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Take a look at the following link from University Arts London who have provided lots of links which may be of interest.

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It's SCIENCE!

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Are you a musical prodigy? Find out now.

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As well as the guide from A level to University, Tom Pankhurst has also made a really handy transition guide from GCSE to A level for those of you in Year 11 to work through before September.

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Welcome to the King Ed's music website. I look forward to seeing all you year 11s in September and with a bit of luck in July for induction. Usually we set a few tasks at induction day for the summer break. Given that you have a bit more time and it is uncertain what will...

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LiveNation are updating their 'Live from Home' streaming service every day so you can enjoy some 'live' music from your sofa.

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Live Nation - Live Events, Concert Tickets, Tour News, Venues

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Buy concert tickets for top tours and festivals - Live Nation is your premier source for latest tour news, artist insights, exclusive videos, photos, and more.

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A documentary on music in London in the 1960s.

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rock n roll island: where legends were born

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Rock n Roll Island: Where Legends Were Born

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A celebration of the R&B musical history of Eel Pie Island in the 1960s.

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This is a bit of a level-up from Howard Goodall - here is actual Leonard Bernstein lecturing on music at Harvard in the 1970s. Very inspiring.

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The Unanswered Question 1973 1  Musical Phonology Bernstein Norton

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I'm obsessed with this guitarist. He plays electric guitar, classical guitar and mandolin, amongst other fretted instruments. He live streams mandolin whilst drinking whiskey at 11pm at night. It's so mesmerising. You can find and follow him on YouTube too.

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Can live streaming save the music industry in lockdown?

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Can live streaming save the music industry in lockdown?

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You  have, hopefully, seen  at least one live stream from a musician or band over the past few weeks*. Here is another interesting article to read.
*If you haven't, then look for some, such as 'Live from Home' also posted here.

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"As long as there can't be live music, I think we might keep doing these", says Dent May of the live streamed concerts hosted by his LA studio over the past two weeks. May, an indie-pop singer-songwriter, has appeared on the bill alongside acts including Real Estate frontman Martin Courtney andart-rock artist Madeline Kenney.

May is not alone in his desire to entertain his fans while in isolation. Since the coronavirus pandemic ensured the cancellation of tours, festivals, promotional trips and studio sessions, artists all around the world have broadcast home sets online. James Blake has twice taken to his piano to play fan favourites and unexpected covers; Christine and the Queens are performing nightly in the luxurious Ferber Studios where she is working and living during France's lockdown; and in March John Legend played live as part of Chris Martin's "Together at Home" series, featuring a guest appearance by his wife, Chrissy Teigen, wearing only a bath towel.

For these particularly successful musicians, a request for donations has not been necessary. But for artists whose livelihood depends on touring, and who don't have vast savings or other revenue to fall back on, working out a way to profit from their isolation performances is essential.

May, whose new album is due to be released in August, has not yet had to cancel a tour: he hopes that his August-September US dates will go ahead. But he is seeing damage elsewhere. Honeymoon Suite, the recording studio he shares with Pat Jones and Michael Rosen (the latter of whom is part of the LA-based duoCones), has had to cancel bookings, and, having lost all income from his day-job as a wedding DJ, May has filed for unemployment benefit under the new US bailout bill. He joins the 6.65 million Americans who filed for unemployment in the last week of March. "I'm waiting to hear back on that. For now, I'm doing things to try and keep momentum going," he tells me over Skype.

At the first Honeymoon Suite "live stream rager", 13 musicians performed from their homes. The broadcast was hosted on Crowdcast, a platform May chose because it allows hosts to charge viewers to access the live stream, rather than relying solely on optional donations. "It was a $5 minimum donation," May tells me, "but most people chose to donate more." Around 170 people tuned in to the first session and the studio raised $1,350 (approximately £1,097) in total. That may not seem a lot when divided among each of the artists, but, May points out, "that sort of amount is on par for a local show where there's three or four bands on the bill, and each is splitting the door money with every member". In short: it's a fair short-term substitute considering no one is leaving their homes.

While in self-isolation, Jules Jackson, frontwoman of London-based band the Big Moon, is offering virtual one-on-one guitar tutorials for fans. "I was just looking for something constructive I could do, something that felt helpful and useful rather than too performative or gimmicky," she tells me over email. "The reaction has been outrageous: I'm booked up for the next three weeks! A lot of the students are kids and teenagers who are desperate to learn things now that school is cancelled."

Jackson is charging £20 per half-hour for these lessons. "A friend was like, 'you should be charging triple that! You are a Mercury-nominated musician!', which made me laugh. But it's not just musicians who are losing their jobs, millions of us are. I know so many people who've been made redundant in the last fortnight. So it didn't feel right to charge more. I wanted it to be democratic rather than any sort of get-rich-quick scheme. On reflection, the amount of money I'm making would never be enough to keep a four-person band and crew alive, but it all helps."

Not everyone has been supportive of artists getting creative in order to make ends meet. Matt Healy, lead singer of the Brit Award-winning 1975, was recently subject to criticism for posting a tweet which seemed to mock such initiatives. The tweet, which has since been deleted, read: "Stop telling people to support you we don't want your EP and zine bundle right now Laura we're going to die [ sic]". The tweet, later dismissed as a joke, touched a nerve with those who pointed out Healy's privilege. Though the 1975 will be affected by the crisis, they are likely to be far more financially cushioned than smaller artists who rely on a steady stream of income to pay their bills.

More widely, there are fears that the trend for successful musicians hosting complementary live streams - giving their music away for free - devalues artists' work across the board.

"I noticed a lot of people are doing free live streams on social media which I fully support and I think is incredible," says May, "but I'm an advocate of artists charging for their labour whenever possible. I think fans of music are really happy to support artists right now and always."

