Youth Workshop Assistant - Blog 2
In my first blog post a few months ago, I mentioned how I was enthusiastic to get some experience teaching and leading other members of the band—something I’ve never really done before, and that I considered to be very much outside of my comfort zone. It ended up being a much simpler process than I was imagining!
When I did end up teaching a tune for the first time, it was (thankfully) in person rather than over a Zoom call, which definitely made me feel more at ease with the whole thing. I chose a relatively simple jig and played phrase by phrase, with everyone else playing each phrase back—pretty standard stuff. It was very useful to be able to actually hear how everyone was doing when they repeated each phrase, so I knew when to move on and when to keep playing it round. Also being able to hear and see everyone made me feel a lot less awkward! The whole band was super supportive and took me seriously as a leader, so there was no need to feel nervous at all really. I can’t wait to get back to meeting in person!!
Also at the end of last year were M@HoT’s interviews with the potential new tutors. We have a new set of tutors every year, usually a pair, to join us in the weekly sessions and work on new tunes and arrangements. It’s nice having new people every year, bringing fresh ideas and perspectives into the band. This year I was asked to come to the interviews (over Zoom, of course), ask questions, make some notes, and add my input into the final decision. It was all fine until we got to the end, when we had to discuss between ourselves who would make the best tutors and who wouldn’t get the job. I hate critiquing people in a ‘serious’ way, so I felt very mean at this point. Nevertheless, we came to a conclusion, and now we have three lovely tutors working with us this year!
Working with Sam Partridge and Grace Smith for a few weeks before half term was lots of fun. They’re both very energetic and bubbly, and a few of us in the band already know them fairly well, since they’ve both been tutors for us before as well as leading workshops that some of us have attended. Their main focus was getting us to think about rhythm, flow, and energy—naturally this included getting us to stand up and clap and stomp out beats. I think that internalising the flow of the bars like this was very beneficial to the band when it came to actually playing the slip jig that they taught us!
In our first session back after the half-term break, we had Jenna Macrory leading the session for the first time. She taught us a fun little bluegrass reel in the first half, and then the second half was focussed on improvisation. This is a skill that a lot of people, including myself, are very intimidated by, but Jenna made the whole thing feel so easy that I honestly don’t even know what I was scared of. It didn’t sound particularly harmonious with myself and my two sisters all improvising at the same time in the same room, but it was fun so who cares. It’s definitely something I’ll be practising outside of our weekly sessions!
For now, I look forwards to teaching another tune (I have so many cool ones to choose from that I don’t even know where to start), and itch to get back to in-person sessions again so I can hear us all playing the stuff we’ve been working on.
