Live at the Vibe!

We're celebrating the launch of a CD of original music written and recorded by young people of Hodge Hill with a live performance on Monday 17th December at the Vibe in Birmingham. We're so excited to see the result of months of hard work from the guys and our music producer James Kennaby. Please come along to support!

West African xylophone music

This is a piece of music composed by two young people on the ward at Heartlands Hospital. I've been doing some sessions on West African instruments and after they learnt some Ugandan xylophone music they made up their own tune!

PHOTOSHOOT!

Guys, this is so exciting. Our photos have arrived from professional photographer Imke Daugs. They are amazing. View more at our facebook page: facebook.com/music4hh

 

More behind-the-scenes footage

Here's a video showing an insight into our glamorous lives as music producers. Our fantastic photographer Imke has sent over the finished pictures so look out for them here soon.

Behind the scenes at our photoshoot

We worked with a professional photographer from the Medical Illustration team at Heartlands last week - she was amazing and worked really well with our young people. We're so excited to see the results!

Fun sessions at the Pump!

A little video showing the hi-jinks we get up to at the Pump. It's a bit misleading, we actually spend most time in the studio rather than playing ukulele. But only film the ukulele bits apparently.

New logo!

Younus has designed another great logo to mark the start of our new set of sessions in the recording studio. Thanks Younus!

Sarah Westwood, drummer extraordinaire

Sarah Westwood was the first ever music leader on our project, teaching funky West African drumming. She's recently been on some training which we were able to fund through our CPD (continuing professional development) budget, and she's written an insightful and entertaining article on Youth Music about her experiences. Check it out here!

http://network.youthmusic.org.uk/resources/blogs/sarah-westwood/sarah-experiences-%E2%80%98village-music-circles%E2%80%99

Huma & Jonny sing Taylor Swift "Crazier"

We run music sessions at Heartlands Hospital alongside the Kids United session in the community. Here one patient who has not sung before, gains confidence in singing thanks to encouragement and help from the amazing Jonny Amos.
Thanks Jonny!

Huma says "thank you, it was amazing. The best experience I've had".

Quantize!

We started a new set of sessions last week! This mini-project is called QUANTIZE and it's a bit different from what we've been doing so far! Some of the young people from Naseby and Hutton have joined with some new recruits to write, record and produce a CD of their own music. This is taking place at The Pump, which has a professional recording studio and lots of useful specialised spaces for these workshops. It's a much better environment for these sessions really, as the youth centres were often busy and provided lots of distractions.

We're working with MC Vice (James) from Street Soul Productions plus some special guests to create this exciting project! I think it's really great that by the end of it, the young people will have learnt so many new skills (writing, studio recording, CD production) and will have a brilliant end product that they can keep.

Our first session last week focussed on working together and producing a concept for the songs, and writing some first lyrics. We also had a little introduction to the recording studio, and ate lots of biscuits.

As always, if you are under 18 and live in the Hodge Hill area (or know anyone who'd be interested) get in touch by leaving us a comment, message us on twitter @Music4HH or via facebook.com/music4hh, email music4hh@gmail.com.

Rapping!

We've come to the end of our sessions on rapping, beatboxing and lyric writing. Here are some of the tracks that our young people have created with James!

These two are from the youth clubs, so James had more time to work with them on lyrics and got their input about what the backing should sound like. He also sampled some of their beatboxing and included that too.
Naseby crew - Drastic by Music4HH
Arceus - character rap - norton hall session 2 by Music4HH

And these are from the sessions at the hospital:
Mckenzie - character rap - heartlands hospital session 3 by Music4HH
Haider AND Baabar - The Adventure by Music4HH

James's music class! - Filmed by Nafees (thank you!)

Rapping with James

We are lucky enough to have another brilliant rap artist to run some sessions with us! James Kennaby is working with our young people in the hospital and the youth centres, helping them to write their own lyrics and create their own music tracks.

James encourages our budding rappers to write about what they know by thinking of different things about their lives: activities and hobbies, their family, their thoughts and feelings. Often he gets the young people to compose a section each and adds them together to make a longer verse.

Here's some lyrics that the young people came up with and James has set to music (which I will upload later!)

The Adventure

His name is Red Arrow
He lives in London
And he really loves jumping
He wears adidas
Cos he's all class
He wears red from morning to bed
And because he tried parkour
He's got a broken leg

His friends call him odd
Because he loves playing COD
And when he's online
He talks to his friend Todd all the time

He says he drives a Subaru but that's not true
Instead he's learning to drive in a Daewoo
He fancies a chew so he goes to his friend's barbeque

He travelled to Australia to meet his friend Dalia
Whose washing machine had a recent failure.

