Mentoring Dartmouth

Give it the good ol’  college try!

After winning Baronial Bard this year, I took is very to heart that I wanted to save and grow the bardic community. It was brought to my attention that we had a college chapter within the Barony at Dartmouth. I was close with Frenya, Estefania and Frostulf, who were serving as advisors to this chapter. I had first gone to meet the group when they were having their own faire/demo for the school. I went to show support and to get some music going. I met several talented musician’s in the group and offered my services.

My second visit to the school included me teaching a class on how to compose a Contrafact (Filk). We did this as a whole class. I had been working on one of my own, “Bow Hemian Rhapsody”. I brought the unfinished product into the class and then, we as a class worked through our own. I started with a popular song that most people in the class new like the back of their hand (No, there was no hair on the song and certainly no dried mustard).

The second class I brought was a master class. This is where a person would bring a piece that is pretty well worked on or in the process of being completed and we work on enhancing it in front of the group. This is a safe setting where you get to perform a piece without interruption and then we slowly and gently pick it apart to make it better.

The first brave soul was a young gentleman singing “When Johnny came home again”. His twist on it was painful and beautiful. When we finished working, everyone expressed they had chills and some had tears in their eyes.

Next, we had a young Harpist. This was an experience for me as I’d never worked with a stationary instrumentalist before. She was certainly skilled but where we could enhance her was in stage presence. We talked about eye contact, body movement and shaping her melodies and how her hands trailed from her harp. She stated that even she felt more connected  to the piece as well.

I made a few more visits up with the students until my reign was over.