A Walk Through
Harlem: Syllabus
introduction
-- concept/preparation -- syllabus--
instruments --process/performance
By
the time the kids arrived, our 10-week stirring time had been trimmed
to 5 weeks, due to organizational difficulties. Luckily, the kids
( Shameena Khan, Igor Zubkov, and Leila Tamari) turned out to be
wonderful, as you will see. We set up the following rough game plan:
- Weeks
1-2: Have kids play with the instruments we built, see how it
goes. Revise.
- Week
3: Take a walk through the Computer Music Center neighborhood
(Harlem), record sounds of the environment, bring the recordings
back to the CMC, listen, discuss. Ask the kids to write stories
or poems about the sounds for the following week.
- Week
4: Read the stories and poems, experiment, come up with a game
plan (with the kids) for a "piece," and begin working on it.
-
Week 5: Further develop and rehearse the piece.
This
schedule emphasized process and experimentation. Rather than entering
with a carefully preconceived notion of what the kids should do,
we tried to have them show us what they could do, and what was most
interesting. This meant that actually working on the piece had to
wait until frighteningly late, but we didn't see any other way of
doing it that would invite the kids to be collaborators and would
really allow for learning on both sides. Ideally, we would have
many more weeks for "R&D."

introduction
-- concept/preparation -- syllabus--
instruments --process/performance
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