Ben Somewhen - Howard Skempton

In this activity you will create simple melodies decided by the toss of a coin and the roll of a dice. The activity is inspired by Ben Somewhen composed by Howard Skempton. Howard is 75 this year and we are celebrating his birthday with concerts, workshops and new resources of which this is one.

Ben Somewhen is inspired by fifteen black and white drawings of country life adorned with texts by the artist Ben Hartley. The drawings and words are funny observations Hartley made of his life in Devon in the 1960s. 

The 12 minute piece consists of fifteen short contrasting musical episodes which run without a break. Composed for flute, clarinet, harp, violin, viola, two cellos and double bass. The double bass has a central role in the piece and it interacts with different groups of the other instruments throughout the piece.

Listen to the piece here performed by BCMG and recorded by NMC recordings. To hear the full version you will need to have Spotify open:

As you listen notice:

• The quirky and unpredictable melodies Howard composes
• The different character of each section
• How the instruments interact with each other in each section - in particular the double bass.

Find out more about composer Howard Skempton HERE

Please send any music you create to learning@bcmg.org.uk

For printable version of this resource click HERE

Your Turn!

Print or draw a copy of Resource Sheet 1 and find a coin. Toss the coin 8 times to decide on how long each note of your melody will be. Heads = crotchet (1 beat long) and tails = minim (2 beats long). Each time you toss the coin, fill in the top row of the grid. Below is a filled in example. Practice your rhythm on one note.

Now choose 6 notes from the C major scale. Give each note a number from 1-6. Roll the dice 8 times. Whatever number you get will decide which of your 6 notes to play. - the note names to the grid or use notation. Here is our version:

Notated and performed:

Now practice playing yours. Because you have used chance procedures (coin and dice) to decide on your melody, it will also have a quirky and unpredictable feel like Howard's melodies. 

Now look at the drawings on the next pages. Choose one you like and play your melody with the character of the drawing. You could play around with dynamics (how loud or quiet), tempo (how fast or slow), playing techniques and articulations.

Hocketing means dividing a melody up between two or more players. If you have someone to play with, you could create a hocketed version of your melody.

Using your 'score', decide who is going to play which notes of the melody. Play around with this before deciding who is playing what notes.   Mark on your 'score' in different colours who will play which notes:

If you want to compose a longer melody, you could carry on for 16 instead of 8 notes. You could also create an accompaniment to the melody for a 2nd or 3rd musician by using one of your notes as drone (long note) or by creating a simple repeating rhythm pattern.