For musicians who would usually rely on tour managers and venues to deal with ticket sales, asking for money directly from fans does not come easily. In March, Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who makes experimental pop as Self Esteem and was formerly one half of folk-rock bandSlow Club, organised a weekend-long virtual festival of femme performers called "Pxssy Pandemique", featuring artists including KT Tunstall and Låpsley. Taylor hosted the festival on Instagram Live, where approximately 5,000 people tuned in over the course of the weekend. Altogether the festival raised £5,865 from 394 contributors. The money will be donated to Women's Aid.

The idea for the festival, Taylor says, came about because she was "getting pretty galvanised about the inequality between male acts and female acts on festival line-ups". Coronavirus thwarted her initial plan to hold a traditional festival, but thanks to streaming services, it was able to go on regardless, with each act performing a 20-minute set via Instagram. The only mishap came about when, Taylor claims, the account was blocked. "On the Saturday one of the artists did a performance piece where she eventually takes all her clothes off. Not in a gratuitous way, it's just part of the act. But the Instagram account was locked down and they wouldn't let us back on." Acting quickly to set up a new festival account and move across as many followers as possible, was "like being in Line of Duty, such high drama!" she says. "But I cannot bear to tell women not to take their clothes off; it's so against my ethos in life."

Initially, Taylor was unsure whether she would ask viewers for money. "But even before it started, people donated," she tells me. She chose Women's Aid to be the recipient of the donations to help women who, because of the lockdown, are trapped indoors with their abusers.

The success of the virtual festival has made Taylor reassess her feelings towards asking fans for payment for future live streamed performances. "Sometimes I do a charity bucket at a gig and that always feels good. I feel that's extremely different to trying to fundraise for myself, just ethically. But it is important to put value on your work because people consume what musicians make so freely and without thinking about it enough, even before all this. Giving things away for free doesn't help."

The Big Moon have a similar approach. As well as Jackson's guitar lessons, the band is sharing guitar tabs of their songs, in return for a donation to the Trussell Trust. "It's not just us, everyone is struggling. It's nice that we have a platform we can use to help others," says Jackson.

Writing in the New Yorker, Doreen St Félix suggests that "live streaming, which once seemed to presage the dissolution of human intimacy, now looks like its preservation." May's experience, of streaming and speaking to fans simultaneously, echoes this. "I prefer a traditional live music gig to a live stream any day, but in some ways it felt like there was an even stronger connection between the musician and the listener," he says.

But he feels uneasy about how the current pressure for artists to stream from home mirrors a wider trend in the music industry. "I resent the idea that in the streaming economy and in the 21st-century music world, you have to release more music than ever, you constantly have to put singles out on Spotify, you need content on Instagram... I resent that art has been devalued to become content."

Mat Dryhurst, an artist and researcher who works on technical and ethical protocols and who collaborates with the electronic musician Holly Herndon, feels much the same. "I've had a ton of musicians write me concerned messages asking if they have to live stream performances now, which I resent. I resent the idea that musicians have to invent an awkward new medium of performance and busk for tips when people could just buy their record," he tells me over email.

"I feel that the right point to take away from this crisis is that the current music infrastructure is unfit for purpose, and Covid-19 is a dress rehearsal for the kind of world many artists might live in, when flights get expensive due to carbon tax and borders and visas start becoming more real for many who have grown up without that concern. Live shows and cheap flights have been a tourniquet that has covered for the tragedy of the transition from sales to streaming, which only really works for a minority of artists who make work that complements the goals of streaming platforms or the majors that unduly dominate them.

"I think that live streaming feels like a distraction that actually perpetuates the dominant narrative that streaming will be music's salvation. This is the opposite of what this crisis is telling me. This crisis is telling me that music's sole advantage over games and Netflix is real-life congregation, interaction and full-spectrum sound."

Of course, it may be some time before the music industry is able to deliver those experiences again. For now, musicians must work out how best to monetise streaming. Later, when lockdowns are lifted and artists head back out on tour buses around the world, the question will be how to rebuild the industry's infrastructure.

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Can live streaming save the music industry in lockdown?

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"As long as there can't be live music, I think we might keep doing these", says Dent May of the live streamed concerts hosted by his LA studio over the past two weeks. May, an indie-pop singer-songwriter, has appeared on the bill alongside acts including Real Estate frontman Martin Courtney and art-rock artist Madeline Kenney.

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Proof that studying music is good for you

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Proof that studying music is good for you

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Maybe I’m biased, but here is a study which has proved music students are the best.

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High school students who take music courses score significantly better on math, science and English exams than their non-musical peers, according to a new study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology.

School administrators needing to trim budgets often look first to music courses, because the general belief is that students who devote time to music rather than math, science and English, will underperform in those disciplines.

"Our research proved this belief wrong and found the more the students engage with music, the better they do in those subjects," said UBC education professor and the study's principal investigator, Peter Gouzouasis. "The students who learned to play a musical instrument in elementary and continued playing in high school not only score significantly higher, but were about one academic year ahead of their non-music peers with regard to their English, mathematics and science skills, as measured by their exam grades, regardless of their socioeconomic background, ethnicity, prior learning in mathematics and English, and gender."

Gouzouasis and his team examined data from all students in public schools in British Columbia who finished Grade 12 between 2012¬ and 2015. The data sample, made up of more than 112,000 students, included those who completed at least one standardized exam for math, science and English, and for whom the researchers had appropriate demographic information -- including gender, ethnicity, neighbourhood socioeconomic status, and prior learning in numeracy and literacy skills. Students who studied at least one instrumental music course in the regular curriculum counted as students taking music. Qualifying music courses are courses that require previous instrumental music experience and include concert band, conservatory piano, orchestra, jazz band, concert choir and vocal jazz.

