Keys to the musical highway

Interactive software is helping children to feel more confident about making music - and it has also inspired a theatre show in Ballymun, writes Sylvia Thompson.

A large musical contraption stands in the middle of the stage at the Axis Arts Centre in Ballymun. A cross between a piece of contemporary sculpture and a medley of instruments usually used by street musicians, it contains chimes, cowbells, cymbals, horns, an Indian harmonium, an accordion, steel drums, gongs, teapots, small milk churns, and much much more.

"We call it Big Biddy and we invite children on to the stage to play different instruments during the show," says writer/performer Little John Nee, whose innovative musical theatre show, An t-Amhrán Briste/The Broken Song, is currently on at the Axis.

The inspiration for this bilingual show came from a collaboration between Little John Nee and John Hesnan, the Galway-based information technologist who has developed interactive software products for teaching music to children.

"When I saw the MusiCan software, I was delighted that there was attention given to an inclusive system of music education. Music is one of the greatest human resources anyone can have - mentally, emotionally and spiritually - and too often in our society today, we turn it into a commodity," says Little John Nee.

Particularly concerned about how easily children can be led to believe they are not good at music, Little John Nee was keen to write a show which would counteract these tendencies.

"There has been a lot of mis-education regarding music," he says. "For instance, if you take a classful of children playing the tin whistle, one child who hasn't got the propensity for playing traditional Irish music can be told he is not good at music - and he can spend the rest of his life believing he is not good at music."

So with his strong belief in the value of music confirmed by MusiCan's interactive, inclusive approach to education, Little John Nee set about writing a musical theatre piece which would inspire all children to believe in their ability to enjoy and perform music.

WATCHING EXCERPTS FROMthe show, this writer could see clearly how much fun making music can be. First, the three performers - Little John Nee, Laura Sheeran and Caoimhe Connolly - sing a sort of country blues song in Irish. After that, they demonstrate the extraordinary sounds that come from a washboard base (created out of an old metal bath with a brush handle and a shoelace for the string), a washboard and spoon, and a tinjo (a banjo made from a tin). And then Sheeran performs a most amazing piece of vocal harmony, created on the spot with a looping pedal which allows her to sing in various different pitches and rhythms, adding each new layer as she goes. The show also contains Motown, ska and reggae music.

The story itself is about a band of travelling musicians who fix broken songs.

"We fix any song which has been forgotten about, unfinished or stuck in your heart because you're too afraid to sing it," says Little John Nee. The audience is encouraged to join in at various stages throughout the performance and individuals - particularly those who don't believe in their musical ability - are invited on stage to play the ukulele alongside John.

Children from the nine primary schools linked to the Axis Arts Centre will get the chance to use the MusiCan software and see the performance piece.

"This is an experimental piece. We had three tasks: we had to figure out how to embed the software into the audience; then bring them to the theatre; and support classroom lessons in music afterwards," explains Ray Yeates, director of Axis Arts Centre.

THE BEAUTY OFboth the software and the performance piece is that they allow children - and adults too - to access music at their own level. "This form of access is integral to how we work at Axis. We don't have an outreach department because we already work closely with all the local schools and St Michael's House for children with disabilities," says Yeates.

The project has been funded by Foras na Gaeilge, and Axis is encouraging local schools to purchase a site licence to MusiCan which would include 50 sets of CD-Roms for use by the schoolchildren.

To get a feel for the MusiCan software itself and see how children interact with it, I was introduced to children at Gaelscoil Bhaile Munna. Sitting in their prefab school building, groups of three children showed us their favourite games.

These included Billy the Wonder Horse, a piece of animated film to which the children were adding a musical score. Sounds complicated, but in reality they simply had to select different instruments from a panel and try them out to see whether they liked how the sounds matched up with the images.

"It's like learning and playing at the same time," said Eoin Downes (11). Beat Townis another popular game. In this, different characters represent the different musical terms which define the required beats and the children are introduced to crochets, quavers, minims and semibreves by getting the characters to jump on trampolines to the correct beat.

In another game, coloured and numbered birds are used to represent the different notes in a musical scale and, in an ingenious way, these birds fly over to a gate which is then transformed into the musical staff (the set of five parallel lines on which notes are written).

In yet another game, the children have to decide the tempo of the music at a wedding. Tapping the space bar on a computer keyboard in time to electronic sounds, the pupils suddenly realise that they've missed their break. Now that would rarely happen in any other class, would it?

• An t-Amhrán Briste/The Broken Song , by Little John Nee, continues at Axis Arts Centre, Main Street, Ballymun, until Fri. 01-8832100; www.axis-ballymun.ie