Playing with Plant Sound: a workshop for young musicians

Playing with Plant Sound – a musical workshop

Sunday 2 July 10am to 12 noon at the Resurgence Centre, Hartland

This is a different and very special workshop for young instrumental musicians and singers aged 9 upwards.

Have you ever wondered what a flower sounds like when it’s being watered, or a tree when its leaves are falling? We can capture the amazing sounds of plants communicating with us and make music with our instruments (and voices) to make unusual, unique pieces with them.

Alex and Rowena are the team to teach you how. The workshop will explore a variety of plant sounds and we’ll be composing our own music together with them. Alex will explain the process he uses and help us attach electrodes to each plant and turn the digital signals into musical notes. Rowena will guide us in how music can be structured as we design it together and encourage us to explore new sounds on our own instruments that we’ve probably never made before!

Overall we’ll gain a greater understanding of musical communication, structure, timbre, tone, rhythm and composition. The results will be astonishing and we can perform them at the end to parents in an informal presentation/concert.

Alex H. Duncan is a talented composer, passionate plant advocate and established music teacher. He presents his own radio show, Plant Noise, and played at Glastonbury last year. He has lots of expertise teaching people how to relate to plants in a different way and has tons of enthusiasm for his subject.

Rowena Wilson is a music and mindfulness teacher, composer and workshop facilitator who expertly guides young musicians to gain confidence, to improvise and experiment and have enormous fun with new sorts of music – whatever instrument they play.

Both these facilitators are highly experienced and respected teachers who enable youngsters to try something completely new with music.  Children will come to explore their musical instruments in a new way and make friends with living plants and understand and explore their musical world.

Suitable for singers or players of any acoustic instrument (like a guitar, violin, flute, clarinet, penny whistle, etc.) who have been playing their instrument for a minimum of 1 year. No sheet music reading is required at this workshop, although it may possibly be used and explained.

This will be an extraordinary workshop. It will be great fun, but there will also be a lot of musical learning gained from attending, and an enhanced empathy with plant life too.

Tickets £9 in advance.

This event will raise money for The Resurgence Trust, an educational charity (no. 1120414).

www.resurgenceevents.org