The researchers found the predictive relationships between music education and academic achievement were more pronounced for those who took instrumental music rather than vocal music. The findings suggest skills learned in instrumental music transfer very broadly to the students' learning in school.

"Learning to play a musical instrument and playing in an ensemble is very demanding," said the study's co-investigator Martin Guhn, an assistant professor in UBC's school of population and public health. "A student has to learn to read music notation, develop eye-hand-mind coordination, develop keen listening skills, develop team skills for playing in an ensemble and develop discipline to practice. All those learning experiences, and more, play a role in enhancing the learner's cognitive capacities, executive functions, motivation to learn in school, and self-efficacy."

The researchers hope that their findings are brought to the attention of students, parents, teachers and administrative decision-makers in education, as many school districts over the years have emphasized numeracy and literacy at the cost of other areas of learning, particularly music.

"Often, resources for music education -- including the hiring of trained, specialized music educators, and band and stringed instruments -- are cut or not available in elementary and secondary schools so that they could focus on math, science and English," said Gouzouasis. "The irony is that music education -- multiple years of high-quality instrumental learning and playing in a band or orchestra or singing in a choir at an advanced level -- can be the very thing that improves all-around academic achievement and an ideal way to have students learn more holistically in schools."

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k-12 education; music; educational psychology; numeracy; literacy; learning disorders; infant and preschool learning; creativity

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Music students do better in school than non-musical peers

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High school students who take music courses score significantly better on math, science and English exams than their non-musical peers, according to a new study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology. School administrators needing to trim budgets often look first to music courses, because the general belief is that students who devote time to music rather than math, science and English, will underperform in those disciplines.

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Ridiculous! You are musicians - get practising! Watch Nicola Benedetti for some inspiration.

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Not ready to say goodbye to the eighteen set works? You might want to take the exam in the Autumn series or even next summer? Here are some tips.

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There is no right or wrong way to revise, but it is good to know what you are doing and have a plan. One thing is for sure, you need to know the Set Works inside & out and so listen to them as much as possible. You also need to make sure that you don't revise what you already know just to make yourself feel better. You need to make sure that you cover the topics that you genuinely find hard or the set works that you maybe don't enjoy listening to. It is easy to listen to music we like and enjoy so be careful not to fall into this trap.
What resources should you have with you to revise?

1. Set Works to listen to - have them with you on your phone all the time!

2. Anthology - annotated throughout the year and added to during revision.

3. Notes from the exam board.

4. Textbook/Revision Guide - although this is not essential if you have made notes throughout the course.

5. Your own notes that you have made in addition to the notes in your anthology.

6. Past Papers & Essays that you have completed during the course.

Revision Techniques that you may like to try

1. Write an essay for each of the set works, focussing on different elements of music for each essay. The format of the Q6 is always going to be along the lines of:"Evaluate Mozart's use of Melody, Harmony & Texture...etc etc.
Generate your own questions and then hand in to be marked - or pier assess with a partner.

2. Focus on one Element of music and go through the anthology considering not only how it used, but how it changes over time. Instrumentation is a good place to start and this will give you a clear idea of how approaches to instrumentation changed over the years. Some elements like Rhythm can be trickier to discuss in an exam, and so focussing on that will really help.

3. Make sure that for every Set Work you have a line of argument. So for Bach - What features of the Cantata make it a great example of BAROQUE Vocal music? Put this line of argument at the top of your revision notes or in the centre of a spider-diagram/mind-map and then start to add features to it.

4. Wider listening is something that never needs to end and every piece that you listen to can be referred to (as long as it is relevant). However it is important that for all 18 Set Works you have at least 2 Wider Listening examples. I will be adding a full list of suggestions to a future document and you also have ideas throughout your notes and in the anthology. Make sure that you can link the Wider listening to strong salient points - nothing vague.

5. I know I have already said it, but listen to the set works. One approach is just to have them on all the time in the background of your life. At the gym, on the way to school or when you are revising for your other subjects. Embrace them and listen to them. But also make sure that you listen to them alongside the actual score itself. You want to be able to visually see what is going on in the music.

6. In the exam you will be asked to comment on various different things. The more details you know about the pieces of music the better and the more you can then hear them when you listen the better. The exam could easily ask you to comment on very specific things and so don't shy away from traditional revision where you actually learn the key facts. But remember, there is no point or need to remember bar numbers. Don't fill your head with trying to remember the smallest details, but moreover, remember the key features of the music.

7. Where possible listen out for things in the music and specifically listen out for things that you are not totally sure you can explain. These are the features that you should revise and cover in your preparation. We often pick out the things we know, so it is important to watch out for the other stuff.

8. Key Terms are crucial in the exam. We need to not only use them but use them frequently and in the right context. Spelling is also important and some words in music do have tricky spellings. Make sure that you read through the glossary in the back of the anthology and highlight all of the key words in your notes and handouts. The more words you know the more you can use them in the exam.

9. It is good to write out whole essays, but it is also good to prepare some introductions as part of your revision. These can include the key facts about the piece that help you to set the scene and also your line of argument. Prepare an intro and conclusion for every set work and you will be more than ready for the exam.

10. Where possible revise with friends and chat about the music. The more you talk about the music the more it will embed in your brain and the more you will be able to recall in the exam room. It is great to just chat about music freely and share ideas on wider listening and other key features. Failing this you might like to record yourself chatting over the music or just talk to your cat!

11. It is hard to revise for the dictation questions, but what you should do is practise using resources that are given to you. Listen to melodies and rhythms and have a go at writing them out. This is something that is easier to do in pairs and you can test each other on intervals at the same time.

