Interview questions

It’s been a long time since I’ve played any music.

BJ: Well, you’ve made a big improvement from 0% to 52%

Well I knew nothing about drums.

BJ: The reason I chose drums is that there’s a whole lot of stuff you don’t need to worry about. Things like chords, key signatures, even that “Every Good Boy Deserves Fruit” saying is irrelevant with drums. We just talk about rhythm to make it a manageable process.

Here are the questions:

1. How many times did you watch the animations?

I probably went through them about three times.

2. Were the animations helpful?

Some of them were, yes. Some of them were good revision. I did learn quite a bit that I didn’t know about. When you had the guitars at the end that totally lost me.

BJ: The idea of that is that was how to get around and not about the notes themselves. By replacing the notes with violins I was trying to focus on navigating your way through.

I totally got lost there.

BJ: That’s alright. (Note to reader. During the process of converting the animations to video to improve synchronicity, I also replaced the violins in this particular animation (number 6) with crotchets and quavers because of this feedback).

3. Can you think of any improvements that would have made them more effective?

They needed to be slower. I also think you should talk about it and then show it because you were talking and showing it at the same time.

BJ: That’s an interesting issue.

You could say “This is what I want you to look for” and then show it rather than explaining while you’re going because it’s hard concentrating on both. When I first tried watching them I had two playing at once which totally overwhelmed me! It wasn’t until I closed one down and noticed that another was still playing that I realized what had happened. (We both laughed at this)

4. Do you think that children would be able to understand these animations?

I think they’d probably pick it up much better than I did. We weren’t taught that way.

BJ: I heard a term recently about children which described them as “Digital natives”.

If you teach them like that they’ll pick it up. We were taught the more formal, structured way. When I was in primary school, we had a teacher come in once a week and it was mainly singing. We learnt songs. We didn’t learn to play instruments as such. We mainly listened to the broadcast, “Let’s Sing”.

Now just to get a bit of a background on you:

5. What was the first concert you remember attending?

I think it must have been the Beach Boys at Festival Hall in the 80s. Recently, I’ve seen John Farnham, Tom Jones, Neil Diamond and Rod Stewart.

6. What is your favourite album?

I don’t know if I’ve really got one.

BJ: I don’t have one either.

There are songs I like but I wouldn’t know, half-the-time who sang them.

7. Is there anything else you would like to add about this whole process?

It’s an interesting way to learn. You could have set lessons and you could listen to them and pick it up.

BJ: It building on the concept that diagrams are helpful. It’s just taking it that next step further by introducing movement and sound.