Isn't that great? I'm particularly impressed by the washing machine reference.

Beatboxing!

We have also had some beatboxing sessions recently, from the Beatbox Twins. This part of the project is really exciting, there are so many different things going on!

Here are some videos from early sessions. They mainly consist of making really stupid noises. Beatboxing takes lots of practice. This is something I've learnt from these sessions. Also, you often get very lightheaded and need to drink a lot of water otherwise you feel like you're going to pass out. I don't know how they do it!

Here's a demonstration of what the Beatbox twins can do:

And here's some of our participants! Farzan at Naseby:

Younus and Forid at Hutton:

Curtis at our youth centres

Curtis also led some sessions at Hutton Hall and Naseby Centre, focussing on what the young people wanted to talk about. The young people wrote their own lyrics, a minimum of 8 lines was set as a target. Here are some examples of their work!

Curtis with Forid and Mahfuz, last week's official best rappers!

Curtis at BHH take 2!

Curtis came back to the Children's Ward at Birmingham Heartlands Hospital last week (2nd July) for another session rapping with the young people on the ward. He rapped with Baabar in the sensory room, creating a rap based on things that Baabar likes. First he brainstormed some ideas, then wrote the rap in super quick time!

Hi I’m Baabar, trainers on my feet

Love a bhangra beat and a little doner meat

Loving all the nurses, yeah there’s a few

If I ever bought a car then it would be a Subaru

Can’t beatbox but I’ve got a DVD

Christina went and videoed and made a vid for me

Lights in the room tell me colours that you see

Purples and pinks and there’s blue like the sea

Long limousines and they call it a stretch

All of the nurses I’ll go in and fetch

Baabar’s niece who he loves have you seen her

Amina’s her name but I call her Ameena

But I better wrap it up here

So we can record and we all give a cheer

Lay back now in the chair go to sleep

Press play whenever to hear my little beat.

Next Curtis co-wrote a rap with Morgan, whose twin brother is a rapper too! Curtis took the same approach, first making a chart of all the things Morgan likes and then encouraging him to write about them.

Morgan is my name I won’t tell you again

I text real quick on my black BBM

59 plus in my contact list

And I got a red label around my wrist

Love the Lazy Song by Bruno Mars

And I don’t know why but I’ve got it in my stars

I live in Birmingham with my mom and my brothers

House too small so no room for others

Play football on the big green grass

I’m way too quick so I don’t need to pass

I have a favourite player who is Marlon King

He runs down the pitch and has a good swing

12 inch pizza yeah it’s a beast

Pepperoni and a large meat feast

Box so big that I can’t see the telly

Wait til I’m done see the size of my belly.

Curtis and Brandon's rap at BHH

Curtis Clacey is a brilliant young rapper from Leicester who came in to Heartlands Hospital to work on the Children's Ward to create raps about their lives. He's an amazing freestyler and wowed everybody!

Brandon here is one of the young people he worked with to create this rap. Brandon was wonderful, really enthusiastic and really good at coming up with rhymes! He wrote all of his lines himself. Unfortunately Curtis made me join in too and spoil everything.

Our first rap session!

Our next few months of sessions cover a few different styles and we have invited 3 young artists to lead workshops in beatboxing and rapping. Our first music leader, Curtis Clacey, helped our young people to write their own raps after wowing us all with his freestyle skills!

Here's a selection of some of our young people's work on a subject of their choice:

I got a favourite wrestler called AJ Styles 
He can run a mile but never has a trial
He never fears with no tears so he turn up his gears until he cheers
He calls his rival Mangi-Ray then whacks him with a tray
Until Mangi-Ray pays
They always fight when they have the highest height
before night they feel tight after they become bright but not white

Mans go gym to get hench get slim
Flexin muscles on the road with the fresh trim
Thanks to habus for the skin fade now I can rock the black shades
Rollin on Alum Rock Road keeping beef to myself like am told
Life isn't about the money or the fame being in the game without a big name

 There are mini cats
In school I learnt my maths
I just passed my SATs
I wanna work in a bank
Not to get fired and get a spank

Everyone always blame me
I go on flame I'll go on my game
I always lose on my shame and my game is so lame
and I'm always in pain on my game

And here's a video from Naseby - with a bonus demo from Curtis :-)

DJ showcase 28th May

We had an amazing time with DJ Moyma learning about DJing, dancing and graffiti. To celebrate the end of the sessions and show off what we learnt,  we put together two "performances" on Monday 28th May (one at Naseby Centre and one at Hutton Hall.) This was a chance for our young musicians to showcase their new skills and experience what it is like to DJ, MC and dance to a crowd.

