We are currently seeking an enthusiastic and capable fundraiser to join our Core Team as Fundraising Officer with a salary of £28,000 per annum. Do you have the experience and skills  to help us secure funding for disabled artists, musicians and young people across Scotland to achieve their musical ambitions? This might be the role for you.

Click here for the full Job Pack and information about How to Apply. 

The post Is this opportunity for you? appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

More on the Background

What Lies Ahead

The post From Scotland to Kazakhstan and back: How international connections are reshaping what contemporary music can be appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

Last Monday, Drake Music Scotland led a workshop for the BA(Hons) Community Music course at Edinburgh College. With a cohort of about 45 students, we managed to cram a lot in. The most valuable aspect of our training is always the hands-on learning. We firmly believe in learning by doing, so naturally, we built our famous 5-minute band.

A percussion section used body percussion to keep a beat, while the rest of the room divided into groups playing various instruments – bass, adapted Figurenotes guitar, switches with Notion, iPads using Thumbjam and GarageBand, as well as a chime bar choir. Figurenotes scores helped keep everyone on track, especially people playing instruments they had never tried before. Everyone loves a Figurenotes bass! Pink Pony Club has never sounded so cool.

We finished with a beautiful improvisation using an image of colourful houses in Tobermory harbour as our starting point. Everyone coming together in a creative vision was the perfect end to the session, and everyone went home very relaxed. Twinkling sun rays on the water played out over moving chords underneath, all led by a volunteer conductor with a chime bar. Figurenotes colours make improvisation and composition easy, taking away the anxiety of the ‘blank page’.

The post The Future of Community Music appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

During the last week of August, I was situated in Helsingborg, Sweden. Not to be confused with Helsingør, Denmark, which happens to lie on the other side of the water. While there, I was working with colleagues from Share Music in the wonderful Dunkers Kulturhuis (which was designed by the son of the creator of the Sydney Opera House), and we hosted sixteen musicians and composers from across the Nordic and Baltics; though many had lived elsewhere with one particular resident originating from Almaty.

The week had a pretty simple goal, introduce these disparate musicians and composers to different ways of working, both in terms of working with disabled and non-disabled musicians, but also in a wealth and breadth of musical idioms including ‘typical’ contemporary music, Kurdish traditional music, ambisonics, and flute playing just to name a few.

My role was relatively simple, help the guide the creative ideas and develop them, while also broadly mentoring and supporting the musicianship and construction process. I was working alongside Ewe Larsson and Tomas Hulenvik Klingberg offering differing suggestions and ideas on how the ideas could develop further.

The ideas and inspiration were magnificently varied, with one group taking material from Jonathan Mesteron Pitter and expanding it into a larger exploration of sound, improvisation, and morphing sound material. Another group created an incredibly dialogue in space wherein the quartet spread themselves in the space and interacted between each other with their unique and fascinating tech set ups including Merve Erez who had her own makeshift feedback machine, whereas Merilyn Jaeski performing on various keyboard sounds. A third group, which included Aizhan Sultan, and Wander Leo Havir produced what became affectionally known as the Rave Cave. The final group built a fcinating dialogue between the sounds of the harmonium, which were manipulated digitally, as well as other sounds around Helsingborg, which were then musically interacting with the other musicians in the ensemble and a beautiful counterpoint of sound, music, and noise.

What I loved throughout the process was firstly having the trust to be a mentor to prompt and point the groups to new ideas, or to be brave and continue with the ideas they have. But more importantly, what was particularly endearing for me was seeing how each group had a disabled member within it, and without any ‘proper’ training everyone simply accommodated them into the process. Noone was left out, or lagging behind, everyone had a certain comraderie which allowed for everyone to contribute regardless of how they may be feeling that day, or how they approach an idea. The creative results are a demonstration that once you get stuck in, and stop worrying too much about the how, you can make some truly fascinating, and accessible work.

Ben Lunn

The post An Adventure in Helsingborg appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

Acts include Shared Circuits (live electronic music by Paul Duff & Farhad Ahmed), mellow Digital Harp & Bass duo with Rhona Smith, a new collaboration between Digital Orchestra & Sean Logan plus new music from Sean.

Tickets here:
https://events.humanitix.com/digital-orchestra-or-paul-and-farhad-rhona-smith

Find out more about this unique venue here – https://www.pianodrome.org/

The post Sean Logan & Digital Orchestra @ the Pianodrome! appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

Our brilliant tutor Paul Binning has been guiding students through two courses this year:
MIDI Sequencing SCQF Level 5
Sound and Synthesis SCQF Level 6

Well done to all 7 students for their successful completion of the course – we’re really proud of you all.

Thanks to the following supporters of our MusicSPACE programme:
R S McDonald Charitable Trust
CEC Third Sector Resilience Fund
Edinburgh Communities Mental Health & Wellbeing Fund

The post Technology Course Success! appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

It was brilliant to be part of the concert by this wonderful community orchestra who also played music by Tchaikovsky, Mendelssohn & the soundtrack for “How To Train Your Dragon”. The audience was huge and appreciative with several people commenting how much they enjoyed the new piece!

Rhona said: “It has always been one of my dreams to play with an orchestra. Thank you for making that happen.”

Thanks go to Ali Gillies for his tech and artistic support on this project, and to Louise Martin (conductor) and the board of Merchant Sinfonia who worked really hard to make the performance happen.

This piece is part of our programme of activity supporting disabled composers to see their works performed in concerts and festivals, in collaboration with partner organisations – promoting a more inclusive music sector.

We are grateful to PRS Talent Development Network for their support

The post New music for Orchestra & Technology – performed in Glasgow appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

I then went on to do more learning with Pete about the Digital Orchestra and how iPads are used with apps to create music.

After that, I was helping Lesley around the studio and when Varifocals band needed a bass player for their practice, I stepped in to help, and somehow managed to do quite well.

The next morning started back in the studio with Lesley and Liveheart, working on two of their original pieces of music and helping adjust the mixer and audio levels. I also helped them and was playing bass in their last song. After that was work in the office learning about Figurenotes, testing the website and packaging Figurenotes magnets.

I later joined the Digital Orchestra, who use iPads to create music. It is impressive seeing this musical technology and how it can be used to create the digital orchestra.

Wednesday started with a meeting discussing technology and software before moving on to set up a talkback microphone in the recording studio for a recording the next week. The process wasn’t without some technical difficulties, however all issues were solved and it provided a great learning opportunity.

Later in the afternoon I was with iPad Lab, creating music with iPads using ThumbJam and improvising. Later on in the day I also helped to set up the laptops for the AMT course the following morning.

On the final day of my work experience, I was with the Singing Group helping to set everything up for them, which included microphones, audio mixer and other items. It was especially exciting for me to meet someone else who also had perfect pitch and shared similar musical enthusiasm as myself.

The afternoon was spent talking to the CEO and doing admin tasks. It was clear to me after this week there is some incredible musical talent at Drake Music Scotland, an incredible community, and that nothing should be a barrier to letting someone access music.

The post Work Experience Placement Blog – Innes appeared first on Drake Music Scotland.

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This recent blog by Rowan Boase, Partnerships and Learning Manager, highlights Drake Music Scotland amongst that of other organisations such as our good friends at the Cumnock Tryst https://www.thecumnocktryst.com/ and Tinderbox Collective https://tinderboxcollective.org/ showing ‘exciting creative work emerging in places you might not expect and from people who have previously been marginalised in cultural life. This challenges narrow ideas of where high-quality art can come from, and who gets to be seen as an artist in the first place.

https://www.williamgrantfoundation.org.uk/when-more-voices-shape-creative-work/

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