3.1 Top tips from a musician
Throughout these documents we thought it would be good to hear from musicians delivering the work to give you their top 3 tips for working as a Noise Solution musician. Click to watch the video
Isi’s top three tips for new musicians
In Part 2 We discussed Top tips from a musician, Equality, diversity and inclusion, The first conversation with families and professionals, The Digital journey, Some basics of using the platform, How to record and post a welcome video for your participant. This time we’re going to discuss
• What do you bring to a session
• Censorship and safeguarding boundaries
• Policies - they are proportionate and useful - where are they?
• Why the start questionnaire is useful and how to do it
• What happens if they don’t turn up?
3.2 What do I need to bring to a session?
Transcript of this video is in this grey box
Your shadowing musician will have everything they need for the first couple of sessions but when you start solo, whether you are delivering online (Yes we do do that sometimes) or in person the kit is pretty much the same. Your main tool is your laptop and your skills and ability to have fun with your participant in making the music
relevant to them. If you are delivering digitally, It goes without saying that you are going to need a reliable broadband connection. We totally understand that no ones broadband is entirely reliable but it needs to be sufficient to not get in the way of most sessions happening.
Kit for sessions
What you need to deliver is dependent on what sort of session we are doing. The following list really covers more toward doing face to face work in the home, but it’s all gear you would need anyway.
Many tutors (me included) have had the experience of turning up to a session only to discover that we’ve left a cable behind or a power adaptor. It’s not great for the participant or you as a musician, particularly if it’s the first session!
Checklist
Here’s a checklist of what you will likely need to bring with you to your first (and every other) session:
1. Laptop and power cable, with software the participant will be able to continue using after the sessions (so Ableton - we have licences, or Reaper or similar - and links to samples - we use Loopcloud mainly)
2. MIDI keyboard and appropriate cables (USB/MIDI) to connect to your laptop
3. Microphone – this may be a USB microphone or a microphone with an audio interface. Whatever your preferred set-up, remember to bring all the leads you need. There’s always a lot of mileage in recording someone’s voice and slapping reverb and delay on it and seeing their reaction
4. Speaker – laptop speakers are often not loud enough and they don’t have enough bass to make listening to the tracks enjoyable. A small, portable speaker (connected by cable! As bluetooth is too laggy to monitor recording with) can work wonders in sessions.
5. Smartphone and power cable for charging - you need this to capture the important bits of the session!
Optional, but recommended
1. Smartphone stand for taking photos and video footage. This may seem like a small thing but it makes videos look that much better.
2. Audio interface if you think you might be recording an instrument or using a non-USB mic.
3. Instruments (cajon, guitar, keyboard, synth, etc.) and percussion? Whatever you think will engage the participant.
4. Other MIDI devices such as a Novation Launchpad, ROLI Lightpad Block, etc can be a fun diversion or lead you off in completely different directions.
As a Noise Solution musician, you have a lot of freedom in sessions to help the participant achieve their goals and pursue their interests. Remember we’re not using a curriculum or meeting a learning goal - we just want them to have fun and feel like they’ve achieved a goal they’ve set themselves. Having the right gear on hand just means you can ‘react’ to their interests quickly :)
If you have something to hand that you think might make a positive contribution to a session, please feel free to bring it along or ask us if we can purchase it.
3.2 Four important tasks
These will make your sessions more successful: Before you start making music in session 1.
Transcript of this video is in this grey box
Before you make music in your first session there are four important task that we need to get done first..they will make your life easier when you do them trust me, that’s 15 years experience I have in delivering these sessions talking. The four things are.
1) Covering how we handle censorship 2) How we deal with safeguarding issues when they arise
3) The digital story and letting them know they have control 4) Collecting the first well-being data questionnaire
It is a fact that sometimes young people disclose things in sessions that mean for their safety or the safety of others, we have to tell other people about them. This is so we can keep them safe. But we need to be really careful to not lose their trust or make them feel ‘betrayed’ when we share that information.
