Proms at Home

Anna Meredith’s HandsFree

Welcome to Proms at Home!

Open your ears, unlock your imagination and enjoy a musical adventure!

As part of this week’s Proms at Home we’re going to get to know an exciting piece of music
by Anna Meredith called HandsFree.

HandsFree

HandsFree is performed using just one instrument. It’s a musical instrument we’ve all got – our body! 

To create this piece the brilliant teenage musicians of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain …

  1. Put away their usual instruments (like violins, bassoons and trombones)
  2. Stood up so their bodies can move and sway and stretch
  3. Set their hands free to:

Clap
Wave
Push
Snap
Slap
Pat
Click

Here they are performing the opening of HandsFree at the 2012 Proms. How many movements and sounds can you spot?

Together, working as a team, the musicians make one big musical sound.  

Anna Meredith introduces more and more movements, shapes and sounds to change the volume and mood of the music.  

Then, in the middle of the piece, a new sound arrives …

The voice!

Vocal percussion (sometimes also called beatboxing) is a way of making music and rhythms using your mouth. You can hiss, hum, pop and whoosh.

Here's a clip from the middle section of HandsFree. How many sounds can you hear the musicians making using just their mouths?

As different groups swap and change their shapes and rhythms, you’ll see amazing patterns spring out from the orchestra.

Huffing. Puffing. Waving. Rolling.

Slow. Fast. Calm. Wild.

What do the rhythms and shapes of HandsFree make you think about?

(Images: Laura Fuhrma; Serrah Galos)

Listen Out ...

All those mouths make lots of sounds during HandsFree, but they only say one actual word in the whole piece.

Have a look at this clip from the very end of the piece, and see if you can work out what it is.

If you'd like to listen to HandsFree all the way through, you can catch the 2012 Proms performance on 麻豆官网首页入口 Sounds.

Where Next?

  • Why not listen to more music by Anna Meredith? You could listen to some of her powerful, energetic electronic music (which she also performs!), like her song .
  • Anna also wrote another body percussion piece called Connect It . You can hear Anna chatting about Connect It, and then discover how you can make your own body percussion music, on the Ten Pieces website.
  • Indian musicians also use vocal sounds in their music, by singing different drum rhythms. Indian composer Ravi Shankar uses these ‘drum syllables’ in his fantastic Symphony. Near the end of the piece the members of the orchestra have to sing at the same time as playing their instruments.

    You can watch part of Ravi Shankar’s Symphony here, performed by sitar player Gaurav Mazumdar and the 麻豆官网首页入口 Scottish Symphony Orchestra:

Your Turn

  • Why not have a go at performing your own body percussion piece?

    In this video, Beth Higham-Edwards shows you how to create two different rhythms inspired by the body percussion in HandsFree.
  • You’ve seen and heard lots of body and vocal percussion now. So why not create your own HandsFree animal? Choose an animal. Think about how it sounds when it calls out, walks, runs, sleeps, swims or flies.

    Now find two sounds you could make with your mouth and two rhythms you can make with your body, and bring your animal to life in music.

    Happy creating – and we hope you’ll have lots more orchestral adventures with Proms at Home.

Proms at Home notes by Andrew McCaldon

For more activities throughout the summer, visit the Proms at Home website.