The public school Schule Buochs in Switzerland engaged Dust of Soul to do their intuitive music composing programm «Positive Music Power for Kids – Creative Composing» with children in the 5th grade of elementary school.
Dust of Soul singer Saskia Stäuble, known professionally as «Dusty», and pianist Michael Odermatt, known professionally as «MiKey», have carried out their concept – «Positive Music Power for Kids – Kreatives Composing» (Intuitive Music Composing) – with a class of the public elementary school in Buochs, Switzerland.
«’Positive Music Power for Kids – creative composing’ is intended to show children how valuable and powerful it is to intuitively compose a story and a song from their own ideas. They can take this song home with them, listen to it anytime, sing along and activate their own creative power.»
— Saskia Stäuble, Singer «Dusty» from Dust of Soul
Creative Composing
First, all students listened to pianist MiKey’s intuitive piano-playing. His compositions were created in the moment, guided by his perception of the students and the space. All students were asked to express themselves to the piano music by painting, sketching, drawing. They had paper and crayons and felt pens available for this.
Afterwards, all students formed groups of their own. Each student of the group interpreted his drawing. Singer Dusty wrote down the key message from each. Together with the students, Dusty created a story. All students were allowed to contribute their ideas. The essential task was to link the intuitive drawings of all students to a collaborative story. This was a lot of fun for the students.
«The essential task was to link the intuitive drawings of all students to a collaborative story»
— Dust of Soul
Once the story was written, they worked on evolving it into a singing melody. A simple basic melody was found that connected all the children to the story.
The next step was creating the music: The basis for this was the piano and simple percussion instruments such as rattles and methods such as clapping, snapping, etc. In the first part, the basic melody was played on the piano. The notes were defined by playing the melody on the piano and then written in the music book as notes above the text under the direction of pianist MiKey. In the second part, the students practiced performing the melody through singing together with the help of the piano. Rhythmic elements were integrated such as rattling, clapping, snapping.
«… an experience beyond anything else»
— Teacher, 5th grade at the public elementary school of Buochs, Switzerland
Now each group performed their song to the other group. The group’s performance was accompanied by the piano, played by pianist MiKey. Each performance was recorded with a professional recording device.
After the program, the students received the live recording of the performance of their own original song. Some days later in class, the teacher sang the students’ songs together with them. The students felt very emotional and empowered by their original songs. As of the teacher’s feedback: this was an experience beyond anything else.
Dust of Soul took three lessons of 45 minutes each to carry out their program. All equipment such as the piano, rhytmical instruments, and song books were sponsored by local music store and official Yamaha reseller «A-Zulauf Musikinstrumente GmbH / Tastenträume.ch».
