Students who composed their own piece had the option of picking an animal, character or scene to inspire their piece. They then had to consider how various musical elements might “sound like” the animal, scene or character of their choice. For example. a bird sound might be in the high register (high notes) as opposed to low notes. A grasshopper song might jump around a lot on the piano, etc. Some of the animals, scenes and characters that students picked included cats (yay, we do love cats), fox, mermaid, fairy, platypus, a sunset, Cleopatra …

Other students decided to create an arrangement of a song they like. So over the recording week, we heard a piano cover of Never Gonna Give You Up, of a roller coaster song from the Netherlands, Interstellar, Illusions by Dua Lipa; a harp version of Do-Re-Mi.

Those students who were not as keen to compose/arrange (or did not have the time to do so) performed pieces they had been learning.