Tag Archives: summer camp

A Little Lax on the Early Bird…

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OUR ORIGINAL MAY 1st EARLY BIRD EXTENSION
HAS COME & GONE BUT WE’RE A LITTLE LAX…

which means you can still get a 15% – $40-$50 – discount!
But this won’t last for long!!
REGISTER NOW & use “early bird” as the promo code.

Sign up for multiple weeks and GET $105-$125 OFF!

Additional siblings & referrals gets you even more discounts.

And don’t forget that the fee listed is the price you pay.
There are no other additional fees or taxes charged!

 

IN CASE YOU DON’T KNOW, MusiCamp is an excellent summer day camp experience for kids (8-14 years) that explores music making in a positive environment, filled with activities that build your child’s musical skills and challenges their creativity in intuitive and fun ways.
The activities are designed to supplement traditional formal musical training but also be accessible to the less experienced… read more

 

THIS YEAR’S WEEKLY THEMES
The Blues

All the greats – from the Rolling Stones and Daft Punk to Beyonce and Katy Perry –  know the blues. So should you!

Composition & Song

Appeals to aspiring song writers and singers, with practical and fun hands on experience at composing and arranging!

Roots Music

Call on fiddlers, guitarists, ukulele and banjo players and others who just love to sing and harmonize. Special guest this week is acclaimed roots musician Hannah Naiman. (Rental of instruments can be arranged.)

West African Drumming

It’s all about polyrhythms and the GROOVE. No need for a drum, guest mast drummer, Anna Melnikoff is bringing her chorus of dunks and djembes.

More about our camps themes and registration can be accessed here.

 

 

visit our Flickr Gallery – click on the images below

MusiCamp at a glance

Instrument Making at MusiCamp

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Yes, these are real, playable instruments. They aren’t toys or kids’ versions. They are still played today and have an interesting social history worth telling. But best of all, they are fun to play and are excellent pedagogical tools for teaching musical concepts of tonality and harmony.

 

The Diddley Bow

The diddley bow is the instrument featured in the picture above on the left. As you can hear and see in the video below, the diddley bow is played with the neck of a glass bottle and a stick (though at MusiCamp we replace the glass bottle with a copper washer, it’s a little less dangerous). The result is very bluesy! No wonder the diddley bow is considered the precursor to the slide blues guitar.

The diddley bow is related to many different instruments found around the world (like the andibidi from the Congo, the umakweyana of West Africa, the dan bau of Vietnam, the gobichand of India). But this particular set up, a metal string expanded over wooden 2X4 (it used to be the wall or beam of house) with a metal or glass resonator, is of African American origin and emerged out of  the ugly social and economic conditions of slavery in the Southern United States.

More pictures of the diddley bow construction at MusiCamp can be found here.

The Bucket Bass

The featured image at the top of this post show three campers building/painting their bucket basses.

Below is a video of Andrea, MusiCamp’s director, and her son performing In The Highways Of The Hedges with the bucket bass. NOTE, you need headphones or good speakers to hear the bass because laptops and mobile devices tend to cut out the bottom end.

The bucket bass, closely related to the washtub or tea-chest bass, is not so different from the diddley bow. Both are one-stringed instruments and vary the tension on the string to alter pitch. The emergence and use of either the bucket, the washtub or the chest as a resonator is similarly linked to conditions of economic hardship.

For more information about the construction of the bucket bass visit our earlier post about making a washtub bass.

Cigar Box Diddley Bow

In 2015 we started making cigar box diddley bows as well (picture below).

cigarbox diddleybow

Diddley Bow Song

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Must Hear! Especially the ending!!
Diddley Bow Song from the Rhythm & Stuff week at MusiCamp 2015.

 

A large part of MusiCamp is making instruments and the tin-can-2X4 diddley bow featured in this post is just one type of instrument campers can choose to make during their week at MusiCamp. This past week, these three campers decided to really explore the playing of the instrument and in particular drew from the instrument’s African origins. They based this song off of a Malawian song we heard from another Youtube video that discusses the history of the diddley bow – and it was so much fun to figure out and then play – and these guys did a great job getting the groove! Have a listen to them and make sure you listen to the end to hear their singing!

 

Malawi was probably used as an example in “The History of the Diddley Bow” video because Malawians were and are so successful at using recycled containers as resonators for homemade instruments and then creating music that is exciting and fun yet distinctly Malawian. I spent a few years in Malawi in the 1990s and especially recall the Malawian Chibuku beer box guitar!

 

The diddley bow, as seen in the above video, with tin resonator attached to wooden 2X4, is believed to be an African American origins, though it is related to many different instruments found around the world, like the andibidi from the Congo, the umakweyana of West Africa, the dan bau of Vietnam, the gobichand of India. More information on instrument making at MusiCamp can be accessed here.

 

By the way, in case you are wondering, the Rhythm & Stuff week was originally scheduled as West African Drumming Camp; however, because we didn’t have enough registrants (we needed 7 registrants to run the drumming) we ran an alternative program that involved lots of rhythm fun, including lots of body percussion as well as beatboxing, rhythm games and some hand drumming and singing.

 

THE BLUES: From Shouts to 12 Bars

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From great rock ‘n’ roll legends like Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, to pop divas like Beyonce or Katy Perry – they all know THE BLUES. And so should you!