Everyone did really well.

Naseby Centre dancers

Hutton Hall DJs

New logo!

Our third excellent Kids United logo, in honour of the start of our new set of sessions. Designed by the talented Younus. Thanks Younus!

Some more guitar club pictures

Haleeka

Maysoon

Ramarn

Norton Hall Guitar Club

Here are some pictures that the members of our guitar club have drawn. Guitar club takes place at Norton Hall on Tuesdays from 4.30pm. It's supported by Sound Futures and Birmingham Music Service.

By Blial

By Raman

By Umme

By Wisaal

DJ Bash and DJ Biggie at Naseby Centre

DJ Biggie and DJ Bash demonstrating the baby scratch

DJ showcase!

Next Monday (21st May), our DJs will be showcasing their skills at Naseby Centre (5pm) and Hutton Hall (6.30pm). Come along to learn about hip hop culture, music and dance. Free entry!

Some more graffiti

Rory at Heartlands Hospital

Fazaan at Naseby Centre

Fazaan AKA DJ Biggy

DJ Bash at Naseby Centre

DJ Bash

DJ Techno

DJ Ishy

DJ Bullet Squash

DJ Techno, DJ Ishy and DJ Bullet Squash at Hutton Hall

Our young DJs in action

Some videos of our DJs from Hutton Hall, taken from weeks 4 and 5 of our project (March 2012.)

Featuring:

DJ ISHY

DJ BULLET SQUASH

DJ AKI ICE

DJ TECHNO

DJ BABES

DJ KEMPS

Some videos from our roving reporters

We asked some of the young people taking part in our project to video each other talking about music. They each came up with a set of questions and carried out some excellent interviews! Thanks guys: Bashir, Farzan, Younus and Forid.

Our guest blogger returns! - DJ Bullet Squash

Hello everybody. I have been a musician for nearly 5 years. I had played many instruments and I performed at school many times and Symphony Hall. I am a very confident person.

Kids United are going to perform in Hutton Hall 6:30-7:30 (on Monday 21st May) and I am going to be the host of the performance. I am following Kids United on Twitter @Music4HH. Also if you want to reply back reply to Christina. (@Music4HH or leave a comment on this blog! - Christina)

DJ Bullet Squash (Forid)

Yet more graffiti!

Turns out, I've been spelling "graffiti" wrong this whole time. Oh well. The final (I think!) batch of graffiti art to show you - we have some really talented artists at Kids United! DJing has been really popular with all sorts of young people turning up to try it out - we are seeing new faces practically every week.

DJ Ishy. Love the face and the colours!

DJ Sufi. Brilliant concept! And a great drawing. Well done Ishyy!

DJ Techno. Amazing!

Learning about graffiti!

The last couple of sessions with Moyma have been about graffiti art. In the first session, we learnt about tags and how they are created. Then last session, we looked at graffiti art and how we could design a logo using graffiti-style lettering. Moyma brought along examples of artwork he has created for other DJ artists, along with some examples of different types of graffiti lettering. The young DJs started to create their own logo using the different graffiti lettering along with pictures and shapes. Here are some of the works-in-progress!

These are from young people on the Children's Ward at Heartlands Hospital and at Hutton Hall and Naseby Centre.

DJ Anees

DJ Babes

Jules

DJ Luciee

This is the new logo Younus (DJ Techno) from Hutton Hall designed for us.

Even Esther and me had a go (Esther is the Project Co-ordinator, I'm the Project Intern).

DJ EJ

My first tag!

Graffiti art

Last week our DJ artist, Moyma, did some graffiti art sessions with the young people at Hutton Hall and Naseby Centre. He showed some examples of graphic art and explained how tags are like brand names for companies. Our young DJ artists developed their own personal tags by experimenting with different fonts and styles and adding pictures and graphics. Graffiti is an integral part of hip hop culture and it's great how Moyma includes learning about these things in our DJ sessions.

DJ Bullet Squash

Mr Xtreme

DJ Techno

DJ Yahya