Composing music about minibeasts

Alice Mullay teaches music to pupils from early years to S4 at Baltasound Junior High School. This class, with a group of 12 P3 and P4 pupils, is part of a project on minibeasts. The pupils compose short musical themes for a variety of minibeasts and record them onto minidisk. In the studio, Alice transfers the themes to the computer and then works with the pupils on arranging the tracks to create a final minibeast composition.

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Teacher profile

Alice is the full-time music teacher at Baltasound Junior High School. She worked previously in a number of other schools on short-term projects and as a supply teacher. 

Alice integrates ICT into most of the creative projects she works on with her pupils - for example, making a school CD of pupils’ compositions, producing a DVD (digital video with audio narration) to accompany live music in the Christmas production, and using Sibelius (software for notating music) to write out parts of compositions. She says, however, that although technology is an increasingly important part of music making it can never replace playing live music. 

As part of her degree course at the University of Edinburgh, Alice covered some music technology, but she has developed her skills mainly through using the technology as a professional musician - composing and recording for the theatre and for community projects. 

Baltasound Junior High on the island of Unst is the most northerly school in Britain. It opened in 1897 as Baltasound Public School and now has 125 pupils from across Unst, ranging from nursery age to S4. Three pupils have free school lunches and there are three pupils with special educational needs. One pupil speaks English as a second language. Baltasound Junior High School was the top ranking small school in Scotland for Standard Grade results in 2002 and 2003. The school has 20 computers and a dedicated ICT room. ICT training for staff is organised through continuing professional development (CPD).

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