Slow Music Sessions

We aim to encourage people of all ages to enjoy playing with other musicians and continue their musical journey, develop their aural skills and have fun, make friendships, easily accessible to all, with no economic barriers to access. We provide a one-hour tutor led music session of “local session type tunes” with music notation and music stands made available to all. By playing the tunes slowly and repetitively it allows musicians to gain confidence and develop their aural skills to play with a group of musicians.

Having the confidence to be able to play at a live session with no musical notation is a big step, relying on your aural music abilities can be challenging for many so is playing at speed in a session. So, learning in a secure environment with others is an excellent steppingstone for many.

For our charity funding has helped us to be established as a supportive organisation that tries to meet people’s musical expectations and encourage all ages to play together and share a musical experience. This work helps develop people’s self-confidence and friendships, helps to prevent social isolation, provides a common interest, mutual respect of others irrespective of class, age, or gender. Importantly it helps to keep the community connected and keeps alive the traditional folk tunes and the Orkney musical heritage

During the tourist season several musicians who are just visiting Orkney do come along and participate in a music session, some contact us in advance and ask to borrow an instrument, which we are happy to facilitate by bringing one from our Music Instrument Bank. Normally they are keen to learn some local Orkney folk tunes or others just ask to come in and listen.

We do run a music instrument bank where we loan out instruments to people free of charge, for either on a one-off basis so they can participate in a Slow Session but normally for a 3-month period and provided that there is not a long waiting list for that instrument we will extend the loan further. Also, we have made the Ukrainian refugees aware of the loan instrument bank and one of the ladies did borrow a cello for 6-month period.  It allows people to try instruments before they commit to the cost of owning one. Having an instrument bank consisting of over 130 various instruments also allows us to introduce people to new instruments, (there is no instrument shop in Orkney so people may have limited chance to try out a variety of instruments). We will be holding regular Come and Try sessions once again, open to all (these were suspended due to the pandemic) where we encourage people to find an instrument that they enjoy and take their musical journey forward. We encourage people to get some basic lessons either in person or online then to come back to us when they want to take the next step at playing initially with other musicians via the Slow Session before they go onto other groups and societies.

Karen Black Mask Waltz - YouTube