Fresher's Week Taster Session (Wednesday 16th September 2015)

Introduction to Musicianship CMU105

I was really nervous about attending this workshop! Lots of thoughts were going through my head; am I good enough? Do I have the skills? Do I need to be able to read music really well? However I was excited too because I love to sing and I play guitar. 

We learned some African Drum rhythms which was such good fun! I was expecting it to be a lot easier than it actually was, especially once other rhythms were added it was hard to keep my rhythm. I found that playing the African Drum made everyone work together, you could even feel the vibration from the other drums! 

I learned that sometimes the African Drum is also known as Talking Drums as they were used as a form of communication and then other objects were made into instruments such as the cow bell, this was also used as communication. I also learned that in Africa Music and Dance is one. This is fantastic as when I was playing the drum you have to make big movements with your arms and it makes you want to get up and dance. I like the idea that Dance and Music are one.

As a group, we had 15 minutes to create a piece of music based on a picture of a carnival. We used a few different instruments; African Drums, Cow Bells, Piano and other Bells to create this sound. We also used our voices. 

We decided to call our song Onion Rings as that is a typical carnival food and we named ourselves Curly Fries as it fitted the song perfectly.