Composing Camp – creative summer fun!

This past week was Composition Camp 2010.  This is the second year I have held such a camp. I love to compose and I love to teach composition but regular lesson time is jam packed with so much that there isn’t a great deal of time to focus on creating.  The four day summer day camp gives me a chance to dig deeper into the world of composing with the children and allows the children to be creative while using their learned theory concepts in a constructive way.

In four days, each of the children wrote between and 3 and 5 compositions. They learned about a variety of composition techniques, put them to use and then learned how to write their music using notation software. All of the compositions were printed and made into booklets for the children to take home so they could play their friends’ compositions as well. We also recorded all of the compositions and the children each recieved a CD at the end of the week  with their original songs on it.

It amazed me how the children (age 8 – 11) came up with so many different ideas. How they focused on the task at hand each day and it was really neat to see their faces when they listened to the recording of their very own songs. What a terrific group of kids! What a terrific week!