A music improvisation workshop at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin.
An unconventional approach to learning involves deconstructing sound to its component parts in an improvisation workshop led by David Cross at Dublin's Project Arts Centre.
A session like this may not look exactly productive but if music is just organised sound, it makes sense to start at the beginning and disorganise.
As a group, the participants practice rhythm, the length of notes, pitch, the duration of notes, texture, technique.
The workshop is all about audience participation and finding out about the grammar of music.
Jazz musician Keith Donald demonstrates how improvisation is used in jazz music with a rendition of 'Three Blind Mice'. He describes improvisation as something that's in your own head, that you hear and you want to express.
Traditional musician Paddy Glackin describes improvisation as technique and demonstrates some examples of how he puts this into practice when playing.
This episode of 'PM' was broadcast on 1 March 1978. The reporter is Áine O'Connor.
PM was a magazine series reporting on aspects of Irish life with interludes for music from Irish performers. PM first began on Tuesday, 20 September 1977 and was initially aired three nights a week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at 7.00pm on RTÉ 1. The original presenters John O'Donoghue, Áine O'Connor, Nicholas Coffey and Doireann Ní Bhriain were later joined by Pat Kenny.
As editor Noel Smyth sees it, the Tuesday programme will consist mainly of film reports on topical events anywhere in Ireland, the Wednesday edition will concentrate on studio discussions, and the Thursday programme will be in Irish, with just as wide a brief as the other two.
(RTÉ Guide, 16 September 1977, Vol.1, No.37, p.18)
PM ran until Thursday, 12 April 1979.
