Hodge Hill Rocks!

Our final music showcase took place at Naseby Centre and featured the young musicians who have taken part in the last sessions of our Music for Hodge Hill project. It was a really varied and exciting performance, including some young people who had never performed before and had only started to play or sing a few weeks beforehand. Here's a video featuring highlights from the show.

Thanks to Daz for his music tuition, Esther for organising the event and providing snacks, Naseby Centre for hosting, our young people who set up the hall for us, the musicians, and everybody who came along to support.

HODGE HILL ROCKS!

Drummer boy

Daz has also been visiting Naseby Centre. Here there are a group of older lads who are really wonderful and help to teach the younger ones. Ali has been diligently teaching Farzaan how to play the drums, and in a matter of weeks, he has gone from being a total beginner to a total pro. Well done both of you for being brilliant.

Daz at Norton Hall

Let's gloss over the fact that I haven't posted for a while. Things are a little crazy as we come to the end of our Youth Music project. We're planning a final performance, details of which will be dripped out over a period of several days like when they announced the new Justin Timberlake album.

Our music leader Daz has been delivering sessions at Norton Hall on guitar. He's been teaching chords and exercises to help develop our young musicians into rocking lead and rhythms guitarists. We've also been learning TV themes, playing musical games and talking about what it means to be a musician.

Here are some pictures from the sessions at Norton.
 

Daz at Naseby

We had a great session on Monday with loads of people (including some new guys) so thanks everybody for turning up to take part. Daz brought some of his guitars and there's actually quite a lot of kit at Naseby: more guitars, keyboards, drums, so there's a chance to try out loads of different instruments. As always if you are under 18, please come along to Naseby Centre on Mondays at 7pm to take part in the music!

Thanks to Daz for running these sessions and to all the older guys who lend their expertise to the younger ones!

Lovely Alina's lovely Jelly Song

From one of Daz's sessions at the hospital. Alina is really great and loves music, but was a bit shy of singing so we all joined in. Unfortunately you can only mainly hear me because I'm behind the camera.

Daz at Naseby - demonstrating Purple Rain

Just want to point out, Daz is not really a drummer :-) Tutorial video from last week!

Our first session with Daz!

The other week we started our new set of sessions, with Daz, a super cool multi-instrumentalist and performer from Birmingham. He's going to be coming in to teach us about instrumental techniques on guitar and bass and other useful things about being a musician, like stage presence, rehearsing as a band, mic technique, and anything else to encourage our young musicians to go on to a glittering career in music!

Our first sessions at Norton and Naseby were off to a good start, with Daz demonstrating his experience as a musician and sharing some of his stories as a techie for various rock groups. He's really relatable as he is into so many different styles of music. He has made a list of requests from the young people of the songs they would like to learn. Our aim for these sessions is to create a band with a varied repertoire that could than go on to perform together.

Unfortunately our sessions this week had to be cancelled due to massive amounts of snow, so we'll resume on Monday!