Over the summer, we piloted a new, collaborative project between the Tinderbox community music and games team, focussing on local legends from the North Edinburgh and Leith areas. Working from Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre, 9 participants collaborated on creating new music and a video game, brainstorming who their local inspirations were, and what inspires them about their local area. We developed mind maps of local inspiration, and a physical map of North Edinburgh & Leith.Â
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We finished off the week with a showcase at the Tinderbox Lab/Wee Hub at Ocean Terminal on the final day of the project, joined by family and friends, where the music team performed Shells of the North against the It Grows game as an interactive visual backdrop to the music, rounding off the day with a brilliant open mic.
Play the game ‘It Grows’ here!
The music team creating brand new song “Shells of the North”!
The games team creating brand new game “It Grows”!
Nicola in front of the ‘It Grows’ game, with song lyrics for ‘Shells of the North’!
About the Music
From this, young people who wanted to focus on music split off into groups, including music production, melody and lyric-writing, and chord sequences. We all worked off similar themes: Granton Harbour, West Pilton, Ice Cream, Gardening, Skate Parks and Home, to build a beat, chords, and develop melodic and lyrical ideas. We also had a young person develop a rap section for the song.
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The song: Shells of the North, was written with the idea that young people’s shell collections grow over time collected from Granton Harbour, representative of their memories and growing up in North Edinburgh. This was nicely tied into the games-design of: It Grows, inspired by community gardeners, like those at Drylaw Neighbourhood Centre.Â
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As the game took shape, the music team practiced a performance of Shells of the North, ready for a showcase at the Tinderbox Lab, at Ocean Terminal on the final day of the project. Invited family and friends attended, and we piloted the projection of the interactive game, It Grows, behind a live performance of Shells of the North. Young people finished the day with a brilliant open mic.
Getting ready for the final showcase!
Showing off the game!
Building 3D models for our game!
About the Game
The games team during the summer project worked together to come up with a game that could be played alongside the composition of the songwriting team – a backdrop for the music that would function almost like an interactive music video.Â
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We had a wee games design team working on the game itself, and we decided it’d be cool to make a game where you take care of a plant, helping it to grow. This was partly inspired by talking about local gardening communities, and we tied this into the theme of North Edinburgh by putting the plant by a window, and on each scene we see a different backdrop of North Edinburgh… As if you are living in the city, taking care of your home.Â
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It was such a cool little game, and everyone involved put so much effort focus and concentration into the making of it! With only two days to put to put it all together too! They did such a great job.
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Here’s a wee insight into how we did it…Â
We began by brainstorming a few ideas, with the connecting theme being Edinburgh, Local Legends, Green, and Nature!Â
Once we settled on an idea we all quite liked, we made a storyboard so we could see how we all thought the game should look.
We compared all those ideas, found the connections between them all, and grasped a shared sense of what the game will be.Â
We then wrote up a big list of Assets (these are items that will make up the game, like characters, objects and backgrounds), contemplating all the possible things we will need for the game… And then we got to work designing them!Â
We opened up Construct 3 and Pixelart and started creating all our assets and getting them into the game engine (which brings all the assets together into a working game)! We also kept in touch with our songwriters, to ensure we were all heading in the same direction and all happy with the content
Build-A-Buzzer Game Experiment with electronic components like LEDs, resistors, and buzzers to make your own nosiy wire loop game! Age range: 10+ Time to complete: 1 – 2 hours
Workshops
We were also delighted to bring the first finished kits to run workshops with Craigroyston Community High School 1st and 2nd years too.
And we were also very pleased to join the very first North Edinburgh Community Festival on Sat 7th May too, with a Makerbox stall, where young people joined us to build kits and learn about electronics during the afternoon!
Some quotes from the workshops included:
“I’m going to go home and take this apart so I can build it from scratch again!”
“This is so cool!”
Thank you to everyone who joined in!
As part of the Motor Music Maker we also needed a bespoke 3D printed part, and thankfully Mark Kobine and the Institute of Design Informatics and Creative Informatics were happy to help – supporting us to design this custom printed plastic mount & base to hold the motor in the right place.Â
More Info
If you are interested in finding out more or exploring the circuits yourself at home, we have a list of components, instructions and videos available here.
