Sarah Westwood, drummer extraordinaire

Sarah Westwood was the first ever music leader on our project, teaching funky West African drumming. She's recently been on some training which we were able to fund through our CPD (continuing professional development) budget, and she's written an insightful and entertaining article on Youth Music about her experiences. Check it out here!

http://network.youthmusic.org.uk/resources/blogs/sarah-westwood/sarah-experiences-%E2%80%98village-music-circles%E2%80%99

Huma & Jonny sing Taylor Swift "Crazier"

We run music sessions at Heartlands Hospital alongside the Kids United session in the community. Here one patient who has not sung before, gains confidence in singing thanks to encouragement and help from the amazing Jonny Amos.
Thanks Jonny!

Huma says "thank you, it was amazing. The best experience I've had".

Quantize!

We started a new set of sessions last week! This mini-project is called QUANTIZE and it's a bit different from what we've been doing so far! Some of the young people from Naseby and Hutton have joined with some new recruits to write, record and produce a CD of their own music. This is taking place at The Pump, which has a professional recording studio and lots of useful specialised spaces for these workshops. It's a much better environment for these sessions really, as the youth centres were often busy and provided lots of distractions.

We're working with MC Vice (James) from Street Soul Productions plus some special guests to create this exciting project! I think it's really great that by the end of it, the young people will have learnt so many new skills (writing, studio recording, CD production) and will have a brilliant end product that they can keep.

Our first session last week focussed on working together and producing a concept for the songs, and writing some first lyrics. We also had a little introduction to the recording studio, and ate lots of biscuits.

As always, if you are under 18 and live in the Hodge Hill area (or know anyone who'd be interested) get in touch by leaving us a comment, message us on twitter @Music4HH or via facebook.com/music4hh, email music4hh@gmail.com.

Rapping!

We've come to the end of our sessions on rapping, beatboxing and lyric writing. Here are some of the tracks that our young people have created with James!

These two are from the youth clubs, so James had more time to work with them on lyrics and got their input about what the backing should sound like. He also sampled some of their beatboxing and included that too.
Naseby crew - Drastic by Music4HH
Arceus - character rap - norton hall session 2 by Music4HH

And these are from the sessions at the hospital:
Mckenzie - character rap - heartlands hospital session 3 by Music4HH
Haider AND Baabar - The Adventure by Music4HH