How do we keep trust? By setting ground rules and being up front and honest with them. That’s what this video is about; developing a strategy to maintain our connection and trust with your participant when it gets tricky.
When you log in to your participants community with them for the first time (hopefully in their first session) there is a green ‘New to Noise Solution’ button front and centre. We’d highly recommend that before you get to making any music you press that with them.
You’ll be presented with a page that has a FAQ drop down, a video that you can watch to find out what’s in their story and a little further down on the left and right there are two boxes.
One is titled ‘Important - Censorship’ and the other is titled ‘Staying safe’. You could just read these two boxes to the participant but that’s not really the point. What we’re trying to do here is help you establish some trust with your participant by providing a prompt or way into a really important conversation.
Covering how we discuss censorship
The censorship discussion that needs to happen is to let them know that you are not going to censor what they create. BUT and it is a big but..you will absolutely reserve the right to challenge them on what they say. Just because they say it doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. Let’s imagine that a participant is 14 years old, really into grime and they want to post on their
digital story a track they’ve made that has drug references, or violent imagery (this will come up). We obviously shouldn’t encourage this, but if we shut it down and say no you can’t record or post that - what happens to your relationship with that young person? You’ve removed their sense of autonomy and In all likelihood they don’t come back to the next session. But if you say “I don’t agree with what your posting, but I’m not going to stop you -
you flag that there is a conversation to be had while keeping the door open. Always discuss with us if you are unsure how to handle any situation.
Covering how we discuss safeguarding
Now it might be that they disclose something that makes you worry about their or someone else’s safety, remember your child protection training? What then?. Again, if you’ve not laid any ground rules then this is another way in which you can lose the session. The second box labelled safeguarding is a great prompt for exactly this conversation. My wording, when I discuss this with a young person normally goes something like:
“I’m not a social worker or a teacher, but I do have a responsibility to keep you safe. If you tell me something that makes me think you might hurt yourself or someone else then I will have to share that with other people. Are you ok with that? If I do have to do that I’d definitely discuss it with you first.”
Covering how we discuss the digital story and collecting the well-being data
Autonomy is really important to us and participants so when we show them their digital story it’s important to set the scene there as well. This is what I usually say to install that sense of autonomy
We like to capture the cool stuff we do on your feed and share it with your family and maybe a few others? - are you ok with us doing that? You have complete control over what goes on the ‘Digital Story’ Feed - if you’re not happy it comes off! You also have control over who you share with - again if you want to add someone or take someone off the group of people you share your feed with that’s absolutely ok. Is there anyone else you want to share with?
Covering how we discuss collecting the well-being data
The well-being questionnaire is vital to our work - this isn’t an optional (unless the participant doesn’t want to). Before you collect well-being data see how in the next section) You need to explain what it is we’re doing. I normally say something like this
“I’m really interested in how music changes how people feel. Do you mind us asking you seven questions about how you feel now and we’ll ask the same questions at the end? Anything you say will be entirely anonymous (no one will know it’s you) Also we might use the data in some university studies - is that ok?
All of the above sounds like a lot to get through but in reality it only takes 4 or 5 minutes, if that to have that conversations - and I guarantee you’ll worry about it much more than they will (they will be used to these kinds of conversations).
Inevitably it feels a bit weird and awkward at first - but trust me when I say this has helped me and saved sets of sessions imploding on a number occasions because the ground rules were set in advance. It is best practice, tried and tested and it works.
.
**********************Consent for video analysis****************************
We automatically analyse video reflections (if you tag/name them reflection and if we also have consent). You need to have that conversation with the participant - there is a video at the top left of the community where I talk about this - you might want to go through that with the participant as well.
Here’s a short easy cheat sheet for things to cover before you get into making music
3.3
Policies: Safeguarding, Health and Safety Lone Working
We spent quite a lot of time conferring with musicians to find a Safeguarding policy, lone working policy and Health and Safety Policy that wasn’t just an ‘arse covering’ tick box exercise, one that actually takes into account you, the musicians, views on what’s useful and appropriate.
