The secong line sounds much more flowing. Again, at the last bar you could try to end your song in C or E note. In this case, the most suitable note to end your song would be C.
















Sim Yu Yin Age: 6 Song title: Happy Day
Yu Yin, although is 6 only, but the music you write is very nice and flowing. The only thing is, your music does not match the bass clef accompaniment. You can try again but try to play what you have written to hear the sounds of the treble clef and the bass clef and if they will sound nice together. You have the potential to write more songs. Don't stop writing.

















Jordan Chan Yin Jun Age: 9 Song title: My flower and me
Jordan is a very active fella and can be quite creative. He actually asked me if he could add more notes to his song. And he actually did it quite well. Very creative. Good job.


















Elizabeth Yonicole Age: 6 Song title: Rainbow
Elizabeth is very young and at age 6 she actually made quite a good attempt at writing her own song. Keep trying and you will definitely get better.


















Lim Celine Age: 5 Song title: My Family
Good try by Celine. Your melody is quite nice. It is a good start and if you try to write more, your songs will get better.
















Lee Khoon Hong Age: 8 Song title: Home on the range
A good try by Khoon Hong. What you can do is to try to write again but this time play the bass clef first and try to hear what the bass clef sounds like. Then you add the treble clef notes and play together with the bass clef to see if they sound nice together.

















Lye Wei You Age: 8 Song title: Westminster chimes
A good attempt by Wei You. You have to write more music and very soon your song writing skills will begin to improve. This is your beginning so continue to write more.
















Tan Yan Ni Age: 8 Song title: Westminster Chimes
Nice attempt in song writing. Continue to write more and just like Wei You, you will improve.
















Chee Tsu Ling Age: 5 Song title: Flower
You started your song quite nicely. Continue to write and you will be able to improve on your song writing skills. This time try to play what you have written. When you can hear what you write, your songs will always get better.

















Renelle Koay Age: 7 Song title: Blue Star
You have quite a nice melody here. Try to keep the notes close to each other and keep the interval slightly closer. You could also try to end your song on a E or C note.

















On the whole, I would consider this as a very good attempt by the children to write their own songs since they never got the chance to hear what the pre-set bass clef accompaniment sounded like and still some of them wrote very good melody line to harmonise very well with the accompaniment. In fact, they also never got the chance to play what they wrote and still could come up with some very good melodies. I believe that every ons of these children are actually gifted in their own way. All they need is the opportunity to develop it. And now they have.....

My Schedule

Click here to Compose Your Own Music and send to Michael Kay at michael_rmp@yahoo.com


2011
Wednesday, 23 February 2011

2010
Monday, 29 November 2010

2009
24-29 August 2009 (Monday - Saturday)
Music Jamboree 2009 - Penang, Malaysia - Application Form (PDF)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Music-Jamboree/70165541274

19 - 20 July 2009 (Sunday - Monday)
Music Camp 2009 - Brastagi, Medan - Medan Musik

5 June 2009 (Friday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Sweet Harmony Music Centre

16 May 2009 (Saturday)
Song Writing Competition 2009 - Penang, Malaysia

2008
23 November 2008 (Sunday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Bandung, Indonesia @ Andry Effendy Music
21 November 2008 (Friday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Jakarta, Indonesia @ CDE Music
20 November 2008 (Thursday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Jakarta, Indonesia @ Excellent Music
19 November 2008 (Wednesday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Jakarta, Indonesia @ Trinity Musik
16 November 2008 (Sunday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Probolinggo, Indonesia @ Cendana Musik
15 November 2008 (Saturday)
MPA & Music Fiesta - Surabaya, Indonesia @ Cadenza Music

21 September 2008 (Sunday)
Music Appreciation - Probolinggo, Indonesia @ Cendana Musik

18-23 August 2008 (Monday - Saturday)
Music Jamboree 2008 - Penang, Malaysia

30 May 2008 (Friday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Sweet Harmony Music Centre
26 May 2008 (Monday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Genesis Music
22 March 2008 (Saturday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Pronix Music Centre
14 March 2008 (Friday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Pronix Music Centre
11 March 2008 (Tuesday)
MPA - Penang, Malaysia @ Fame Music

2007
15-16 December 2007 (Saturday - Sunday)
The Joy of Making Music - Perak, Malaysia @ The Piano Cafe Taiping

1-2 December 2007 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival - Penang, Malaysia

29-30 November 2007 (Thursday - Friday)
Music Educators Conference - Penang, Malaysia

29 November 2007 (Thursday)
The Jimmy Boyle Young Talent Jazz Competition - Penang, Malaysia

6-27 September 2007 Music Appreciation in Indonesia
CDE Music, Tangerang, Banten, West Java
Interlude Music School, Cilegon, West Java
Interlude Music School, Citra Raya, Tangerang,
Global Nusantara School (Kindergarten), Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Unison Music and Dance (Gandy Restaurant), Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Don Bosco 2 Primary School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Edwin Philips, Makasar, South Sulawesi
Saint Peter's Primary School, North Jakarta
John Calvin International School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Singapore International School
IPEKA
Unison Music and Dance Course, Sunter, North Java
Rhapsody Music Center, Tangerang, Banten, West Java
Willie Sumantri Music School (WSMS), North Jakarta

21-26 August 2007 (Tuesday - Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2007 - Penang, Malaysia

21 April 2007 (Saturday)
Music Carnival - Selangor, Malaysia @ SJK (C) Kepong

25-19 March 2007 Music Appreciation in Indonesia
EduArt, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Don Bosco 2 Primary School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Don Bosco 1 Primary School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
John Calvin International School, Kelapa Gading, Jakarta
Bunda Mulia International School
Mawar Saron Junior High
Mawar Saron High School
Singapore International School

2006
2-3 December 2006 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival 2006 - Penang, Malaysia

30 November 2006 (Thursday)
The Jimmy Boyle Young Talent Jazz Competition - Penang, Malaysia

22-27 August 2006 (Tuesday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2006 - Penang, Malaysia

2005
3-4 December 2005 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival 2005 - Penang, Malaysia

23-28 August 2005 (Tuesday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2005 - Penang, Malaysia

2004
4-5 December 2004 (Saturday - Sunday)
Penang Island Jazz Festival 2004 - Penang, Malaysia

23-28 August 2004 (Monday ~ Saturday)
Music Jamboree 2004 - Penang, Malaysia

2003
8-14 September 2003 (Monday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2003 - Penang, Malaysia

2002
9-15 September 2002 (Monday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2002 - Penang, Malaysia

2001
10-16 September 2001 (Monday ~ Sunday)
Music Jamboree 2001 - Penang, Malaysia

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