This is the welcome, and introduction.

The Story is a favourite tale from Scotland, as told by Duncan Williamson, a Scottish traveller and storyteller.

The percussive nature of the sound effects are a perfect way to get people engaged in drumming, and also to remind people about the negative impacts of showing off!

The song is I am awake!!

This is a song to sing loud and help you open up your windpipes.

The words are my own, but the tune comes from a song that drum master and social activist Babatunde Olatunji reputedly sang often in the shower while living in New York... I changed the lyrics to:

“I am awake, I am alive, and I am ready, ready for the day. 
Me and my body, me and my body, me and my body are well!! (repeat 8 times with optional moving shaking rubbing, body percussing your body.)
I am awake, I am alive, and I am grateful, oh so grateful for the day.

May you feel full of vitality after singing it!

Here is video from the simple and fun introductory welcome and warm up to the Natural Musicians Facilitators Training Weekend, held at Trill Farm in September 2018. 

The Flow for the welcome went like this:

Not all of the welcome was videoed because we felt you would be able to do your own intros and warm ups as appropriate to your setting/needs/group etc.

Another simple way to get started on the musical journey using found natural objects that can be used to make a sound.

Participants are invited to make up a rhythm based on the syllables of their names.

Watch the video or if you like instructions... there's the instructions from my book/online course I love my world below.

When you have had a go with names you could also do the same activity with other prompts... such as how people are feeling "I am feeling sadness...", or what they like to eat: "I could eat... a pizza!, I could eat... cheese and crackers etc"

Introducing ourselves musically.

Here are two ideas for initiating different shakey egg percussion patterns...

This is another one of the most often used Natural Musicians Activities.

It encourages interpretation, creative thinking and expression, listening skills and helps people see that there are many ways to perceive the world, to experience an object.

So often we humans give a name to a place or thing...and that is where the relationship ends. It has a name.

But everything is a world in itself. A seed is a whole plant, waiting to unfold. If we touch one part of the web of life it is connected to every other part. A rock, seemingly 'dead' and inert, could be full of tightly bonded crystals that dissolves into salts vital to the life many creatures.

Every place or thing will give rise to different feelings in a person.
(Here I feel frustration with the English language because I know a thing or place is not an isolated object... it is a manifestation of a system, it is relational)

Standing infront of an interpretation board can help us understand some facts about somewhere or some 'thing'.

It is an objective relationship.

What about the equally valid subjective relationship?

How do we feel in that place? Isn't that kind of relationship, that feeling, that 'vibe', just as important?

Moving back towards the Found Sound Round activity...

Two people could choose, for example,  a leaf from the same species of plant and be moved to express it in very different ways.

We all have our own perspective on the world and this activity helps people bring that unique perspective to a group and share it and have it witnessed.

That's part of being a team, right?

This activity involves developing a personal interpretation of nature and being in an 'orchestra', a team of Natural Musicians and taking it in turns to be the conductor.

Using a stick, string and natural objects to make a microphone for capturing recordings of nature sounds.

I love this activity. It's perfect for developing fine motor skill for children, and an arty activity for all, with a lot of scope for inventiveness, creativity and humour.

It's fascinating to see what people make, and what they go hunting for.

I frame this activity in different ways to suit the age or interest.

One way is as if we are wildlife documentary makers searching for unheard of before sounds. I have also framed it as though we are looking for sound effects for comics. I am sure you will have fun! 

Once you have heard the sound from the microphones you could do the the previous activity, a Found Sound Round. You could ask the participants to choose one sound from their recording library and use that to join in with a Found Sound Round.

Musical Code or Natural Notation is another one of the staples of the Natural Musicians Activities. 

It's a way of writing music and generating clapping games and incorporating dance moves, that depends on the person writing making the significance of the placed item. 

Creative thinking!

 Kids love it and I have seen them extending the play to the playground after that have tried the activities in class.

I love it. 

The possibilities and complexities are endless!

See Natural Notation Compositions for a next step activity.

In this section you get to develop your woodcraft skills and learn how to make a simple musical scraper or guiro.

Tools required are a saw, fixed blade knife and a stick/baton.

A marker pen is handy too.

Working in pairs can be good, with one person holding the wood and knife... another doing the work with the baton.

And if it all goes wrong... you can always start again and pop the reject on the woodpile!

A simple group song/chant making activity that enables everyone to have a line included in the song.