Policies can currently be found in a tab called help and support at the top of your digital community. They are in the Policies are here to guide us when things get tricky and to keep us safe.
While you check it out you absolutely should read the safeguarding and lone working policies. It’s incredibly important you know where they are, so that when something goes wrong you know what to do - we’re really trying to make these documents useful to you rather than just a thing we have that no one looks at. Read those three at a very bare minimum - we’ve kept them as accessible as we could. Some of the policies you can find include:
Business Continuity Statement
Lone Working Managing Absence
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
Finance Policy
GDPR
Health & Safety Policy
Health & Safety Risk Assessment
Positive Behaviour Management
Safeguarding
Complaints & Compliments
Environmental Policy Statement
Family Leave
Digital Stories
Whistleblowing
Social Media
None of this is because we want to cover our backsides, again, we’ve spent time thinking about them, and included musicians in helping draft them, so
you can keep yourself safe and have somewhere to go if questions come upit’s a roadmap to solve difficult problems.
Click on the video above to follow where to find policies in your community
familiarise yourself with them and where they are and then when you need them you’ll know where to go to answer those questions.
3.4 The start questionnaire
As you know (cos we keep banging on about it) Noise Solution is genuinely interested in how we use music (delivered in the way we do) to change people’s level of well-being and how they feel about themselves. Why? Because when that happens we see better education/health/social and engagement outcomes - which we think is ace!
You collect the questionnaire data here in the Admin tab (see video above) it will have it’s own section called Wellbeing questionnaires.
The easiest way to do this is to go to their digital story and look in the Admin tab - there you will find the wellbeing questionnaire and instructions for what to do (Click the video above to see where this is).
So, if Self Determination Theory (remember that) says that when we grow feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness we improve well-being, then we should probably measure whether any change in well-being happens right?
That information is also incredibly useful when we talk to the people who provide the funding for your work. This is the sort of thing Noise Solution is able to use in convincing commissioners to fund our work because of the data you collect at this point - it’s incredibly interesting and useful! Often people get asked to collect information when they work for organisations and they have no idea what or why they are collecting it. They are apologetic about asking and don’t value it….so inevitably the person who’s being doesn’t value or take it seriously either…We want you to know why we collect this and how important it is to us!
Because how you ask for it IS REALLY IMPORTANT - We want you to believe and agree about its importance.
You’ve seen the examples of young people talking about of what happened when we changed their wellbeing. Amazing stories of transformation. Stories like this are brilliant, and it’s amazing what you accomplish through this way of making music. We capture lots of these stories, but the people who fund our work often need more than a few stories. They are spending public money and need to see how we do with everyone we work with, and that’s where the questionnaire comes in.
We collect well-being using a simple 7 question scale (You’ll find it in the participants feed). It collects the data that can prove what we do and that means people give us (and by that I mean you) work. We want you to know a bit more about how genuinely cool and useful this is for all of us.
The questionnaire we use was designed by the NHS and it’s called the Shortened Warwick and Edinburgh Well-Being Scale (called SWEMWBS for short). It’s had a lot of research put into it over the last 10 years.
We do these questionnaires at the beginning of a set of sessions and at the end. We then measure the difference so we can see what change occurs. It’s not so much about how much an individual’s well-being changed but how, alongside those individual stories, we can convince people that we’re seeing progress from the whole population we work with.
So, we collect this stuff because it’s genuinely as useful to you (because it brings in work) and useful for us when we’re talking to people outside Noise Solution because it’s another way to show how amazing the work is that you all do.
You’ll be able to see if they have or haven’t completed their start questionnaire when you log into their in their feed. Participants are encouraged to fill out the questionnaire before they start sessions, but that doesn’t always happen. They, and you, can access the questionnaire on the Questionnaire tab in their feed. You can also access it when you’re logged in as you and in their group feed. So you could for example do it with them over zoom if you needed to. Ideally though they do it on their own without help, so we’re not interfering but they may need help with understanding some words or meanings - and if that is the case this is fine.
