The music surrounds you!

Michel Laforge is a Sudbury-based multidisciplinary sound artist who creates music, sound design and interactive installations. You may have heard his work in Telecolor, at Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario, YES Theatre, or at the Up Here festival. Here he reviews his electronic music workshops at Carrefour francophone’s 2023 summer camps.

"Music surrounds you, music is everywhere"

This is what I systematically explain to the children I welcome when I give my electronic music and sound design workshop, whether in a school context or at the Carrefour francophone summer camps.

Just stop and listen.

I explain to them that you can make music with traditional instruments, but thanks to technology, you can also use everyday sounds to create your own. All you have to do is stop and listen.

Closing your eyes and listening – this mini-meditation with which I always begin the workshop – proves a particularly fruitful exercise at outdoor summer camps: the rhythmic chirping of grasshoppers, the rustling of leaves in the wind, other children playing, the sound of chunks of rock, and of course the ubiquitous Sudburian slague, are among the sounds that children identify.

Sound harvesting.

Armed with my portable recorder (which I sometimes replace with my cell phone when I forget the batteries), we harvest these sounds just as we harvest blueberries before baking a pie.

Off to the studio.

On our short walk to the mobile studio I have set up in the kitchen of the school where the camp is held, we start dreaming about what we want to tell with our sounds.

This is precisely the approach I use when I compose music or sound for my professional projects. If there is no story, or at least no emotion, you go off in all directions and less often end up with something usable.

Fun and experimentation.

We arrive at the makeshift studio, transfer the files to the computer, and get to work with the samples we have collected. The ultimate goal: to have fun and experiment with sound manipulation to discover its possibilities. Here, accidents are welcome!

Make way for creativity.

Each group has fun singing into the microphone, playing with the synthesizers and manipulating samples and other sounds to create their own little sound work. I am blown away by their creativity.

It is the story of a monster...

The orange group decides to create a soundscape with a little music to tell the story of a scary monster who lives in the forest near the summer camp.

Discover their music here .

It is rap time for some.

The blue group is having fun with the microphone in all sorts of ways. What little awkwardness there was at the start of the day seems to have disappeared. Even one of the hosts decides to have a rap.

Discover their music here.

The creation of a musical piece.

Some groups are joining forces: the orange and green groups recorded the vocals of a game led by the artist Chloé Thériault earlier in the day, and are using them to create the main rhythm of a short musical piece.

Discover their music here.

The unexpected arrival of aliens...

And finally, the morning sound harvest is used extensively in this short soundscape about the unexpected arrival of aliens at summer camp! The red and blue groups not only use rock noises and other sounds as percussion instruments, they even choreograph a dance to accompany their composition!

Discover their music here.

While technology and screens can certainly undermine children’s creativity, when used judiciously as a support in a context like this, they can also unlock new horizons! All you have to do is close your eyes for a few moments, just long enough to “open your ears”.