There are so many things that you can do to revise, and it is important that you try them all. But it is also crucial that you take regular breaks and don't overdo it. The key thing for any exam is that you are fit and healthy and ready for it. The music exam does rely on you being on the ball and disciplined with your timing. You have control over the CD of extracts and you have to pace yourself throughout the exam. When you do revise, practice writing essays to a set time and make sure that you go in to the exam with the ability to move on from a question if you are not sure.

Hopefully those tips, ideas and approaches will help you in the lead up to the A-Level Music Exam.
PDF Version for you to Print & Give to students - How do I revise for my Music A-Level

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How to Revise for A-Level Music - Manwaring Music Education Blog

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How do I revise for my Music A-Level? There is no right or wrong way to revise, but it is good to know what you are doing and have a plan. One thing is for sure, you need to know the Set Works inside & out and so listen to them as much as possible.

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We study the Eduqas syllabus, which you can find here.
There are three main foci for the exam: the development of the symphony between 1750 and 1900, musical theatre, and 20th century art music. (These are areas of study A, C and E - ACE!)

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Ever listened to one song that lasts almost ten minutes? Try it. This is the Stone Roses' Fools Gold. Excellent summer garden tune.

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A great article on how our brains work (referenced in my 'Broaden your horizons' post)

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Listening to new music is hard. Not hard compared to going to space or war, but hard compared to listening to music we already know. I assume most Americans-especially those who have settled into the groove of life after 30-simply don't listen to new music because it's easy to forgo the act of discovery when work, rent, children, and broadly speaking "life" comes into play. Eventually, we bow our heads and cross a threshold where most music becomes something to remember rather than something to experience. And now, on top of everything else, here we all are, crawling through this tar pit of panic and dread, trying to heft some new music through historic gravity into our lives. It feels like lifting a couch.

Why do we even listen to new music anymore? Most people have all the songs they could ever need by the time they turn 30. Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube can whisk us back to the gates and gables of our youth when life was simpler. Why leap off a cliff hoping you'll be rescued by your new favorite album on the way down when you can lay supine on the terra firma of your "Summer Rewind" playlist? Not just in times of great stress, but for all times, I genuinely ask: Why spend time on something you might not like?

It was a question that Coco Chanel, Marcel Duchamp, and the rest of the Parisian audience might have asked at the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, an orchestral ballet inspired by the Russian composer's dream about a young girl dancing herself to death. On a muggy night at the end of May, inside a newly constructed theater along the Seine, those who chose to bear witness to something new experienced a piece of music that would presage a new world of art.

Stravinsky, having already thrilled Paris with his ferociously complex Firebird ballet three years earlier, was the bright young thing of symphonic music in Paris, and The Rite was to be something essentially unheard of. Drawing from the Slavic and Lithuanian folk music of his homeland and his viscerally atavistic brain, Stravinsky blackened his score with rhythmic and harmonic tension, stretching phrases to their outer limits and never bothering to resolve them. The harmonies were difficult to name and his rhythms impossible to follow. Leonard Bernstein later described The Rite as "the best dissonances anyone ever thought up, and the best asymmetries and polytonalities and polyrhythms and whatever else you care to name."

After months of grueling rehearsals, the lights finally drew down at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées that evening. The Rite began with a solo bassoon squeezing out a riff so high in its register that it sounded uncannily like a broken English horn. This alien sound was-apparently and unintentionally-so strange that chuckles erupted from the bourgeoisie in the mezzanine boxes and rippled through the crowd below. The dissonant opening gave way to the martial assault of the second movement, "The Augurs of Spring," and the dancers-choreographed by the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky of the Ballets Russes-bounded on stage, moving squeamishly and at jagged angles. As recounted in the daily newspaper Le Figaro and in various books and memoirs since, the chuckles turned into jeers, then shouting, and soon the audience was whipped into such a frenzy that their cries drowned out the orchestra.

Many members of the audience could not fathom this new music; their brains-figuratively, but to a certain extent, literally-broke. A brawl ensued, vegetables were thrown, and 40 people were ejected from the theater. It was a fiasco consonant with Stravinsky's full-bore attack on the received history of classical music, and thus, every delicate sense in the room. "One literally could not, throughout the whole performance, hear the sound of music," Gertrude Stein recalled in her memoir. The famous Italian opera composer Giacamo Puccini described the performance to the press as "sheer cacophony." The critic for the daily newspaper Le Figaro noted that it was a piece of "laborious and puerile barbarity."

Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is now hailed as the most sweepingly influential piece of music composed in the early 20th century, a tectonic shift in form and aesthetic that was, as the critic Alex Ross wrote in his book The Rest Is Noise, "lowdown yet sophisticated, smartly savage, style and muscle intertwined." Within the brambles of The Rite are the seeds of an entire outgrowth of modernism: jazz, experimental, and electronic music flow back to The Rite. Maybe the Parisian audience wasn't expecting a feat so unfamiliar and new that night, they simply wanted to hear music they recognized that drew upon the modes and rhythms they had come to know. Life was on one track, and suddenly they were thrust off into the unknown. Instead of a reliable Debussy ballet, many left the theater that night miserable, agitated, with few jettisoned cabbage leaves stuck to their dresses, and for what, just to hear some new music?

One of my favorite pieces of arts criticism is a 2016 article from The Onion titled, " Nation Affirms Commitment to Things They Recognize." From music to celebrities to clothing brands to conventional ideas of beauty, the joke is self-explanatory: People love the stuff they already know. It's a dictum too obvious to dissect, a positive-feedback loop as stale as the air in our self-isolation chambers: We love the things we know because we know them and therefore we love them. But there is a physiological explanation for our nostalgia and our desire to seek comfort in the familiar. It can help us understand why listening to new music is so hard, and why it can make us feel uneasy, angry, or even riotous.