We ask the same questions at or near the end of sessions (plus a couple of extra ones) and we compare the answers from the two and add them to the pot of answers we have - so we can see how we’re doing as an organisation, how increases compare against the national average score for this scale and a whole bunch of other analysis that commissioners want to see.
How are we doing I hear you ask? Well through collecting this information we know that we happen to have more impact with young women than young men, that we’re most impactful with 14 - 25 year olds, we’re able to see and demonstrate how well a contract has gone and lots, lots more. All by asking 7 simple questions at the start and end of a set of sessions.
We can also demonstrate that over the last 5 years, across the population of vulnerable people we work with we’ve seen consistently massively significant
impacts on well-being. That’s the stuff that reassures the people who pay for this work. If we know that stuff, when we talk to schools or social work teams they trust that we know what we’re doing. Those changes in well-being are resulting in savings for tax payers and families of £6.46 Million in 2024 alone, or more simply the work you do means that for every £1 spent on Noise Solution delivery there is a social saving of £12.56 in things like lost pay, resources taken up by services etc.
If you want some more detailed discussion about this part of the work, evidence, how we know this stuff, you can read a chapter that Simon wrote for this book (Oxford University Press, 2023). The link for this chapter is here or you can find it in the research section on the Noise Solution website.
3.5 Using SDT strategies in sessions
We’ve talked about setting culture and protecting trust (using the early conversation and ground rules) and about the importance of collecting the well-being questionnaire but what about the sessions themselves. When you are actually having fun making music what can you do to encourage some of those feelings that we identified as so important to increasing well-being.
We’re interested in what evidence tells us work so let’s briefly return to SDT or Self Determination Theory and see how we can actually apply it in a music session!
The transcript for this video is in this grey box
We talk a lot about Self Determination Theory at Noise Solution and how it is our roadmap to understanding how to get great outcomes with people. Just like a plant flourishes with water, nutrients and light…people have psychological needs that have to encouraged for them to flourish.
If you encourage feelings in people of being in control (Autonomy), feeling they are good at something (competence) and feeling connected or ‘seen’ by others (relatedness) – then you are creating those very conditions that mean they are much more likely to flourish …. we’ve been applying this for a while now and we see astonishing results for people happening again and again.
But how do we actually do that in our sessions, what are the things that we can practically do that work, that you as musicians can draw on while you are making beats or learning a song to support these feelings? This video is about
setting out for you what’s worked in the past, so you have some ideas to draw on, you might discover new ways -Brilliant – let us know if you do!
We’ve been lucky enough to have had a Master’s student at Anglia University (take a bow Millie) interview a bunch of you musicians to get a feel for what was occurring within sessions and how that might relate to SDT theory.
Let’s talk about what Millie identified when analysing musicians talking about sessions. What we saw from studying lots of interactions is that within sessions, when they are successful, Musicians and participants often tend to take up three different ‘roles’ or characters
The roles are:
The Professional friend role (Taken on by the Musician) The Facilitator role (Taken on by the Musician) and Being made to feel they are the Expert in their own music role (Participant)
Let’s break these down one by one, first…The role of Professional friend
What that might look like. This is where the musician supports participants, by showing genuine care and interest in them. Seems simple enough…. but joking and laughing and asking them how their week went and ‘actually listening’ is important,……. really important.
There is huge evidence across teaching and clinical mental health research that the most important indicator of any intervention working is whether the person you are working with feels liked by you! So please be reassured, it’s totally ok to talk about things that are off topic, to be playful and most importantly to always value and prioritise having fun. If we do these things -
Joking, laughing, caring, listening, being playful (being human?), keeping the participant at the centre of everything, then they will feel listened to.
This ‘professional friendship’ (which is probably very different from their experience of teacher/student relationships - where there is a pressure to achieve a result) in turn will create a sense of relatedness – Which is one of our three key feelings we’re trying to encourage.
What are some of the things you can do within this role of ‘Professional friend’ to encourage the three psychological needs?
