Rosalind’s Work Experience
Rosalind Orr from James Gillespie’s High School is already knowledgable about Drake Music Scotland. Over the past few years she has performed in our Edinburgh Schools concerts “Jazz Jigsaw” and “No Place Like…”, before as a saxophone player in the Edinburgh School’s Jazz Orchestra. This week we had her in the office for work experience.
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I was given the opportunity to work in and around Drake Music Scotland’s office from Tuesday 21st to Friday 24th of May. I was able to work with many talented musicians throughout the week and gained loads of valuable experience.
On my first day I spent time experimenting with the Figurenotes software. I transcribed lots of different tunes to add to the Figurenotes resource base and made lead sheets for children’s TV themes, small combo tunes and even film music. The Mister Men theme and the In The Night Garden theme are some of the tunes now in the Figurenotes repertoire! Later in the day I got to sit in on a Screaming Rainbows rehearsal who are working on some cool new songs. Finally, I was very lucky to sit in with Digital Orchestra who were exploring and working with some new switches, which make some very awesome sounds. I found it really interesting finding out how everything works and all the obscure ways that people can make music
Wednesday was a quiet day in the office and I continued with my Figurenotes task. I also sat in on Erin’s one to one session and she played me some of her own compositions she is working on to play at a concert in a few weeks. They are so good!
On Thursday, I got to sit in on a Music Technology course ran by Paul to see what they were up to. The students had been working on making their own radio on their favourite singer or band. They had already written a script, chosen songs to play and recorded their programs. All that what left was to do was to choose “beds” to play underneath their commentary which is what I helped with. I found their work very intriguing and I would love to attend a course like that myself one day. For the remainder of the day I began to work on the office scanning and archiving tasks to clear some room in a cupboard. It was good to get the experience despite the photocopier playing up a few times!
On my final day I began finishing of some tasks I still had to complete. I then got to sit in on the iPad Lab who were working on making music for their upcoming trip to Norway. It was mainly improvised and this meant I was able to accompany them on keyboard which was fun to do.
