If you’re interested in our Live Sound, Digital Production, Dance or Keyboard Skills classes, express your interest now. We’ll be launching the next round of courses in July. Email: browningst@ecojamming.net
New Courses ready for delivery – April 2012
We’re excited to announce a complete overhaul of our short courses in 2012. Come April, we’ll be able to offer you:
- Keyboard Skills (Composition and Crash Course streams) (10-week course);
- Home Studio and Live Sound training;
- Rock and Pop crash course (13 weeks); and
- Our tried and tested Musicianship Courses (Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced).
Watch this space – and in the interim, you can get in contact with us at browningst@ecojamming.net
Live / Studio sound workshops available
Dave Ryan, our resident soundie, is running two excellent courses about sound production: Live sound, and studio sound. Read more about these course offerings here: http://www.davesmusic.org/.
Next course starts week of July 25
Check out our Course Outline for musicianship term 3 2011
Last chance to enrol in our Advanced Musicianship Course…
We’ve received a special request from a number of our enrolled students to defer the first week of our Advanced musicianship course until next week, Thursday April 22. This means you have until next Thursday to secure your place in the course (without missing a thing!)
Please email sarah@ecojamming.net if you would like to enrol in this course. We have 2 places remaining.
Last week of Term I / Term II Courses Starting mid-April (Brisbane students)
We will be running our midday musicianship class on Saturday April 3rd (Easter Saturday). This will conclude the 10-week beginner/intermediate course however enrolments are now open for our Term II courses.
Which course is right for me?
Beginner Musicianship (Weeks 1 -5, Saturdays @ Midday, Starting April 17)
Love music but not sure what it all means? Our beginner musicianship classes are designed to introduce or revise a wide range of basic musical concepts including style, genre, pitch, rhythm, notation, listening skills and sight-reading skills. It’s an all-round introduction for those of you who want to understand more about what makes music work. No prior musical experience is required, though this course is also helpful for active musicians hoping to understand more about their own music-making.
Intermediate Musicianship (Weeks 6-10, Saturdays @ Midday, Starting May 22)
This course is recommended for graduates of our beginner musicianship course, or musicians with at least one year of musical training (i.e. private lessons, ensemble or songwriting experience) hoping to take their skills a step further. We unlock concepts such as tonality, scales and keys and move on to basic chords and harmonic structure. The intermediate course really pulls apart the harmonic and tonal building blocks of popular, classical and world music, helping you to understand how to recognise, analyse and apply these concepts in your own listening, playing and songwriting practice. You don’t have to be a professional musician to understand these concepts and to use them to write and arrange your very own music!
* NB The beginner and intermediate courses are available as a 10-week course that runs back to back.
Advanced Musicianship (Weeks 1 – 10, Thursdays 6 – 8pm, Starting April 15)
This course is designed for graduates of our Intermediate Musicianship workshops (your teacher will need to assess your folio and rate the units as competently completed before moving on to the Advanced level course), as well as practising musicians and songwriters with an understanding of chords and major/minor tonalities. The concepts we cover are equivalent to many concepts contained in AMEB theory and musicianship grades 3 – 6, though we also explore the application of concepts to real world contexts, particularly songwriting and arranging for bands, ensembles, solo instruments and voice. Throughout this course you will be expected to apply knowledge of music culture and context to music making and develop and extend your critical and creative thinking skills.
Term I Musicianship Classes Start TOMORROW Sat Jan 30
Musicianship Classes start tomorrow @ midday. There has been a slight change to our fee structure this year – casual attendance will be charged at $15/session plus $10 for a Resource Pack, or $120 for the entire ten-week course including materials. Payment can be made by cash, cheque, credit card (no eftpos cards, sorry) or BPAY.
As places are limited please express your interest via email or telephone (even if you don’t think you’ll be able to make every session) so we can gauge numbers. The classes are suitable for kids and adults (we recommend ages 8 and up).
Musicianship Term Dates Set (Brisbane students)
Hi all,
Our 10-week beginner and intermediate musicianship course will commence on Saturday January 30 @ 12 midday.