• Explore similar interest to establish a rapport (what we mean is finding common ground like similar music taste’s here could be a good option)
• When you find stuff they like or you like together, Post examples of these musical interests on their ‘Digital Story’ stating why they like it
• We’ve already said Joke and laugh – be playful! (relatedness) but we really mean it so we’re saying it again!
• Explain that it’s your job to explain things in a way they understand – if they don’t understand it’s not their fault but yours..take the pressure off them
This final one is really important
• Always think of their ‘Digital Story’ as a way to create, project or mirror back at them positive feedback from others for them (Autonomy)
The role of Facilitator
The second role that musicians’ take on is that of a facilitator, making things happen…Musically, unlike traditional music teaching our approach doesn’t mean starting sessions with a learning goal or curriculum to ‘get through’ ever – we’re not working towards someone’s external idea of what’s good but…. How can we use their musical ‘journey’ (and the sharing of it) to help create those psychological needs..of autonomy , competence and relatedness.
That means enabling the participant to make their own choices about their music (even if we don’t think it sounds great), creating feelings of success by encouraging the interests of the participant, letting them discover they can achieve the creation of their own music.
To create feelings of participants owning their music we can ask them questions like this
“On a scale of 1 to 10 how much of this track is yours?” or “ On a scale of 1 to 10 how many of the decisions about this piece of music did you make?”
Why the scaling? By encouraging them to recognise the control they have had as much as possible (even if it’s not a ‘musical’ decision we would have made) we enable them to vocalise that they are in control… vitally, they realise are making decisions about their music.
That doesn’t mean we can’t sometimes steer them to create things that sound great for sure, and sometimes it needs to sound good to get the result but we need to always balance the participant needing to feel their decisions matter.
Facilitating also means helping them set achievable goals they can achieve, making sure they succeed at something quickly, utilising their ‘Digital Story’ feed to record these ‘moments of success’ and growing competence externally. Also always encouraging reflections from the participant, to recognise the things they did well in their ‘reflection videos’
When we do this well, we are killing two birds with one stone. Participants not only reflect on their success we also give others viewing the ‘Digital Story’ the opportunity to see that success and importantly to comment on it – so the participant can feel seen. I can’t underscore enough how valuable this can be.
You are facilitating them mirroring their achievements back at themselves. That mirroring enables people to take on or internalise those feelings that we know are so important.
For instance In session 1 If I’ve shown them the piano method that we find so useful for creating a quick sense of achievement (Course also available in your digital stories) I’ll often get them to explain back to me how they’ve learned to play lots of chords so quickly, using our chord methods…I’ll literally say “you’ve learned 14 chords in 10 minutes…that’s amazing…and how much on a scale of 1-10 did you understand?
What I’m actually doing is allowing them to feel ‘Ah I got this..yes it is amazing that I’ve learned this many chords and that I’ve understood it..” we repeat this process throughout sessions – identify something good, capture it…get them to reflect on it..post to their ‘Digital Story’
An additional benefit the feed brings is to enable others to recognise the participant’s success Parents, key workers), who then comment – That the participant then see’s in the next session with you…especially if you make a habit of reviewing the ‘Digital Story’
Feedback and scaling in the video reflections and throughout the blog isn’t a ‘nice to have’ it’s an essential element of what we do. What else can we do..?
What are some of the things you can do within this role of ‘Facilitator to encourage the three psychological needs?
These question you can ask when collecting video reflections are all SDT aligned - can you see how?
1. Could you describe a moment from today where you felt like you could just be yourself?
2. What was something you got to decide or do your way today?
3. Was there anything new you tried today?
4. Was there anything you got better at today?
5. Was there a moment from today where you felt like, ‘Yeah, I got this!’?
6. What are you proudest of from today?
7. Who have you connecting differently with because of these sessions?
8. Do you feel like people on your blog ‘get you’ or have your back?
9. What’s one thing someone did or said since the last session that's had an impact on how you feel about these sessions?