Making instruments in 3d with found objects. If they can make a sound even better!

I like to turn this into a guessing game where the groups go off to make a picture of a musical instrument. 

Ideally in a frame. So we can see what is picture and what is not. 

When time is up we come over to each picture in turn, and try to guess what the picture is of... and if we need a clue the artists can play or add sound effects to the picture!

This section is very brief. It's about numbers in nature, and is more of an invitation to go find numbers in nature, rather than a set activity.

This is a short video I made, originally to send off to see if I could be the next David Attenborough (he's my hero I wish I got that job!).

So please, take a cuppa and go wander outside and see what numbers and pattern you can find!

If you are interested in a book that teachers botany in a simple way I can highly recommend Botany in a Day 

Musical patterns can be broken down into numbers and so times tables can be done bodily, musically. I find this helps embody the patterns and numbers of the times tables.

Having done this activity with all ages, one of the aspects I like about it most is how your children 4-7year old, especially girls, seem to love it the most. They can become fascinated and absorbed, and even obsessive about it, going way beyond the initial facilitation or framing, into their own challenges and patterns.

Here are a few examples of different times table patterns:

Here you will find a simple way for students to write musical loops with the help of found objects.

They can then have a go at playing them using percussion and musical instruments.

Once students have written music this way, it becomes easy for them to write longer tunes together, in threes or in larger groups.

Natural Notations can lead nicely onto a session using a computer and software such as Garageband where people can create their own track by dragging and dropping loops of music... great fun!

All things in nature are connected, sometimes in linear ways.

The idea is for this activity to be a fun way for groups to discover connections and make links physically in the outside world (and thus also in their brains,) all under the guise of making up a song and being given an idea for a melody.

This activity is a way to learn the language of nature, because nature is based on relationships.

Start in one place you will always find a connection to something else nearby, or more further afield, in nature. I try to show this in the introduction.

When doing this activity with groups I suggest you will want to entice or glean the connections out of your students by asking open questions.

Once the connections are made using the string, it can become a reference or inspiration for a melody...high points being high notes, low points - low notes... and the words of the connections give ideas for creating a song or poem.

One of the things I think of when leading this activity is the song about bones being connected to each other... the toe bone's connected to the foot bone... etc

And another thing I think of is a letter said to have been written by Chief Seattle to the US Government in 1984, which eloquently shows how all life is connected,  read here by the great mythologist Joseph Campbell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5CHNsmbEw8

Once you have had a go at the activity I suggest you follow it up with some journalling, writing  or illustrating time as appropriate.

I hope you have a lot of fun out there.

As I mentioned in the section above, "I went and found a", call and response songs have fascinated me for years. The inclusivity and the connectivity. 

While creating the resources for this course I looked into the tradition of call and response songs. Here is some of what I found.

This song is now sung by forest school leaders around the globe!

I can't remember how or when the tune and words popped into y brain, but I am very grateful for it doing so!

It's an excellent tune for including everyones voice and can, in time, be adapted for hundreds of strings and occasions.

It's a sort of chant.

Here are the lyrics

Lyrics don't have to rhyme, but it helps

Have a listen to the song and then have a go yourself!

Then you can make up your own lyrics like:

When we went for a walk in the dark...

When we went a running through the grassy field...

Here is an example of something you can do to close the circle, to give thanks to the place, plants and animals where you have been making music, working, camping etc.

It's a closing ritual or blessing, a gift to the numen, or spirit of place.

Latin speakers began using numen to describe the special divine force of any object, place, or phenomenon that inspired awe (a mystical-seeming wooded grove, for example, or the movement of the sun), and numen made the semantic leap from "nod" to "divine will or power." English speakers adopted the word during the 1600s.

I invite people to join in the blessing in a few ways:

We then stand back to back and one of us starts, with the sonic blessing slowly increasing as people join with the music consecutively, repeating their sounds or loops, until we are all making sounds together. Then, slowly, when the feeling arises, people stop repeating their sounds, and the blessing fades out.

With thanks to inspiration and the spirit of music and place.

Well done! 

You made it to the end of the course.

How was it for you? I would love to know if it hit the mark for you, or if you think there could be some improvements for you and future students' benefit. If you have anything you want to share, then either email me or post it in the comments.

If you would like a certificate of completion, I can send you one in PDF format..... have a look at the example in the section.

Thanks again, 

Chris