For a course outline or to enrol, send an email to sarah@ecojamming.net .
Sarah
Homeward bound – BSGB Project Update
How humbled I am.
We were gifted … yes, that’s straight-out gifted … 23 meals, 15 nights of accommodation and enough fuel for 4500km of travel (as well as the vehicles to travel in). Your cash from fundraiser ticket sales, the garage sale, our raffle and cash donations (totalling around $1500) paid for extra insurance, incidental expenses such as meals, printing costs, phone and internet costs, our train tickets home and 2 weeks of studio rent.
Bang for your buck? 10 communities and around 6500km of travel. 10 resource packs printed and compiled. Flyers and postcards placed in communities. Meetings, networking and scoping completed. Grant applications in progress in at least one community to get us back. A report-back to all our backers coming soon. Two very inspired and excited Browning-Street-ites.
Despite the gruelling distances, rough roads and sheer isolation of some of the communities we visited, it only cost us around $150 per community to touch base, meet important members of the community, play music, suss out venues and build connections and networks.
I would also like to personally thank Max Heers, who joined me on-the-road in volunteering two weeks of her time to this project. Her assistance in documenting the early stages of this project is invaluable.
While I’m thanking people, I’d like to thank the teachers of Browning Street Studios who have been instrumental in fundraising for this project. In particular, Kym Brown has gone well beyond the call of duty, her dedication and hard work absolutely made this project happen. Cameron Burridge, Steven Jarman and Kym Brown ran the studios in my absence. Local businesses Morris Brothers Music, Blackstar Coffee and Moxa Natural Therapies all did their bit to help raise funds. The artists who selflessly dedicated their time and talents to our fundraising concerts (The Rooftops, Peter B and The Homeless Souls, Kay Orchison, Stop It I Love It!, Ian Maurice, Liz Jeffs, Julius Schmidt) – a heartfelt thanks. Those families and supporters of the studios who made cash donations, as well as those who purchased tickets to our fundraising concerts (especially those of you who organised group bookings) – thank you. For all the goods donated to our garage and bake sale – thank you. To everyone who helped to spread the word, and to all the volunteers who helped to pull off the fundraising concerts (Kym Brown, Calum Holland, Marianna Joslin, Cameron Burridge and Lisa Maizey) – words cannot express my gratitude. For everyone on-the-road who gave us beds, meals or a lift – we are humbled.
And last but not least – a huge thank you to Sr. Irene Harrison RSJ, who acted as our guide and gatekeeper in the Gulf-Savannah Parish.
Keep checking back as we’ll be putting the full report of our first BSGB expedition on here ASAP.
On the Road – Browning Street Goes Bush
Hi everyone,
Thought we’d let you know how our first few days on the road have gone.
I left Brisbane on Wednesday morning along with Max Heers, who will be documenting the trip. A generous friend presented us with a tray of fresh baked muffins for the road and we dropped into Blackstar for a final farewell. A big shout out to the crew at Blackstar Coffee in Thomas Street (West End) who have been nothing but supportive of our project. The donation tin that’s been sitting on the bench there yielded fifty dollars, which should cover just about all our incidental expenses on our way North.
We were really lucky to get a camper virtually for free through standbycars.com, the camper and car relocation agent. This includes enough free fuel to get all the way up the coast, and of course includes free accommodation as well. Our friends and family up the East Coast have all had a visit from us on the way up and kindly let us park the camper overnight (and kept us well fed!).
This morning I am writing from my friend’s kitchen in Townsville, and we are about to head up to Cairns to drop of the camper and have a weekend of R&R. Monday morning we head up the range and then West, our first stop will be Undarra ranger station and then Mt Surprise. After that we’ll head on to Georgetown, Croydon, Normanton and Karumba, and eventually out to Gregory Downs near the Qld/NT border.
Promise we’ll take lots of photos and put them up here! It’s nice to be up North again and from our conversations with people, looks like this trip is going to be a great inspiration and learning experience.
Sarah
