'Shimmering Waves' by Year 5 (Oak class), Grasmere Primary School, July 2021
This music project was created over the summer term 2021 by children in Year 5 (Oak class) at Grasmere Primary school in Hackney, London.
The inspiration came from a piece of music produced by Ski Oakenfull and Nick Luscombe, entitled ‘Japan Spring’ which combined ambient music and Japanese field recordings, originally commissioned by Tokyo University to monitor the impact of sounds and music on the well-being of hospital staff and patients at the start of COVID pandemic.
Lisa Bannon, the Grasmere music teacher, developed the concept so that the children would record sounds from around the school, and then write some accompanying music using Garageband software on the school iPads. They collaborated in pairs, and once completed the individual tracks were compiled by Lisa and Ski into a 6-minute audio montage which you can hear in this video. Additionally, the children were asked to design ‘album covers’ as a response to their work. The only adult intervention came with the compilation of tracks - everything else was created by the children.
The final piece entitled ‘Shimmering Waves’ will be used in the school’s Sensory Room to act as calming background music, and will offer a wonderful audio snapshot of life at Grasmere school in the summer of 2021. We hope that you can enjoy it too!
You can listen to the ‘Japan Spring’ project here:
https://otocare.bandcamp.com/album/ot...
Note that it has been renamed ‘Otocare - Scene 1 : Soft Haze’