10. What one moment stands out to you from todays session?
11. How do you think you’ll feel after leaving the session today?
12. If you were telling a friend about how today went, what’s one thing you’d definitely want them to know?
13. How does it feel when we look over what you’ve achieved in your digital story?
14. If you think back to when your sessions started, how have you changed?
15. How does it feel sharing your music with new people today?
16. What do you think/feel hearing your own music back?
17. What would you differently if you were starting again today?
18. What will you take away from these sessions?
19. What does music mean to you?
20. What were your expectations coming into todays session?
21. Are there any other different things you’d like to try in future sessions?
22. How does it feel sharing your music with new people today?
23. Have you surprised yourself in what you have achieved today?
24. What was your favourite part of the session today?
25. What would you give the session out of ten?
26. How do you feel hearing your own music back?
It became really clear from interviews and watching reflection video’s that reflections are a really great way to underline competence. We can do this by asking questions like those above that generate answers that are longer than yes or no….( we call questions that do this open questions).
To do this your follow up questions should start with… what do you think about?…or how did doing X make you feel….(This underscores competence)
Early on use music tech and your skills to get quick wins – whether this is getting them to throw together a track using great samples via LoopCloud or the piano method..or whatever it is that they want to achieve..make sure it’s achievable and make it happen quickly (competence) so they see they experience competence.
Get those quick wins onto the blog to get feedback as early as you can (Competence and relatedness)
Encouraging participants in the role of ‘becoming the expert in their own music’
What about the participant – we should be encouraging them to take on the role of being their own ‘expert’. Participants accept the role of being the ‘expert’ in
some social interactions, at least that’s what we’ve seen from reviewing reflection videos.
It is not so much what participants do to accept this position, but what mentors do to invite participants into the position of the expert. Praise and positive feedback are used by you as musicians which magnifies participants achievements, but also this makes participants feel as though they are effective in their environment, feeling confident in their ability.
What are some of the things you can do when encouraging participants in the role of ‘becoming the expert in their own music’ to encourage the three psychological needs?
Again, use scaling to get the participant to recognise themselves what they have achieved, mirroring it back at themselves (Autonomy and competence) It’s possible to overdo this but it can also become part of the culture of sessions and a really really good way to gauge levels of understanding
• Downplay your own expertise in order to play up participants (competence)
• Use blog as a reflective tool – “look how far you have come!” (competence)
• Let participants decide what is ‘right’ (autonomy)
• Let participants ‘discover’ what they want to do (autonomy)
• Embrace changing direction (autonomy)
• Let participant set their own achievable goals (autonomy and competence)
3.6 What do I do if they don’t turn up?
On average Noise Solution sees between 80 to 85% attendance over a given year - pretty good for an organisation that works with participants that are often referred because of engagement challenges. However, you will all experience sets of sessions where the challenges for some participants can be extreme and there will be regular no shows. It’s not your fault, we all experience it and we expect it to happen. You won’t in any way be judged by it,
but, it doesn’t mean you do nothing and there are things we can do to make the situation and outcomes better. This video comes in two parts really:
1. How do we make something happen from nothing, and 2. What to do when you suddenly have a chunk of time to spare
The transcript from the video is in this grey box
Let’s talk about how do we make something happen from nothing
So you’re waiting for 10/15/20 minutes it becomes apparent that it’s a no show? The contact details on the participants feed are the first port of call. The first thing to do is call the home/family/professional and find out what’s going on. If you can get to the participant - even if it’s just for 10
minutes to demonstrate you’re engaged and there for them, then do that. If you can’t find out what’s going on because no one is answering the phone and the session is definitely just not going to happen, then report it ASAP - we
need to be able to report to schools that people have no showed really quickly and your report (yes we fill one out when they don’t show as well as when they do) is automatically copied to their professional so that they know whats going on. But how do you handle that situation?
What you do is dependent on how you are delivering - if you are doing face to face sessions maybe the home/family/children’s home say they don’t want to get out of bed or they are having a really bad day. Rather than just giving up and thinking this isn’t going to happen we should be ‘sensitively’ persistent in trying to make the session happen to the best of our ability.
