Tag Archives: music

entertainment, The Arts

Festival of the Arts

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Every September Hailsham, in EastcSussex, has 2 weeks dedicated to the Arts.

There is something for everyone. The Downland Poets hold a poetry reading, with an open mic, a local Townswomen’s Guild puts on a play. There is music in the church and other venues, workshops in painting, glass work and other things. Comedy is also included.

There is street drama, a talk on the history of Punch and Judy, and the magic of pantomime, as well as a performance by the Ukrainian Choir and Dancers.

Children aren’t left out, either. There are puppet shows and workshops for them, too, as well as stories. And a writing competition.

There is also a short story competition for adults, and a ‘Meet the Author’ session. No, I’ve not been invited to take part in that! 😕

Near the beginnjng of this festival, artists were invited to enter artwofk to be disp.ayed in shop windows. I had some of my paintings exhibited in that.

On one of the bridges, more recently, artists has been exhibited on a bridge over a disused railway line, now a footpath.

During the pandemic, the organisers put artwork online in a virtual art gallery. They have continued it this year, and I am pleased to say that some of my art is exhibited.

If you are interested, you can reach the virtual art gallery on http://www.hailshamfestival.co.uk

Do you have anything similar where you live?

I just went to loo, online at the gallery, and my work isn’t there! Still there are some good artists, so it’s still worth a look.

Further update.

My work is now there. You have to click on the picture shown and it then brings up the others.

While you’re there, take a look at some of the other excellent artists’ work.

memories

Creating Sound: Childhood Instruments and Memories

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I was changing the toilet roll in the bathroom the other morning when I inexplicably thought about how toilet rolls were in the 1950s.

Yes, I’m that old.

Anyway, I thought about the old Izal toilet rolls. 

They were a bit like tracing paper. In fact, we sometimes used them as such. They were hard and very scratchy. Horrid.

‘What has this to do with music?’ I hear you ask.

Well, while it was not good for its original purpose, it was brilliant to use with a comb to make a paper and comb musical instrument.

For those who don’t know about this, you wrapped the paper loosely around the teeth of the comb and made a buzzing sound with your lips. This made the paper vibrate and make a sound. By altering the pitch, you could play a tune.

We used to take a piece of broad-leaved grass, hold it vertically between our thumbs. Blowing our thumbs made a sound. 

Admittedly, not a nice one!

Paper straws could also be made into a kind of noise-producing item. Cut the end of the straw so it made an inverted V shape and blow. This didn’t last long, though, as the end got wet and stopped working. Pitch could be varied by the length of the straw. A group could play a simple tune. (Theoretically!)

Blowing across the end of bottles was a good noise-maker, too. If you got different sized bottles, you could make different notes.

We also made noises by cupping our hands together and blowing between our thumbs. But raising the fingers of the top hand, we made different notes. Favourite was a cuckoo’s call.

Tapping a pencil on your teeth and moving your mouth would also change the pitch of the tap, and you could ‘play’ a tune.

The last one I remember took some organising.

You took a wine glass (your mother’s best worked well) and added a little water. You dipped your finger in to make it damp, then ran it gently around the rim. It made a ringing sound. 

If you added different amounts of water to several glasses, you could, with a lot of trial and error, get a scale, thus play a simple tune.

Admittedly, some of these can hardly be described as music, but still…

Did you do any of these things? Do you know of any other things we did in childhood to make sounds? Let us know in the comments.

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