It has to do with the plasticity of our brain. Our brains change as they recognize new patterns in the world, which is what makes brains, well, useful. When it comes to hearing music, a network of nerves in the auditory cortex called the corticofugal network helps catalog the different patterns of music. When a specific sound maps onto a pattern, our brain releases a corresponding amount of dopamine, the main chemical source of some of our most intense emotions. This is the essential reason why music triggers such powerful emotional reactions, and why, as an art form, it is so inextricably tied to our emotional responses.

Take the chorus of "Someone Like You" by Adele, a song that has one of the most recognizable chord progressions in popular music: I, V, vi IV. The majority of our brains have memorized this progression and know exactly what to expect when it comes around. When the corticofugal network registers that of "Someone Like You," our brain releases just the right amount of dopamine. Like a needle tracing the grooves of a record, our brains trace these patterns. The more "records" we own, the more patterns we can recall to send out that perfect dopamine hit.

In his book Proust Was a Neuroscientist, the writer and one-time neuroscience lab worker Jonah Lehrer writes about how the essential joy of music comes in how songs subtly toy with patterns in our brains, spiking the dopamine more and more without sending it off the charts. "Someone Like You" is Bruce Springsteen's "I'm Goin' Down" is Cheap Trick's "I Want You to Want Me" is Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" and so on-this is the entire neuroscientific marketing plan behind pop music. But when we hear something that hasn't already been mapped onto the brain, the corticofugal network goes a bit haywire, and our brain releases too much dopamine as a response. When there is no anchor or no pattern on which to map, music registers as unpleasant, or in layman's terms, bad. "If the dopamine neurons can't correlate their firing with outside events," Lehrer writes, "the brain is unable to make cogent associations." We go a bit mad. No wonder the audience at the premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring thought that it sucked: there was almost no precedent for it.

Like the premise of that Onion article, our auditory cortex is also a positive-feedback loop. The way the corticofugal system learns new patterns limits our experiences by making everything we already know far more pleasurable than everything we don't. It's not just the strange allure of the song your mother played when you were little or wanting to go back to that time in high school driving down country roads with the radio on. It's that our brains actually fight against the unfamiliarity of life. "We are built to abhor the uncertainty of newness," writes Lehrer.

If all the brain science is mostly on the side of listening to popular hits and golden oldies, that might explain why, for the vast majority of American listeners, music is just one small facet of life. Most people experience music as a passive creature comfort, like socks or reality television. In this historic moment of colossal fear and dread, music listeners are in desperate need of comfort. Of the 32 artists we asked, almost all of them were listening to music that is older, soothing, familiar; the same thing happened when we asked ourselves what we were listening to in isolation. (I do realize that old music can be new music if you've never heard it before, but you get it.)

The act of listening to new music in the midst of a global pandemic is hard, but it's necessary. The world will keep spinning and culture must move with it, even if we are staid and static in our homes, even if the economy grinds to a halt, even if there are no shows, no release parties, and even artists sink even further into the precarity that defines a career as a musician. The choice to listen to new music prioritizes, if for one listen only, the artist over you. It is an emotional risk to live for a moment in the abyss of someone else's world, but this invisible exchange powers the vanguard of art, even in times of historic inertia.

It also appears that we are in the most impressionable era in generations as each day brings some new, heretofore unfathomable statistic. In this unfamiliar world, our brains have never been more plastic-a spongy tabula rasa onto which you can imprint a new timestamp. My other argument for constant exploration is that I will assuredly remember these pandemic days, the way I remember my first breakup or my first love and the songs that defined them. Don't let history be recursively defined by a feedback loop. Steer into the skid, pour the fear and dread leaking through your roof into something unfamiliar, because it could be the new artifact that exclusively defines this moment for you-a new friend who totally loves you for what you've become.

To those of you getting back into discovering new music, you're not alone. The incredible $4.3 million Bandcamp paid out to musicians in one single day will hopefully bode well for the health of new music, and like clockwork, every Friday will still come with a big sack of new albums to open. The coda to the famous The Rite of Spring riot at its premiere in Paris is not often told, but it's crucial to the full life of the piece. After the melee of that evening, the ballet continued running at the theater for many months. Alex Ross writes: "Subsequent performances were packed, and at each one the opposition dwindled. At the second, there was noise only during the latter part of the ballet; at the third, 'vigorous applause' and little protest. At a concert performance of Rite one year later, 'unprecedented exaltation' and a 'fever of adoration' swept over the crowd, and admirers mobbed Stravinsky in the street afterward, in a riot of delight." What is unheard of could define history-might as well come for the show.

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Our brains reward us for seeking out what we already know. So why should we reach to listen to something we don't?

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A strong theoretical background and everything in music will seem easier. Short term pain - long term gain. This is a good website with loads of exercises for all grades.

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Learn about the musical life of one of the most famous minimalist composers

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The minimalist composer John Adams talks about his career to Charles Hazlewood. (2001)

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Dr Tom Pankhurst makes amazing resources so I don't have to - here is a comprehensive list of things you can do to prepare for University.

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On this page you will find tasks that will help you be more prepared for university and in this forced period of downtime should give you something to do. There are specific tasks for history and composition, followed by general reading and listening lists.

Do as much or as little of this as you wish, but I would be very interested to see the fruits of your labours! You can email work to me and/or pop it on Moodle and let me know it is there (there is a submission called Transition Work)
Essay work
Writing essays is a key aspect of all music degrees. Unlike at A level in which you only do extended writing exams, you will need to write essays that are more formally presented. I have set one essay here on sonata form that draws on Eduqas AoS A. I will set one on Debussy in due course.