We can go to the home (if they are not alone, and people know what we are doing). Use the time to talk to parents to find out how it’s going - how we might make it more likely to happen? Or once there maybe coax them (sensitively and gently) into music making or at least talking about it. I’ve had a lot of success over the years by saying in these circumstances "ok but do you mind if I come to you there and even if it’s just for 30 minutes catching up - maybe just talking about the music you’re into - no pressure".
What we try to do is to remain consistent and committed - show them we are invested in them and we want to do all we can to provide opportunities for their successful music making to occur. Don’t go to the home if they are alone and no one else knows you are going there!
If you are unsure call us and we’ll advise. It’s obviously tougher if it’s online and there is a refusal - in this case then it’s follow up with those around the participant as before to find out what the next best course of action is. But what if all that failed....
Part two - What do we do with those suddenly free hours - sorry it’s not a holiday
There was around 1000 hours of suddenly ‘free time’ because of session cancellations last year. This is still paid time so there are things we’d like you to do:
1. Check everything is up to date with your sessions. Do you need to do any admin? Can you ring around your participants groups and encourage engagement with their Story - Maybe encourage the social worker or mental health worker to attend (with the participants agreement obviously). What can you do to increase those feelings of relatedness that we know are so important to well-being?
2. If that’s all up to date you can make sure you are up to date with all your training - we’ve created an extensive library of training that is available to you when you log in. We’d like you to all be up to date with this pleaseit’s always useful to reflect on what we do. If questions come up, ask them in the musicians feed or WhatsApp group. We can all learn a lot from each others experience.
Summary
Call to find out what’s going on - find a solution, or do the report - Don’t go to the home if no one else knows that’s what you are doing. Get the report off asap - so that people know that the participant isn’t where they say they are going to be. If you are up to date with Admin and creating and encouraging engagement with your
participants stories - catch up with the training videos. Of course if you are up to date with all that then…it’s free paid time
Don’t worry, as I said we see about 80-90% attendance and you’ll have an experienced musician with you when you do your first couple of sessions, and if you are at all unsure you just call us :)
3.7 ******Digital Hygiene******
It’s really important that you delete all photos and videos off of your device after you’ve uploaded the ones you want to the participant’s ‘Digital Story’. This is for obvious safeguarding reasons.
3.8 Recap of things to say in session one
There’s a list here of things to clarify that will generally lead to a better understanding of ground rules, things that experience have taught us will lead to easier sessions by avoiding conflict. Some of these we’ve covered some are just suggestions. Don’t try and steam through all these at once.
I tend to be up front and say “we have just a couple of things I need to let you know and a little admin to cover before we start, then it’s all about making your music for 10 weeks!” Though for obvious reasons the Safeguarding/ Digital Story’ permissions and well-being data does need to be covered when you first meet though.
Other info available to you
Hope you found that interesting, by the time your next video is available you’ll have done your first session - we hope it goes really well and that you have a lot of fun delivering it.
If you’ve got any questions ask your buddy musician or the office - we’ll always answer your questions and there is no question that is stupid
Best of luck!
Don’t panic
Notes:
Appendix
The list of things below looks daunting but remember we’ve got loads of musicians brilliantly doing this and they were felt as daunted as you when they started! Even Jimi Hendrix was rubbish at guitar the first time he picked one up - this takes practice and we are here to help.
Hopefully we’ve broken down everything in detail in this training aid above and it’s other parts 1 through to 5. Our intention was to deliver it in manageable chunks.
You are also going to shadow someone else for the first couple of sessions; you’ll have a Noise Solution ‘buddy’ too ask questions of and we’ll be on hand to answer questions as well. You are not alone! but we thought a complete quick overview of the ten weeks might be a useful as well. So there is a link to one below.
Click here to see a handy PDF reference you can download that is an overview of a set of sessions. It details what it looks like for you when we break down what needs to happen each week?
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