Kids with special needs use technology to compose music

This week’s guest blog comes from Moira Thorburn, a Skoog champion and all round music hero. Here she describes a collaboration between her school in Edinburgh and an SEN school in Australia. The project focussed on composing and recording a unique piece of music exploring the cultural themes of Scotland and Australia. Both schools provide support for kids with additional support needs.

“Braidburn School Edinburgh and Durham Road School Perth Western Australia produced a piece of music in CD form as part of celebrating and commemorating the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow this summer.

I visited Durham Road School in April 2013 taking a Skoog with me and demonstrated it to different groups of pupils across all ages and abilities in the school. We decided we would go ahead with a joint project. Once the school had purchased its own Skoog we decided they would compose music to give a flavour of Scotland and we at Braidburn would compose music to show aspects of Australia.

The school worked independently and then in April this year I revisited Durham Road School and along with the member of staff doing their end of the project, Karli Dore and the pupils we put the whole thing together. This was then turned into a CD a copy of which was presented to the CEO of Glasgow 2014 David Grevemberg at the GTC annual lectur in Glasgow City Chambers where the Braidburn pupils were performing other work they had completed with Drake Music Scotland again using Skoogs along with other music technology.

The joint project was a great success covering many aspects in the Curriculum for Excellence guidelines. The guys and gals at Skoog were a a tremendous and valuable source of support both to myself in Scotland and Karli in Australia. The team at Skoog definitely put success of use of their product before profit.”

Kids with special needs compose music using technology.

Kids with special needs compose music using technology.