Nick

I am thoroughly enjoying doing my placement with OPUS and I have had some fantastic musical interactions with the children, their families and the staff at both Nottingham and Leicester hospital. I have also learnt a lot from taking moments to stand back and watch the OPUS musicians Nick, Richard and Sarah in their musical interactions. On one particular afternoon I also experienced the lesson of ‘‘Have No Expectations’. This is something Nick had mentioned in the musician training course that I attended in October of last year. During my afternoon at the hospital I found that we mainly played and then vacated the space as most people seemed to enjoy listening but not wanting to take up the offer of playing a percussion instrument or singing along.
After a morning of rewarding Social interactions it did seem to move more slowly for me. However, as the OPUS musicians reminded me, in the hospital space we are there first and foremost as musicians and if that is what required at that time that is what we do. This was a good lesson to revisit because being a musician and playing repertoire is just as important as the more social interactions. Ronald Borcazon (2004) Writes how “listening to music can be considered interactive if it is purposeful in nature” (9).I would consider all the music used in the hospital purposeful in nature as its aim is to first and foremost to create a positive atmosphere. My lesson from this afternoon was that I do not need to have a full on social musical interaction to have a positive effect on the space and that allowing people to just listen to the music is a very important part of OPUS has to offer.

Walking through the wards this morning, we came on to one ward and Nick had gone ahead to observe the atmosphere on the ward. Whilst he was making his assessment Sarah and I began playing the song “I can see clearly now the rain has gone”. We began the song instrumentally and in a calming manner, and then we wandered into a bay area. Once in the bay I introduced the vocal line to the song.
As we played the song a young toddler from a different area of the ward expressed an interest in the music. Nick handed the toddler an egg shaker, as we played through a variety of songs and pieces of music, she continued to play along. After a while she became interested in my guitar and so I sat next to her in the ward space. I then invited her to strum the guitar, which she accepted and then proceed to say the words ‘music’. To acknowledge this verbal expression I sang the word ‘music’ back to her. As she strummed the guitar I alternated between the chords C major and G major. She strummed the chords in various ways and I used my voice to mimic the strumming pattern she performed. Sarah and Nick proceed onto the next bay, I felt compelled to follow and the toddler also came with us to the next bay. Here we continued our musical interaction, briefly moving from the guitar to the xylophone and then back to the guitar. We finished this interaction with a funky version of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ in C Major.
What I realised from this musical interaction was that it was not important for me to follow Sarah and Nick into the next bay, and It could have affected my musical interaction with the toddler. However, I was fortunate enough that this did not happen and it actually gave the toddler the opportunity to investigate the other instruments available to her. This time it actually worked well but it is something that I will be aware of in future musical interactions.
After waving the toddler goodbye I looked around the environment and observed the space to be calm and relaxed. Later when we left this space Nick informed Sarah and me that when he had inspected the ward at the beginning of the session the ward was actually very busy and stressful. I could not help wonder if the music may have been responsible for this change in atmosphere. In ‘Music and the young mind’ Harris (2009) writes that “Music can have a calming effect on us although we may not be very conscious of it” (19). Reflecting on my experience and this statement I cannot help but feel that this was the case on this occasion.

I had a great experience at the very start of the day; we had entered the ward space already playing. As the ward was very quite I was playing at a very low volume, we had gathered round the bed of a young boy who was very much interested in the music and he knew Sarah and Richard well. I had also met this young boy two weeks before and he remembered my face. When we started playing the song I was the furthest away from the young boy. I think this made it difficult for him to hear what I was playing and so he requested for me to come and stand by his bedside. I experienced this invite as enthusiasm for the music and this enthusiasm became even more evident when we played the song Zamina. He was eager to have this song replayed; as there were other patients on the ward it was important to play other songs in between Zamina. Initially, Sarah, Richard and I sang Zamina at a well projected volume, eventually the young boy began to join in. However, by the fourth time of playing the song the young boy’s singing was a lot louder, I had lowered the volume of my singing voice and eventually the young boy was singing on his own. I found it moving to see him passionate about singing this song. He also wanted to invite the nursing staff and other people who were on the ward at the time to join in and sing along. However, some were too self conscious to join in and the nursing staffs were very busy. However this did not stop him enjoying the moment, building a musical relationship with myself and the other musicians, as well as increasing his confidence in his own vocal expression.