The Making of a Community Music Project called: “The Notebenders"

    The history of the Notebenders starts with a solution to a problem, as does many successful community music projects. The problem was that of a desire of five individuals and their instrumental teacher Andy Hamilton, MBE, to prepare a concert of published music. Their combined deficiency was a weakness in their ability to read music. The first step in solving this problem and making this project a success, was to come up with a plan of attack. One that would define the problems, present ways of fixing the problems, while at the same time providing tools that would make the next project more successful that the past ones.

    We started by agreeing on a day of the week that we would meet at an agreed on venue. Once this was decided, there was a set of objectives created to provide the tools necessary for the group to prosper. Objective one, creating a rhythm vocabulary that would allow the members to develop their skills long after leaving the performance sessions. We spent several sessions developing and honing this vocabulary in order to make it easier for any new members to just walk in and comprehend the method.  

    Since the members that joined up had a sufficient knowledge of their selected instrument, there was not much need to concentrate on instrument pedagogy, but we included it in the set of objectives in order to provide a more well-rounded education. We started scale studies, and interval pattern drills to support the pedagogy instruction. In doing this, I noticed an improvement in the group’s ability in ear training, and chord recognition.

    The group started to get larger, from a beginning of just five performers to a larger group of between 15-20 individual performers, 20 saxophonists, 1 trumpeter, 3 singers, 1 bass player, 1 electric guitar player, 2 drummers, and 2 piano players. At this point we received a grant from an English based grant provider called “The Scarman Trust”.  A decision was made to move to a larger venue. We had the makings of a true community based music group.

    After three months of preparation we had an opportunity for a performance. It was a community parade held in Kingstanding Housing Liaison Board, Birmingham, England. We put the entire group on a float and rode thru the community. This was a first for a lot of the members, to perform in public for the first time, in a fashion that was not intimidating them.

    Two months later we were finally ready for our first public performance in a true, formal “concert” setting. The venue was the Bearwood Corks Club; the audience was family, friends and the jazz loving community.

    Here we were, almost six months from the day we started the project, the culmination of a lot of hard work and overcoming a lot of fears being presented to the public. The concert was a big success; the group played wonderfully, everybody was happy, especially our chief sponsor and driving force behind the project, Andy Hamilton, MBE.  

    The overall success can be measured by the external support and sponsorship from the professional music community, musical educational community, and the local community at large.

 

“Repetition creates perfection,

the more you do it, the better you get”