A huge thank you to all of the team, partners and supporters who made the Makerbox Series 2 kits possible.
Watch this space for more Makerbox fun!
The Makerbox kits are part of our Tinderbox Lab programme, which explores digital arts, creative technology, gaming, interactive media and more. Get in touch with lab@tinderboxcollective.org to find out more.
Join us for Eco Echoes, a one day creative jam where we invite people to write songs and make games around an environmental theme.
We will start the day with a welcome and some live music, then a short talk from artist & game designer Yann Seznec!
The Music and Game Jam will then begin, where people can write and record songs and make games in their own time.
The theme is environmental awareness and action – jammers can make any kind of game and/or music that explores this theme, in any format. This could be anything from a fully fledged digital or online game; to a physical, board or card game made with recycled objects found around the house; to a song or piece of music! Whatever takes your fancy!
Throughout the day there will also be an optional songwriting workshop, and we will have a couple of meetups on Zoom and/or Discord scheduled throughout the day to share works in progress.
And… We will end the event with a live play-through and open mic to share the games and songs!
Watch the Welcome & Games Talk with Yann Seznec here:
Schedule:
Sat 6th November
9am: Welcome & Talk from Yann Seznec
9:30-10:30am: Morning Music and Songwriting Workshop with Jed Milroy
12-12:30pm: Lunchtime Checkin/Hangout
3:30- 4pm: Afternoon Checkin/Hangout
6pm: Game Submission
7-8pm: Live Sharing & Open Mic
Any Rules?
​​You can join the jam as an individual or as a team!
You can submit a game or music in any format, as long as it connects to the theme of the environment and sustainability in some way, and is an original creation made by you.
​Non-digital games may be submitted as a text document description, or in the form of media such as photos or videos. Music may be submitted in recorded audio or video formats, and/or score/notated/visual formats.
All submissions must be respectful, conscious of others, and family friendly. Inappropriate submissions will be removed.
Submitting Work:
If you would like to submit your work to be included in the live sharing, you can submit games and music by signing up to our Jam page on Itch.io:
Presented as part of The Dear Green Bothy, a collaborative cultural programme from the University of Glasgow’s College of Arts showcasing creative and critical responses to climate emergency.
Last term we worked with some amazing young musicians, bands and ensembles from South Ayrshire Music Service, helping to create these online recordings and videos for their “Summer Sessions 20/21” programme. Â Have a look at the videos below, and here’s a bit of information from South Ayrshire Music Service about the project:
During the challenges of the 20/21 school session, South Ayrshire Instrumental Music Service adapted delivery of instrumental lessons to ensure our reached young people in schools and at home delivering over 14,000 live lessons across the session. Our young musicians amazed us with their resilience, positive attitude and ability to continue to learn. We were unable to hold our normal ensemble and group activities, but pupils took part in a 6 week virtual rehearsal programme across different authority ensembles.
Video Edits by Oana Stanciu & Lorna Simpson Audio Edits by Slate Room Studio Produced & Directed by Tinderbox Collective
This is a bit of an experiment we are working on just now and would love you to get involved. The goal is to explore innovative ways to improvise, compose and conduct a full orchestra, all live and in the moment, and to find ways for audiences to get involved doing this too. We’ll try it out for the first time, attempting a fully improvised performance with orchestra, backline, singers and more at Hidden Door festival on Sunday 24th May 2015.
SUGGESTURE – Improvising & Conducting with Hand Signals.
This is a system developed by Mike Kearney which uses hand-signals to improvise with a band or, in this case, an orchestra. Mike has devised numerous hand-signals and developed an in depth system of how to use them and work with musicians, bands & orchestras to write music on the fly! Check out Mike’s Suggesture blog and short video series to find out more.
Here’s episode 1 to give you a feel for it:
ACETATE COMPOSITION – Live composition using an overhead projector.
This idea was developed by composers Harry Whalley & Jack Nissan – in essence an old-fashioned overhead projector, some acetate sheets & marker pens. The projector projects what is basically a blank canvas onto the wall, and a composer starts to make things up – notes, chord symbols, abstract visuals, graphic scores – anything to communicate ideas to the orchestra (and audience) who are seeing it appear for the first time in front of their eyes!
