Everyone Can Play: theory and songwriting

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We are heading back to China soon and this time we are taking some new friends with us. Despite the fact that they aren't wearing the obligatory Musical Futures T Shirt, we hope that they will help us to introduce some new ideas to teachers of younger children over the next few months!

Ziggi, Kara, Moa and Jon are all characters in an app and approach for music theory for younger children called Mussila Music School.

Mussila is a tool to learn the basics of music theory and link the musical ear to the written language of music. As well as teaching the basics of music in a fun and creative way, the Mussila Music School app and approach reinforces some of the core skills that also appear in Musical Futures: Everyone Can Play, our entry level offer for younger children.

Everyone Can Play incorporates activities that include I play, you play, listen then copy, take your turn, find, hear and keep a pulse and basic instrumental skills all of which are also nurtured through the Mussila games through interactive exploration of the basics of music theory, especially through the use of rhythm, melody and timbres.

With the help of the Mussila characters and story we are also going to look at how incorporating creativity and music technology into our Everyone Can Play series of entry level Musical Futures ideas might encourage younger children to start to write songs of their own.

We will soon be embarking on a pilot project that explores Musical Futures and Creative Education working with Melbourne Graduate School of Education, Geelong Grammar School and with teachers in Australia and the UK implementing some new ideas in their classrooms across 2019.

​Our focus on creative education also feeds into to our revamped work on songwriting in particular an emphasis on story telling and how and why people are inspired to write songs . We hope that the Mussila characters and story might provide a useful start point for exploring this important aspect of songwriting.

We also love the creative opportunities that music tech; apps, cloud based or online platforms and hardware and equipment, can bring, especially when it comes to writing songs. 

​MF: Studio is about finding an approach for music tech that sits within the core Musical Futures pedagogy so we are interested to see how Mussila DJ which encourages the players to create their own musical soundscape and to remix existing songs, record and capture sounds from around them and layer loops and mix the sound to create a live music performance, can help younger children to recognise and use the basic tools of a music studio in creative ways.

As always, we will be sharing our travels so to keep up to date follow @mufuinternat on Twitter, or register for our updates by clicking here

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