Click below to hear the song that Fischy performers Jed Milroy and Jo Jeffries wrote with SUN primary school in Ufton Nervet for Project Somos - a village for orphaned & abandoned children in Guatemala.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkJlA4IgQ94

My name is Pat Holden and I am the YMI Coordinator for East Lothian Council andI have worked with Fischy Music for several years on YMI projects. The latest creative music project ‘What does it mean to be Scottish’ has been a tremendous success and I highly recommend the Fischy team if you are looking for professionalism and a really motivated team of artists to inspire and motivate your children. I certainly will be developing our YMI creative song writing with them again in the near future.

Jed was recently on Radio Scotland talking about latest songwriting project with primary 6s’.

What fun we all had…!

Sandy

Over the last 2 years or so we have been involved in a number of song writing projects that have been both exciting and scary. We now offer a service where we write songs not just for children but where we write songs with children.

This has been a really big thing for us in Fischy Music where we have had to develop another approach to song writing in that when we use this approach we act more as facilitators rather than as songwriters and we are coming alongside children to try and tease out their thoughts and creativity rather than actually write the songs ourselves. It is a bit like starting all over again and learning a completely different skill which is exciting but also very demanding in that you are starting off with a blank piece of paper each time and the onus is on the children to come up with the ideas for lyrics and music. It is our job to try to stimulate their imaginations and draw together the ideas and thoughts of children often in groups up to 30 at a time.

Someone once said that if we listen generously, people will often hear the truth for the first time and I believe that this principle applies well to song writing with children. Just like any adult songwriter who is wading through oceans of musical ideas and words to try and arrive at a song, we need to listen to what children are actually saying and possibly pick up on a comment or what initially seems like a daft idea that might be the kernel of something really profound.

The old adage does apply to this process as well that creativity involves about 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration as sometimes you don’t have a clue where you are going and wonder if you are ever going to end up with anything but if you listen generously and hold on to your nerve, children will always come up with something and often very inventive and thoughtful.

We have written a number of school songs as well as projects with children who have been through traumas of various kinds and we are currently working with the Youth Music Initiative and East Lothian Council  with classes of 10 year old children on the theme of what it means to be Scottish.

Now where is that that blank piece of paper?!

Stephen