One key difference for these university-style essays is the requirement to reference where you have taken ideas from. The most common referencing system in music academia is the Harvard system. The basic idea is that you list all the books you have used at the end in a bibliography, presented in a standard format, and then you reference those books in the text in brackets. I have summarised the basics (and a bit more) of this system in this Harvard Referencing Guide:

I have also put together some more general notes on striking an appropriate academic tone in your essays:

Essay 1: Discuss the importance of sonata form in the Classical and Romantic symphony.

This takes as its starting point an essay topic that we have covered for A level and it should cover Haydn 104 (first and last movements) and also draw on a range of works from the development of the symphony pages (might include Stamitz, CPE Bach, Haydn 31, Beethoven 3, Tchaik 5, Dvorak 8 and Mahler 2).

BUT I want it to be different in the following ways:

It needs to be longer (about 2,500 words)

Introduce and explain sonata form much more carefully at the opening

Write a more discursive essay. How important is sonata form in the examples you choose? How can you prove this? Are there examples in which the principles of sonata form are in fact less important or changed in some way?

Read the extracts below (and any others) and quote from and refer to them in your essay, referencing them properly as set out above.

Rosen, C. (1998) Sonata Forms, revised edn, London: Norton.

Rosen, C. (2005) The Classical Style: Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, London: Faber.

Sadie, S & Latham, A. (eds.) (1990) The Cambridge Music Guide, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Taruskin, R. (2010) Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford History of Western Music Vol. IV), Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Composition
You will need access to relatively decent software to do these well, but any or all the following three projects would be helpful:
Short Exercise
Write a short piece for either a solo string instrument or string ensemble that uses only one pitch (e.g. D, but it can be in any octave). You should use rhythm, texture, and the full range of the instruments to make it as interesting as possible. The more bonkers the better. There are extensive notes on different string techniques here.

Extensions: write a similar piece for your own instrument and/or choose a small set of different pitches and try the same discipline of concentrating on timbre, rhythm, texture and techniques rather than melodic and harmonic content.
Film score arrangement
Choose one of the extracts from this book of film cues for cinema pianists:

You should now orchestrate it but do so by finding models to copy. You can find your own (John Williams plundered loads Holst, Rimsky Korsakov and Stravinsky among others) or you can use the resources on the Composition Moodle. Particularly helpful will be the examples listed under 'Narrative music' but you might also find the more general examples useful. A list of all the examples on Moodle can be found here:
Twentieth Century Piece
Many university departments focus on twentieth century composing styles. You could write a piece based on the notes on various composers here or find a twentieth century composer you like and try to emulate their style.
Listening and Reading Lists
Listening to any of the repertoire listed below and/or reading any of the books would help you be better prepared for uni. It should also be interesting and enjoyable. If you never got round to it, spend a bit of time first browsing around the Short History of Music on here.
Reading list

Taruskin, Richard (2004) A History of Western Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press [six hefty volumes but very readable and you will need Spotify/Youtube handy to listen to some of the examples he gives to get the most out of this. There is a one-volume version that might be more suitable (and affordable!!)]. Much more old-fashioned but shorter and probably easy enough to find cheap second hand on the web is Grout's History of Western Music that has gone through many editions.

Cook, Nicholas (2000) Music a Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press [this is on all the University reading lists it is short and snappy but introduces lots of important issues - written by an influential and provocative commentator]

Ross, Alex (2007) The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, London: Fourth Estate [this is an excellent and accessible introduction to the music of the twentieth century in its wider cultural and historical context]. An older but also excellent pair of books entitled Modern Music by Paul Griffiths.

Harper-Scott J.P.E. and Jim Samson (2009) An Introduction to Music Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [this is an inexpensive and useful introduction]

Caplin, William (2013) Analyzing Classical Form: An Approach for the Classroom, Oxford: Oxford University Press [this is a hefty book but is much clearer for students than a similar one by the same author from 2008 that is on several university reading lists. It looks in detail at how Classical form works from the point of view of its phrase structure and has an excellent companion website]

Listening List
Some suggested core listening (of the sort that would help you understand a first year course):

J.S. Bach

Some of the preludes and fugues from the Well-tempered Clavier (often called 'The 48')

B minor mass and/or some of his cantatas

A Brandenburg Concerto

W. A. Mozart

A symphony (perhaps 'Jupiter')

A piano concerto

Part of an opera (perhaps Don Giovanni or the Marriage of Figaro)

F. J. Haydn

Some of the other 'London' or 'Paris' symphonies

A selection of quartets from Op. 33

L. v. Beethoven

The violin concerto or a piano concerto (you should already have a good knowledge of the symphonies)

A range of string quartets: earlier (op. 18), middle (op. 59) and later (perhaps Op. 95 or the 'Grosse Fugue')

A piano sonata

Some other basic repertoire not covered in the course (i.e. I have missed out Classical/Romantic symphonists and early twentieth century) might be Josquin's masses (particularly l'homme arme) Palestrina's masses, Byrd's sacred music (perhaps Cantiones sacrae), Monteverdi's Orfeo, Vivaldi L'estro armonico concertos,Schubert's lieder, Chopin's nocturnes, Wagner's operas (particularly Tristan und Isolde), Sibelius' symphonies (particularly no. 5), Shostakovich's symphonies, Rachmaninov's Three Symphonic Dances, Bartok's string quartets, Copland's Appalachian Spring,Messiaen's piano music ( Vingt Regards), Britten's operas, Ligeti's Atmospheres, Boulez's Le Marteau sans maitre, Cage's music for prepared piano. You should also listen to some new music (some interesting English composers, for example, include Peter Maxwell-Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, Judith Weir, James MacMillan, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Thomas Ades, Sally Beamish, Kenneth Hesketh and many others)
Online resources list
List of free online music courses (mostly run by universities and institutes - some really fantastic stuff on here)

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Year 13 Transition to Music at University

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On this page you will find tasks that will help you be more prepared for university and in this forced period of downtime should give you something to do. There are specific tasks for history and composition, followed by general reading and listening lists. Do as much or as little of this as you wish,...

