Putting it into practice: Welcome, Ensemble Offspring

It feels exciting to be back from prac especially when we are given the opportunity to immerse ourselves with the various equipment and devices (which we've already had a taste of during our Mobile Video Studio stint) to record our guest performers from Ensemble Offspring.

First half of the session involved us mostly checking the recording devices and setting it up around the room - as a team we all wanted the same goal - and that was to provide optimal lighting and acoustics. It was interesting to attempt a large scale project with a professional ensemble where it was obvious we needed to be proactive in order to get things done. We had teams working on rearranging the furniture around the room to create an open space for the performers to play in, and teams working on setting up the cameras around different angles (we even placed one up at the top of the ceiling facing down to get a time-lapse video!), and lastly, teams working on setting up the mics. Again "the clap" came in handy again as it was to test if we had set the devices correctly - quick and easy technique for an immediate response.

Check out our set up and some of the things we got happening behind the scene - as they all say, "hard work pays off" and in this case, the results were quite good!

We were fortunate enough to set up an interview and ask the composer and also the performers to see what were the processes and inspirations behind the piece of work. As a music educator, I feel that immersing ourselves with experiences like these are very important to continuously further our thinking. Asking questions and engaging with the performers and composers themselves tells us a lot about the music itself and in turn, we also learn a lot more.

What a great way to share these first hand experiences and new-found knowledge to our students in the classroom - from my experience, I find that my students always bounce off from our enthusiasm in their learning!