Creating Music at Home

In this activity you will create music using things you find in the garden or park inspired by composer John Cage's Child of Tree.

In this activity you will make music for your family playing objects that you find around your home, inspired by John Cage's Living Room Music. 

In this activity you will create music for a superhero of your own design. This might be a melody, a rhythm or sound effect or a combination of these.

In this activity you will create your own musical graphic scores inspired by composers such as Cornelius Cardew, Cathy Berberian and John Cage.

In this activity you will listen to BCMG oboe player Melinda Maxwell performing her own composition Sounding Out Varèse inspired by Octandre by Edgard Varese. You will doodle along to the music and then use your doodle to create your own music.

In this activity you will create your own percussion piece inspired by Ionisation for 13 percussionists by composer Edgard Varèse. Varèse was fascinated by the quality of sounds and revolutionised how percussion instruments were used in Classical music. Many of the titles of his music borrow from scientific ideas. 

In this activity, the map of your daily walk, scoot or cycle will become a 'musical score'. Your musical ideas will be inspired by how you move and what you see.

In Sequenza III for Voice, composer Luciano Berio asks the singer to mutter, gasp, laugh and whine as well as go through a range of emotions from tense to dreamy to bewildered. Lockdown has also been a roller coaster of emotion for many people. In this activity you will compose your own 'Lockdown Sequenza' for voice.

In this activity you will create music for imaginary or real deep sea worlds, inspired by Deep by composer Shiori Usui. You will also be encouraged to use the free software Audacity to help create your music. 

In this activity you will use the noisy toys around your house to create music inspired by the music of Joseph Haydn, Benedict Mason and the Modified Toy Orchestra.

Composing is often thought of a magical art that only a few special people can do. In this simple guide to composing, discover that composing is something anyone can do if they open their ears, play and experiment. 

This resource is a simple guide to using the recording and editing software Audacity

In this activity you will have the chance to compose a duet for BCMG's NEXT musicians by creating a graphic score. Send your graphic score to us, and the NEXT musicians will perform a selection of your music in an online concert on Tuesday 22 July.

In this activity you will create simple melodies to describe friends and family thorough the lens of the zodiac, using a music box app and/or a real music box, inspired by Tierkreis by the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen

In this activity you will compose and notate a 60 second piece of music inspired by A Dust in Time by composer Huang Ruo and use the passacaglia musical form. 

In this activity you are going to compose a piece of music for 1 performer that is a short drama between 3 characters inspired by Masks for solo flute by British composer Oliver Knussen