Great news for Clarion users. You can now access Figurenotes colours and patterns within the instrument.
“Figurenotes is an incredible resource, and we’re thrilled that it’s now accessible to musicians who play Clarion. We hope this will create new opportunities for many more musicians to make music their way!”
Barry Farrimond-Chuong MBE CEO, Open Up Music
What is Clarion?
The Clarion is an innovative, accessible instrument that can be played expressively with any part of the body, including eye movement. Created by Open Up Music, it has been used within Open Orchestras and other projects for many years. Try it for free on iPad and PC. To unlock more features you can purchase Clarion Education Licences.
A Clarion pattern
BBC Ten Pieces
Excitingly, the patterns for the BBC Ten Pieces open score arrangements are already available in Figurenotes colours within the app. Clarion users can play some ridiculously fun game music in Laura Shigihara’s Grasswalk from Plants vs Zombies, as well as the mystical imaginings of Judith Weir’s Magic from Storm. To find out more about BBC Ten Pieces Figurenotes resources, see our blog explaining what is available.
How to find Figurenotes
To use Figurenotes colours within your Clarion patterns, go to Settings. You’ll find Figurenotes as an option within the Note Colours dropdown menu.
Clarion Settings
BBC Ten Pieces patterns can be found in the Library, which is shown by a folder icon. Selecting this will open options including a BBC Ten Pieces folder. You’ll find multiple patterns, with descriptions, for both pieces.
Clarion menu for BBC Ten Pieces
It is wonderful to be a part of the latest Clarion developments. Let us know if you are using Clarion and Figurenotes in your work.
We are thrilled to continue our relationship with BBC Ten Pieces this year. Figurenotes resources have featured in every list since Ten Pieces’ inception. This year is a corker! Not only are there 10 interesting and varied pieces by 10 incredible composers, but accessibility has become more of a focus.
Open Ensembles
The BBC Ten Pieces initiative has commissioned ‘open scores’ for two of this year’s pieces. We immediately loved Laura Shigihara’s ‘Grasswalk’ from Plants vs Zombies and the enchanting world of Judith Weir’s ‘Magic’ from Storm. Both are now available as open scores for accessible ensembles.
The open scores are more accessible to a wider range of instruments and players. We particularly love the inclusion of parts for digital instruments, including Thumbjam, Clarion, CMPSR, and Soundbeam. All these instruments have a strong relationship with Figurenotes and Drake Music Scotland, so we’re thrilled to be working together on this. There are Figurenotes parts transcribed for all instruments in the score, in different stages, so you can find the part that suits the musicians best. All parts are available on the BBC Ten Pieces website for free.
But we didn’t stop there!
Creative Resources
Laura Shigihara’s ‘Grasswalk’ is chock full of interesting elements to explore musically. We have created lesson plans and additional supporting resources to dive into these areas in a fun, engaging way. The lessons are divided into packs: Articulation, Chromatics, Rhythm, and Register. You can explore the lessons with a pick-n-mix approach, or work your way through more methodically. All packs are available on the BBC Ten Pieces website for free.
As ever, if you have any questions regarding Figurenotes and BBC Ten Pieces resources feel free to get in touch. Email Figurenotes@DrakeMusicScotland.org or call 0131 659 4766. Please do share your thoughts and feedback with us, as it is invaluable for future resources.
We are very excited to see that the BBC Young Composer competition is accepting alternative notation. This means you can enter with your Figurenotes scores!
This would make a great project for a school class, as the deadline isn’t until 11th June 2020. Plenty of time to learn how to create your own original music, write it up in Figurenotes, and send it in. If you’re aged 12-18 and are a budding composer, take a look at the entry requirements and have a go. The prize looks fantastic!
You could use some of our creative composition resources from the Resource Base to give you a boost. Figurenotes works brilliantly for creative composition. You can take inspiration from abstract art that uses colour and shape; maybe use our composing dice made up of rhythms and pitches; or perhaps you want to map out your ideas using coloured sweets or other foods. The possibilities are endless!
Let us know if you’re planning on entering, as we’d love to know how many Figurenotes entries they get.
Adam Featherstone, a teacher from Middlesbrough, tells us how he used music from Harry Potter to inspire a creative project with BBC Philharmonic musicians (pictured above with a musician from Priory Woods).
I started to use Figurenotes in March of 2015 starting with whole class electronic keyboards, using single note melodies. I quickly progressed to getting the coloured shape notation sticker packs and placing them onto any instrument I could find. This ranged from chime bars to adapting some of our guitars to play open chords.
I am the music teacher in Priory Woods which is an SEN school in Middlesbrough for students with a mixture of special educational needs aged 4-19. These range from PMLD to SLD, however I feel the Figurenotes approach is suitable to both primary and secondary teachers as a good way to introduce students to practical music making. The only difference would be to change the difficulty of the material used.
We have used Figurenotes in a variety of ways. One such example has been to progress our post 16 music option students s to play rock and pop songs. I have written out songs by Green Day and The Clash, mostly chords. As a result they may take part in our end of year school show and hopefully at a battle of the bands next year. Most recently I have set up an inclusive orchestra using a mixture of hard to reach pupils using technology such as ICT, eye gaze, and traditional music instruments. This has held Figurenotes at its core.
We have recently had the pleasure of welcoming 3 musicians from the BBC Philharmonic into school for a day of workshops before a performance in the afternoon. We started the day exploring a simple melody taken from Harry Potter. I transposed this for some of the musicians quite easily using the software. The musicians took a few minutes to get to grips with the coloured notation, but settled in very quickly.
We had a student conduct our students and BBC Philharmonic musicians to create a rather beautifully layered composition. This gave us some ideas about how to progress the day, as our next steps fed into group composition using the entire ensemble, with iPads taking the lead with solos using the app ThumbJam. We also had a student on an eye gaze machine taking a solo. He was delighted to be able to take part. These students responded fantastically to whole group integrated work. One BBC Philharmonic musician conducted whilst the other 2 took solos on flute and trumpet during the piece and gave encouragement to the pupils.
Every person on that stage was valued as an equal and had an integral part to play, whatever their ability or experience. Each musician used Figurenotes. I hope to develop this ensemble at the start of the new school year, adding more ICT, samples, instrumentation and student musicians.
Adam sent us a lovely email saying “Without Figurenotes it would not have been possible. Thank you.” Thank you to Adam for sharing the ways in which he has used Figurenotes. If you’d like to share your ideas then please get in touch.