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Howard Goodall is a bit of a toff, but he is very knowledgable and produced a series of six shows which are worth a watch.

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BBC Howard Goodall's Story of Music 1of6 The Age of Discovery

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I read an article the other day on familiarity in music (see link to 'Why do we listen to music?'), but here are the Guardian's 100 best albums of the 21st Century. This should pass a few hours for you.

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Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly. Listen to the album.

The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (2012)

Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly. Listen to the album.

99 Rihanna

The first album album from an artist whose records had previously propped up killer singles with passable fillers turned her disaffection and disappointment into generational anthems. Listen to the album.

98 Rokia Traoré

The Malian guitarist set a new career benchmark with this intimate set, adding classical western harp and African ngoni to her subtle, bluesy electric guitar. Listen to the album.

97 Róisín Murphy

Trip-hop duo Moloko was dead, and Murphy teamed up with Matthew Herbert for this eclectic, saucy - and still underrated - pop record that anticipated the arrival of Lady Gaga by three years. Listen to the album.

96 Missy Elliott

Miss E ... So Addictive (2001)

Drawing from house, psychedelia and even Bollywood soundtracks, Missy's third - the one responsible for Get Ur Freak On - forced pop to catch up with her yet again. Listen to the album.

95 Charli XCX

XCX stopped waiting around for mainstream acceptance and showed the normies what they were missing with this bracingly eclectic, guest-laden mixtape. Listen to the album.

94 Peaches

The Teaches of Peaches (2000)

Merrill Nisker grafted sweaty, human filth on to the clean machine shock of electroclash on her hilarious, titillating debut as Peaches. Listen to the album.

93 Low

Things We Lost in the Fire (2001)

Filled with crushing, funereal dirges and a song about wanting to encase a newborn baby in metal to prevent its growth, the Duluth group's fifth album was nonetheless inexplicably beautiful. Listen to the album.

92 Erykah Badu

New Amerykah Part One (4th World War) (2008)

Part state-of-the-nation opus, part eye-opening trawl through the unexplored depths of Badu's brain. Listen to the album.

91 Ali Farka Touré and Toumani Diabaté

In the Heart of the Moon (2005)

Two Malian greats met for this soothing, spontaneous record of guitar and kora that is as subtly textured as it is generous. Listen to the album.

90 Katy B

On a Mission (2011)

No disposable vocalist or featured artist, the charismatic, club-savvy south Londoner gave dubstep its first real star. Listen to the album.

89 Taylor Swift

1989 (2014)

Swift's first "officially documented pop album" saw her shake off any remaining country trappings to become a gleaming synthpop behemoth. Listen to the album.

88 Fleet Foxes

The Seattle group's debut heralded a generation's post-recession retreat into rural comforts, conjuring a pastoral idyll from the best of west coast folk and British traditionalism. Listen to the album.

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Breakout ... Justin Timberlake. Photograph: Startraks Photo/Rex Features

87 Justin Timberlake

The finest boyband breakout since Robbie Williams's Life Thru a Lens, and that's not damning with faint praise: Timberlake's Neptunes/Timbaland-helmed debut was slick, sexy and most importantly, convincing. Listen to the album.

86 Elliott Smith

Figure 8 (2000)

Smith's final album followed his brief adoption by Hollywood, and added a cinematic grandeur to his work - but, thankfully, it didn't swamp his haunted songwriting. Listen to the album.

85 Chromatics

Kill for Love (2012)

The album that ushered in the moody, neon-lit synthpop that would define the rest of the decade, Ruth Radelet playing Nico to Johnny Jewel's Velvet Underground-worthy cool. Listen to the album.

84 Konono No 1

Twenty-five years after forming, the Congolese group made their name with this rhythmic explosion of likembes (thumb pianos) put through junkyard amplification. Listen to the album.

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Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly. Listen to the album. Seven years after her previous album, Apple's return sidelined her orchestral trademarks for an austere, homespun sound that exposed her insular lyrics even more starkly.

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Watch some opera or musical theatre for free

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Watch some opera or musical theatre for free

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It's a bit more cultured than Netflix.

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Theatres may be closed, but you can always get a stagey fix online. We round-up a series of shows you can watch right now - operas, musicals and more!
If you can - please do try and help out theatres across the UK - we've got some tips here.
HPC Meeeting 10 December 2020

[Not really theatre but utterly gripping]

London International Mime Festival

A variety of stage shows will be streamed on YouTube for free - highlighting the best in physical and contemporary storytelling. Highlights include Gecko's The Wedding.

Rifco Theatre's Leave the Plastic On

The company's comedy series is available to watch now - top notch production values and some whip-sharp dialogue.

A Tale to Tell

Shakespeare's Globe's Romeo and Juliet

Jackson's Lane international short film

Kneehigh's The Neon Shadow

Frozen

The cruise hour-long version can be seen now.

Sadler's Wells

Sadler's Wells will be streaming an archived production each month, featuring Candoco, Kate Prince and more. More details here.

These Folk at The Boulevard Theatre

Good Dog

Based on Arinzé Kene's hit play, the new, shortened, screen version has been put online for all to see.

Edinburgh International Festival

The organisation has created a whole digital platform to replace its events this year. The series includes National Theatre of Scotland's Ghost Light, which is below:

Zoo Venues

The Edinburgh Fringe company is streaming a host of online and recorded productions on its website, with all funds raised going directly to artists unable to perform this year. Watch here.