Clapping on the off beats
Clapping on the off beats
Exploring the blues on the diddley bo
Exploring the blues on the diddley bo
The blues progression
The blues progression

Blues is the root of all popular music and Blues Camp exposes campers to the rhythmic and melodic feels and harmonic frameworks of The Blues through groovy gospel tunes, African American shouts and work songs, the pentatonic scale as well as the blues itself – from its swingin’ roots to present day Soul and R&B.
And we’ll do this along with the tonne of musical games, beat boxing, body percussion and other fun-in-the-park activities we do every week.

Campers will:

  • build and compose on their own instruments (and explore some ideas about acoustics)
  • learn and improvise on the pentatonic scale, African American shouts, and work songs
  • vocalize the blues rhythms with beatboxing, feel the grooves with body percussion and hear the chord progressions with singing and instruments playing
  • write lyrics to, compose, improvise and sing over 12-bar blues and its derivatives.

While we do lots of vocal based activities, campers who already have instrumental experience are welcome to bring their instrument for this week and explore the blues instrumentally as well.

From the pictures above you can see some campers making diddley bos and bucket basses. The diddley bo is the precursor to the slide guitar and you click the picture below to see how bluesy it sound!. For more info on bucket basses click here.

Check out our Gallery for more pictures of previous camps!

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Roots Music Camp

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Special guest artist for this week includes acclaimed singer / song-writer / banjo player / fiddler Hannah Shira Naiman!

Banjo instruction
Workshopping their instruments for the first time.
Making instruments
Ensemble practicing
End of week performance

Drawing from old time and Appalachian musics, bluegrass, shaped note singing, and other folk musics from North America as well as the English and Celtic traditions, Roots Music Week is all about group singing and playing folk songs. While there is always room for those who just want to sing, this week we welcome campers to bring their fiddle, guitar, ukulele, or banjo – or we can arrange the rental for those following a new found interest on one of these instruments. Guest artist co-leading the week is acclaimed singer/banjo/fiddler/song writer Hannah Shira Naiman, who happens to also be a professionally trained dancer, so there’s a chance we’ll also be doing a little jigging, clogging or square dancing! As we do in every week, we’ll also be making an instrument and visiting Dufferin Grove park for pizza days and other outdoor activity. The week will end with a coffee house style performance that parents and friends are invited to attend.

No previous training required. But those with skills on or ambition to play violin/fiddle, guitar, ukelel, or banjo will want to consider this week!

Check out our MusiCamp Flickr Gallery for more pics of MusiCamp

MusiCamp 2014 in a Flickr Review

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Ahhh… to recall the warmth and fun when it’s soooo cold outside! Here are links to our Flickr pics from 2014. Click on the picks to take you to the Flickr album!

MusiCamp 2014 in Review

MusiCamp 2014 in review

MusiCamp 2014 in Review

Blues Week 2014

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Blues Week 2014

Roots Week 2014

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Roots Week 2014

Composition and Song Week 2014

Screen Shot 2015-02-03 at 4.02.01 PM

Composition and Song Week 2014

 

 

Making a Washtub Bass at MusiCamp?… hmm…

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As I mentioned in previous posts, MusiCamp was considering the possibility of campers making washtub basses as well as diddley bos this summer. So, this past Victoria Day my partner and I attempted to make a washtub bass.

For those of you who don’t know, a washtub bass is a one-stringed bass made up of a stick, a string, and an overturned washtub as the resonator (or better understood as what amplifies the sound of the plucked string).

Tin olive oil container on left and 5 gallon plastic bucket on right.

We tried two different containers (the resonator of the instrument), two different strings, and a variety of playing techniques. While we quickly resolved what physical equipment (resonator and string) worked best, the playing techniques is clearly a work in progress ;) .

One container was a food-industry size oil container. It was metal and so I figured it would resonate more like a traditional washtub than the other alternative resonator, the 5 gallon plastic bucket. But the plastic bucket had a way fuller sound and the one we much preferred.

The two strings we tried was a cotton rope and a plastic weed-wacker line. We liked the rope more but it busted before we even got a chance to properly savour the sound. Luckily, the sound of the weed-waker line wasn’t dramatically different from the rope.

The construction simply involved taking a rake or broom handle, indenting a groove on one end and drilling a hole in the other. We also drilled a whole in the middle of the container/resonator. We then tied the one end of the weed-waker line to the container/resonator and the other end to the stick (which involved wrapping it around the stick a number of times and then securing it with duck-taped). Then we inserted the groove/indent on the rim of the bucket, the string becomes taught, and we started to twang away.

I had assumed that playing different pitches/notes involved moving the stick back and forth; however, this seemed very difficult to keep in tune -as you can see in the youtube video below.

The playing technique that I soon adopted involved placing the stick a little closer to the centre of the bucket and using my fingers (usually just the index finger or the whole hand) to pitch the notes as well as moving the stick.

So, while I still need to work on the bass playing technique and possibly experiment with the instrument design to help secure the stick a little more (and thereby the intonation of the pitches/notes I play!) it is quite a simple thing to make and it makes a great bass sound!

Final say on the wash tub bass at MusiCamp? It’s definitely going to happen. I.e., if campers want to make one, it is very possible!