Small group work
Before you watch any videos, take a moment to get set up and ready to play. Create the most comfortable set up you can with your instrument and take a moment to check it’s working ok by playing a few notes that you know.
Building your performance structure
Once you are able to play your parts with some fluency and flow, and have practised moving between the parts, looping and layering with other parts, you can start to experiment with and plan the structure for your final performance.
Your final performance can include: the A and B sections, an introduction, looping and layering of the parts, solos, duets, and repetition.
To perform with a strong structure, you have these choices:
Option One:
Practice playing your part with someone else on the same part. You can either alternate between sections A and B as the song does, or you can take it in turns to ‘call’ when to change between sections.
Option Two:
Practice playing your part with someone on a different part.
To practice playing in time together in a small group, try having a percussion instrument playing all the time – this acts as a kind of conductor and can help keep people together.
Practice bringing in one part at a time rather than all trying to play together from the start.
Try to balance your volume with no-one playing too loud, so you can hear everyone.
Take it in turns to practice counting the group in: ‘1 and 2 and 3 and 4’.
Remember that the song has a ‘pick up’ note (an anacrusis) so the melody starts on the last beat of a bar, not the first.
Our Modulo arrangement of A Keelie Makolay includes a percussion ‘break’. This is a two bar solo just for the percussion and drums. Watch this video to learn it or make up your own two bar percussion break.
You can also add a percussion break into your arrangement between sections wherever you think it will work!