Tangled

Shakespeare's Globe's Richard II

Manchester International Festival

The festival is putting full shows, musical performances, talks, Q&As and more online for free. Check out the YouTube channel here.

Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti

Opera North is streaming its production of the hit Bernstein opera for a full month on its YouTube channel.

Alan Seymour's The One Day of the Year

Australian and New Zealand actors including Mark Little, Kerry Fox, Daniel Monks, Paul Haley and Celeste Dodwell bring the hit play to life, all via remote performance. It's available until 31 May.

BBC's Performance Live

Featuring Hofesth Shechter, Tourreshero, Akala, Kate Tempest and more, the BBC is offering a raft of free theatre for UK users.

Royal Opera House

The iconic company is putting archived shows online for free, and you can see more here.

ZARA

Now this is a bit of a biggy - Mind the Gap, Walk the Plank and Emergency Exit Arts' epic 2019 show is heading online from Sunday 19 April at 8pm. Featuring 100 performers and a giant baby bigger than a double-decker bus, the piece is available here.

Only the Brave

Only The Brave - A New Musical from AdVision TV on Vimeo.

Only the Brave, the hit musical starring Caroline Sheen and David Thaxton, is available for free online. The show, filmed by AdVision TV in 2016, tells the story of a group of soldiers in the run-up to the D-Day landings. It had its first run at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008, before a full production premiered in 2016 at the Millenium Centre in Cardiff.

Cheek By Jowl

The iconic theatre company has brought back the archive recording of its hit version of Shakespeare's problem play, which was captured live at the Barbican in 2017. It's around for a month!

Henry V

The Barn's hit production with Aaron Sidwell and Lauren Samuels went live at 6pm on Friday 27 March, and will be available from the Barn's website after that.

21 Chump Street

Long before Hamilton there was the speedy 21 Chump Street, starring Anthony Ramos and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Ramos himself is about to take on the leading role in the In the Heights movie, scheduled to be released this summer. The BAM performance is available to watch in its entirety above. A small nugget of gold.

Ghost Quartet

Missed the award-winning revival of Ghost Quartet when it ran in London last year? Well Dave Malloy has posted the full musical on YouTube - featuring himself, performed in 2015.

The Show Must Go Online

This is a cool scheme - live readings of Shakespeare's works provided by top-notch actors who would otherwise be twiddling their thumbs.

Bubble

Rehearsed on Skype and filmed via Facebook, Theatre Uncut's newest show is a perfect fit for the coronavirus outbreak. Kieran Hurley's brand new play will be premiering on 23 March at 8pm and will also be released as a playtext to download, with performing rights free until 23 April. Find out more about it in the trailer above.

Opera Vision

Free opera! Now that's a nice sentiment - the European Commission-supported OperaVision will be supplying free opportunities to watch top-tier performances filmed at the highest quality level, with new shows released weekly on top of a massive back catalogue. Find out more.

First encounter King Lear

Another lovely RSC show geared towards introducing theatre to young'uns, this time taking the tragic story of King Lear and making it more accessible and fleet. The perfect way to kick off a love of theatre.

Gecko Theatre

Physical theatre pros Gecko have put a wad of their shows on YouTube for free, including The Time of Your Life, a collaboration with the BBC.

Tim Crouch is a legend at the best of times, so seeing his solo show hosted by the RSC is a great chance to watch theatre at its best. You can also watch his production of I, Malvolio here.

Girls Like That

Evan Placey's hit 2014 play heads to the virtual world. It follows a group of schoolgirls reacting as one of their peers has naked photos of themselves leaked online - a pertinent issue for the present day, and a good way to get into a knotty play during the quiet hours.

Kanopy

Have you got a library card or a university login? Did you know about this amazing streaming service that can be accessed through your local institution to watch films, TV shows and live theatre performances? Did you know that it's totally free? Well you do now! Open to members participating libraries, colleges and universities, this is a great to way to catch up on some amazing shows from years gone by. Check out Kanopy and discover the participating venues here.

5 Soldiers

The critically acclaimed five-star production is a collaboration between British choreographer Rosie Kay and the British army, and gave an insight into the psychology and welfare of soldiers fighting on the front lines. It's now available to watch online above.

Clown Funeral

Associate artists of the New Diorama and Pegasus Theatre, Clown Funeral has made three shows available online for free (head to YouTube for the others) so that's a whole wad of whimsy while you wait for the virus to subside!

Timpson the Musical

The hit Fringe production has put its best foot forward and released a full recording online! Watch it above.

YesYesNoNo

The theatre company has put one of its earlier works, Five Encounters on a Site Called Craigslist, online for free! The show was one of the smash hits at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2017. And more than that, the company are sending the cast of its latest show The Accident Did Not Take Place to record at the Bunker Theatre. Stream it live online here on 21 March at 7.25pm.

Playwright Emily Jenkins was commissioned to write this show about cyber bullying by the Theatre Royal Haymarket Masterclass charity. It was first performed live in 2017 and then live recorded for Anti-Bullying Week. A great show about the negative experiences young people can face online - and it's available for free!

Daniel Bye

This theatremaker has been creating exciting and thought-provoking work and putting it on his YouTube channel for years. Bye has also launched a Patreon page if anyone wants to contribute.

This apocalyptic comedy came to the Old Vic Tunnels in 2013 and the theatre company has made it available to watch for free on YouTube in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

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Stage shows, musicals and opera you can watch online now for free | WhatsOnStage

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Theatres may be closed, but you can always get a stagey fix online. We round-up a series of shows you can watch right now - operas, musicals and more! If you can - please do try and help out theatres across the UK - we've got some tips here.