Music Moves

Well, the little hub of Staff Solitude I and the other adults here have been enjoying as we prepare for the Braille Music Institute in Philadelphia is about to end:  Students begin arriving on the Overbrook Campus today! By dinnertime this campus will be abuzz with teens and young adults from all over the country and a variety of musical backgrounds, ready to learn the skills necessary to pursue collegiate study in music.

When students arrive, there are a few things they need to do to get settled in.  The first of those things is to take an Orientation Tour.  The Orientation & Mobility (O&M for short) Specialist from Overbrook will take the Students (and us interns) on a walk around the campus, pointing out to students the landmarks they will need to know for everything from finding their rooms and other important areas in the dorms to where to take their guide dogs (for those that have them) for walks and bathroom breaks and how to get to their classroom for the various periods they’ll have throughout the day (more on how the schedule at Overbrook breaks down in a few days).  The tour will end back at the dorms, where we’ll play a few Icebreaker games led by myself before the students break to be evaluated by the main instructors here on their Braille Music, Theory, and Computer Skills.  After evaluations we all reconvene for dinner and general good times will ensue before our official schedule kicks off Monday morning.

I have two kinds of Icebreakers I like to use for these sorts of Camp Get-Togethers: Cooperative Play Games (where Everyone works together) and Competitive Play Games (where Everyone works to win!).  First, for the Cooperative Play…

The Glass Cobra

This game originates from an old Theater Game of the same name devised by Augusto Boal in his book “Games for Actors and Non-Actors.”  In the original game, students are blindfolded (perfect for this population!) and asked to form a line, placing their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them.  The person at the front of the line is considered to be the “head” of the Cobra, and the last person to be the “tail”.  The game facilitator (called the “Joker” by Boal) instructs the group to move as one in any direction the leader chooses.  When they (the Facilitator/Joker) indicates, either by calling out or tapping one of the Cobra “joints,” the members of the Cobra must split, moving in any direction they so choose, in complete silence.  On the Facilitator’s signal, they must unite the same way, in silence, determining where they’re supposed to be by tactile memory alone.  It’s a great game for strengthening focus and concentration in a group, as well as trust and working together non-verbally, a challenge made especially strong when the participants can’t see each other.

There are times when I’ll play the game as it was originally intended, with only the slight modification that if I play it in a gym with young children, if I signal the Cobra to break, they may yell and run about as wild as they want until I call upon them to unite again.  Sometimes I’ll cue them with a musical instrument like the Guitar – entire Vocal songs have also been built around the concept of the Glass Cobra as well.  But when I play this game with older children, I like to add a more challenging musical twist.  Without talking I’ll establish a rhythm, something simple like clapping my hands in a steady beat, and encourage the group to join with me.  At my whim I’ll call out “break!” and the group is free to move and make sounds however they’d like, tapping on their knees, whistling, whatever.  When I call out “unite!” the group has a set amount of time (pre-determined by me) to get back on the beat I set previously or choose a new one, as a group, without talking.  This sounds harder than it actually is.  I often find students will tell me “that’s impossible!” or “we can’t do that!” but every time I’ve done it, within 10 seconds or less, the group can find a beat to agree on.  I’m sure that will be the case with this group as well!

Another Cooperative Play Game I like to use with groups like this is Musical Telephone.  For any of you who’ve ever played the regular game of Telephone before, it’s very similar.  In Telephone you whisper a phrase in your neighbor’s ear, they whisper it to the person next to them and so on around a group of any size until the message comes back to its originator, who must then tell the group if what they received is what they sent, often with much laughter at any errors that may have arisen in the phrase’s travel around the room.  In Musical Telephone, I ask my students to tap a rhythm on their neighbor’s back with their hand (or with a pencil or some other light, harmless object if boundaries are a concern).  Then that person passes the beat down to their neighbor, etc., and we find out if what emerges at the end is what the originator intended.  Very fun!  Also a great opportunity for individual concentration and trust building.

Now, for the Competitive Games…

Pass the pulse

This is a game that, like Telephone, I can’t take credit for creating, nor do I know who originated it, but it’s become a staple among my students and I, and it never gets old!  Played either with instruments or body percussion, one person starts the pulse by tapping their body or instrument one time.  The person to their right or left may also tap one time or they may choose to tap quickly twice.  If they tap once, the beat continues in the same direction, if they tap twice it goes back the other way.  This game is easy to teach and harder than it sounds, especially if you start slow then pick the beat up, or add such challenges as playing along to a metronome or having participants speak or sing with their beat.  The goal for this game is for the beat to travel around the circle consistently without two people playing at the same time or any one person missing a beat.  My way of furthering the competitive play is that if a student plays when it’s not their turn, or has be told when it is their turn, they are “out” of the game.  I do this not to single any person out but to really impress on them the importance of the listening aspect, so that if they don’t do it, they have to sit out for a while, listen to the game without the pressure of playing, and then try again later.  We always play this game twice to give folks a second chance if they get “out” early.  And we never play down to a single winner, primarily because the game doesn’t really work after 3 players, but also because I never want any of my students to think that they have to (or can just “get by with”) do everything on their own – we all need at least one other person by our side to survive in this world, and I think this game illustrates that beautifully.

There are variations on this pulse passing game far to complicated for me to get into here, but here’s a fun video of another favorite variation called “Drum Talk” you might enjoy viewing – See if you can figure out how it works just from watching the video! I’ll likely be playing this one with my students tonight as well.

Coming up next: A day in the life of an Braille Music Institute Student.

Archive note: You can view the next post in this series HERE.