On Saturday the 26th of February I was fortunate enough to be able to take part in SAISA music. Due to the ongoing pandemic, SAISA music was held online rather than in person as it usually would be, however it was still amazing to be able to take part in the first SAISA event in 2 years.

The first google meets which I attended was the opening ceremony in which I received an extremely interesting speech from the keynote speaker Eliza James, a world famous violinist who played the violin for many famous artists such as John Legend. Following that, I attended my first official SAISA music workshop. The workshop was called IB Bossa Nova and although at first the terminology used was extremely foreign and complex to me, I managed to learn a lot about this particular genre of music and its characteristics.

The second workshop which I then attended was on Music Technology. During this workshop I learnt how to use a digital website called Soundtrap to create different loops and combine them with pre-recorded loops to create a song. This workshop was very interesting as I had never really experimented with musical technology before and it provided me with a new experience.

 

Following this workshop I joined my final workshop which was on Jazz Theory and Improv. As this workshop was at a beginners level I didn’t really learn many new things as I already had a fairly decent background in jazz however it was extremely refreshing to remind myself of some of the basics such as the blues scale and a blues chord progression. I also got to experiment these techniques on my keyboard.

Overall SAISA music was an extremely interesting and useful learning experience which I vastly benefited from and I am very glad that I was able to be a part of it this year.

Learning Outcomes:

Identify your own strengths and develop areas for personal growth: During the jazz workshop I learnt that jazz improv was a strength of mine and following this session I set the goal of tapping back into my inner jazz musician as this was a genre which I had abandoned a few years ago and I feel like it is an area where I could enjoy music.

Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills in the process: Using a form of digital music technology for the first time was quite challenging as it was an entirely new process and therefore I learnt many new skills during this workshop such as how to operate a digital music technology website and how to use loops to your advantage.