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Rock on

Iain has been coaching students on their first ever RSL Rockschool Piano exams for Shades Music via online tuition for the Moseley-based music tuition centre across lockdown. RSL was founded on an ethos to provide innovative, contemporary qualifications for music and the arts. Being at the forefront of the industry for over 25 years, RSL's operations include Rockschool Graded Music Exams, Professional Diplomas, Vocational Qualifications (VQ's) and Performance Arts Awards (PAA). The exams assess students on their command of instrument, sync or pulse, accuracy and understanding and style and expression as well as providing them with a performance platform. It is hoped the students will undertake their examinations later in the year.



Dragon world! A creative classroom composing project with a Y1 bubble in Wolverhampton

Iain has been working with a bubble of Year 1s on creating a dragon composition with an emphasis on recording, editing techniques and recognising a link between shape and pitch using physical movements. Socially distanced, the children have improvised and watched each other's mimes as unique dragons, exploring physical movement and images as a creative stimulus. The children together have used a small number of thoroughly disinfected musical instruments, as well as body and vocal sounds mixed with ICT to create their own immersive and evocative dragon soundscapes together. Some children have recorded their own short poetic fragments and narrative to enrich the soundscape and everyone has learned how to record and change sounds onscreen. It is fun to explore sounds and music through mime activities, and children have practised joining in and start/stopping, following a dragon conductor! Pupils' dragon artwork will appear with their integrated soundscape as a video presentation.


Iain Masson's concertina band waltz 'Frivol' broadcast has been broadcast live on Black Country Radio

Iain Masson's concertina band waltz 'Frivol' broadcast has been broadcast live on Black Country Radio, performed by the West Midlands Concertina Group. 


COVID-19 - Iain has been supporting children of Key Workers 

He has been delivering music activities at a primary school on a housing estate in Wednesfield every week across the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

Online lessons  

Iain has been delivering online piano lessons for his Shades Music students since March, over 70% moving to weekly lessons online during the national lockdown.