The Music Department is based in the beautiful Lake House. It has a variety of rooms available for both class and individual teaching, in addition to office space for the Director of Music. At present, there are 2 main teaching classrooms, 9 individual practice/teaching rooms and storage for equipment, music and instruments.
The department has a variety of upright pianos, many by Yamaha, and there is a Yamaha C7 grand piano in Lake House and also one in the school Assembly Hall.
There are 3 new Yamaha CVP-501 Clavinova digital pianos used for class teaching (2 in Lake House, the other for use in Kingfishers), and the department is equipped with projectors and interactive whiteboards for use with class teaching.
In both main class teaching rooms, there is a variety of percussion for the children to use; hand-held, untuned percussion, drum-kits, tuned percussion (Metallophones, Glockenspiels, etc), African Drums, etc, and there are other orchestral percussion instruments (Xylophone, Timpani, Crash Cymbals, Bass Drum, Snare Drum, etc) for use in orchestral rehearsal and performance.
There is a separate music technology room in Lake House which contains 10 Casio CTK-6000 keyboards and 20 sets of headphones for the children to use. In addition, there are 10 iMac computers running the 'Sibelius', 'Garageband', 'Groovy-music', 'Auralia' and 'Musition' music ICT programmes. There are also 10 Edirol PC-50 midi keyboard controllers attached to the computers to facilitate more advanced input of notes to both 'Sibelius' and 'Garageband'.
We also have use of 2 iPod classics where our large library of audio/listening material is stored, ready for use in class or around school, and conveniently set up into 'play-lists' for each of the different Year groups. We have a variety of stereo equipment for use during class music, all set up with iPod docking stations. The main classroom uses a Cambridge Audio system and speakers for high-quality audio listening.
The department also has a range of instruments for hire when students are learning musical instruments, and our team of 18 visiting music staff teach the whole spectrum of instruments (orchestral, singing, piano, guitar, percussion, theory - even bagpipes!). Some 250+ children have an instrumental lesson each week during term, and this is an area of school and department life that is currently expanding. Contact us for more information!
In addition to the facilities in Lake House and the concerts put on in the school Assembly Hall, we are lucky to be able to use the beautiful Chapel for services and other events, with its stunning acoustic and fabulous Harrison organ.
The best thing to do, is to come and experience the department for yourself. We look forward to welcoming you soon!