(Musical) Notes from a Damp Shed

Like me, you’ve probably been spending a bit of extra time at home recently. I’ve spent most of it here in my shed.

I’ve been in here so much since the beginning of March that my daughter says I now smell of damp wood. It’s where I compose, record and for the last few weeks it's where I’ve started to deliver music therapy, digitally. I’ve been a music therapist in the UK for 10 years, and until two months’ ago the thought of providing it over the internet had never, ever crossed my mind… yet now, thanks to Covid-19, digital music therapy (is that what we call it?) is the only music therapy I do. Necessity is the mother of invention and all that. The learning curve has been steep. Technology has become my best friend and my greatest tormentor. As countless musicians across the world are finding, making music ‘remotely’ comes with sizeable hurdles. I’ve never said ‘lag’ so much in my life.

In my shed, looking in control…

But there’s also a load of energy flying around the shed (along with a fly or two) that I guess is a by-product of the fact that this is something new and potentially transformative. The act of keeping us apart has forced us to find new ways to reconnect, many of which have combined music and technology. From Gareth Malone (@GarethMaloneofficial) to Jacob Collier (@jcolliermusic) to the Kanneh-Masons (@ShekuKMOfficial) and countless other musicians big and small, the internet has been filled these last couple of months with brilliant musicians using technology innovatively to make and experience incredible music together.

We're social animals, so we’re hard-wired to seek connection with others. And for 1000s of years we’ve done that through music – particularly in times of adversity. How vital a role did music play during the World Wars? Or to the African slaves, who’s musical response (when everything else was taken away from them) shaped most of the popular music we listen to today?

WW2 was the first global crisis where technology and music could be combined as a force to bring us together. By then, nearly all households had a radio, and countless residents in the care homes I’ve worked at have told me how important hearing Vera Lynn or Glenn Miller ‘on the wireless’ was; for entertainment and morale of course, but also because they knew millions of others were listening and singing along to the same songs, feeling the same feelings at the same time.

Back then, the flow of communication via technology was largely ‘one-way’, delivered into our radios. Today's global crisis comes at a time when our technology allows two-way, three-way, even ten-way communication. And that means that as well as music being delivered to us, it can also be made and communicated by us, and increasingly, between us.

…I’m not.

I think exploring this potential for 'shared digital musical experience' has now become incredibly important, given that access to communal live music - whether that's singing in a choir, going to a gig, playing in a band, or having a live music therapy session - has been, for the moment, taken away.

So that’s my starting point for this journey. I'll try to update regularly from the damp shed, and would love to hear your own experiences and what you think, so if you are interested or know other people who might be, then please click the like and share button on this attune music page and by all means get in touch...

Thanks!

Phil