GET INVOLVED!
We are looking for suggestions from you for hand-signals & written symbols, which we will use to conduct and improvise a piece of music with full orchestra. We have set up a #SpontaneousOrchestra handle on Twitter and a Facebook where you can post your suggestions and we promise to try them out with
Here’s what you need to do:
1. Come up with a hand-signal or gesture, or a written visual symbol or idea.
2. Try to describe what effect you would like it to have on the orchestra:
a) This could be quite a direct instruction – e.g. louder/softer, change the pitch, take a solo, etc.
b) Or more abstract – e.g. an explosion!, fragmented, floaty, scratchy sounds etc.
3. Take a photo or video of your hand signal/symbol, or a written description of it is fine too, and post it on facebook or twitter using the hashtag #SpontaneousOrchestra
We will collect your suggestions and try them out with the orchestra each week. We’ll also try and record them and post back here so you can see how they worked out, and then on Sun 24th May we’ll bring a selection of them into the first ever Spontaneous Orchestra performance at Hidden Door festival, where we’ll be attempting a fully improvised show using hand signals and visuals!
Note: Anyone can do this and your ideas don’t need to be based in any music knowledge or theory – we’ve had a 9 year old conduct the orchestra with Suggesture before! Just a symbol or hand signal and the kind of sound or effect you’d like it to create with the orchestra. There are some examples below to help give you an idea..
Some examples
Here are a few photos & videos as an example of the kind of thing you can send us. Some are taken from Suggesture and some just made up now…
Fragmented sounds
Flap hands like a bird/butterfly = fluttery melody
Shooting star – a short melody or sound flying overhead
Play any note!
Joining people or ideas together in the orchestra – e.g. each dot is a different player.
Fist moves down = a hit / short stab / punchy sound
Mirroring ideas – someone plays something and someone else plays it back
‘Colour of Conflict’ was the name of the last Frontiers project in 2012. This included an orchestra composed of Tinderbox members and choir, young hip-hop collective G-Code and James Gillespies High School Choir. Together they composed a piece over the 10 week course and were led by Prof. Nigel Osborne.
The project was a multi-faith project working with different groups of young people across Edinburgh. It involved the following workshop series across music & different art-forms which were all brought together into an animated film and live orchestral performance. The piece was performed at a concert in the Queens Hall in Edinburgh and at the Usher Hall for the Dalai Lama’s visit to Edinburgh in 2012. The project was put together as a partnership between Tinderbox Project and the Edinburgh Inter-faith Association, and it was funded by the Pump House Trust.
VJ Veils – VJing Workshop with young people from Blackhall Mosque
Battle of the Kites – Kites & stories workshop with young women from Sikh Sanjog
Book-making workshop with Holyrood Roman Catholic High-School
Street Art workshop with Muirhouse Youth Development Group.
Orchestral hip-hop and composition – Tinderbox Orchestra & G-Code – Collaboration between G-Code young hip-hop artists and singers with young musicians from the Tinderbox Orchestra, to compose new music that accompanied the films.
Below you can watch a video from the Street Art Workshop. Through discussions about conflict, the group came up with a number of statements, cut out giant letters from sheets of wood, spray painted them in vibrant colours and then took the statements to the streets of Edinburgh.
The Frontiers Orchestra is a new, inclusive and accessible orchestra aimed at people aged 11 – 25 years old who play any instrument, at any grade or standard, including those with no music experience at all. The project will fuse orchestral, samba and electronic instruments, music and techniques to build a unique ensemble and engaging ethos inspired by community and creativity.
The first rehearsal will be on the 21st October at North Edinburgh Arts Centre in Muirhouse. If you would like to be a part of the orchestra, then fill in the Frontiers Registration Form and post it back to us at the address given.
We are currently running taster sessions to give people an insight into the feel of the orchestra. If you are part of a school or organisation and would like to book an independent taster workshop then please do not hesitate to contact us.
We are looking for voluntary mentors to help mentor the students and support the lead tutors. These positions will include training sessions in community music & leading groups, and the chance to gain hands-on experience working with a range of ages and levels of experience in a community music setting.
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