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The Music Gym

Amongst the squash courts and practice nets at Horntye Sports Centre in Hastings is the Decoda Music Gym, an area designed for experimenting and playing with music and movement. For the physically able there's an interactive bouncy castle, dancing-boards that trigger music, or the opportunity to dance with your shadow on a large screen. For the less able, or less energetic, there are Soundbeams, vibro-acoustic seats and cushions, bubbles, and switches to operate film.

The Gym is overseen by popular local blues musicians Tom Smurthwaite and John Ballard. Its clients range from people with profound disabilities to conventionally able but playful or curious adults and youngsters - but this isn't a mere leisure activity. When administrator Sue Heath invited me to attend one of their regular Friday sessions, I was in for a morning of surprises and learning.

Sue says: "Years ago, as a Relate counsellor, I was surprised to find that mentioning a client was a musician would trigger smiles all round. The label 'musician', I discovered, was taken as shorthand for totally unable to communicate except through his/her music. The film The Commitments bears this out - a band delivering Irish soul music on stage and beating nine bells out of each other in the dressing room."

So why is it that a pair of typical pub-musicians have made such a hit as facilitators at Decoda, working with people with profound and multiple disabilities? How did they come to feel at home with people who find it so very difficult to communicate? And why have they have gone to such lengths over the years to bridge the gaps in those people's lives?

John with his band Night Shift, and Tom (playing under the name of Junior Thompson) are regulars on the circuit of blues-loving pubs around Hastings and make occasional appearances in Europe. They're both life-long blues musicians; singer songwriters with a strong local reputation. Playing in pubs has given them the confidence to walk into any situation and know that they can turn it around. A lack of initial response from an audience doesn't worry them. In short, they can bypass the rituals of polite, social behaviour without embarrassment and without making judgemental responses.

Tom says: "In an open situation, [such as a pub] you're not just playing to people who know you. There are people walking in and out all the time. If people stay, that affects you. Equally if people leave that affects you. Sometimes you're not entertaining in respect of people looking at you, but rather you're creating an ambience."

John felt this was particularly important and something young bands don't necessarily recognise - the need to be sensitive to the feel of the venue, rather than demanding attention and immediate positive feedback.

The Decoda project started with the aim of taking good musicians of all genres into day centres and residential homes. It was an inclusion issue - why shouldn't people with learning disabilities enjoy live music in the same way as anyone else? But not everyone was included - the people in wheelchairs, on the edge of a group, couldn't participate in playing the percussion instruments, they simply had something done for them - bells strapped on their wrists, their hand held around a tambourine.

Gradually the attention shifted to those with the least chance of joining in, with the least experience of having an effect on their surroundings. How to enable them to be more involved? When Tom and John were asked to run a regular workshop consisting solely of people with profound disabilities this question became a real issue. None of the things they had been doing with other groups worked with them. It might keep them, and their staff, amused for a couple of hours but Tom and John wanted to be more than entertainers.

They decided to start from where the people were, to explore how their unconventional gestures could be used to express themselves through music. One of the results of their experiments was their installation of The Soundbeam - a 'keyboard in the air' which turns movement into sound.

Using the Soundbeam meant that a young woman who had no movement other than her eyelids was able to compose music, or a man who constantly jerked his head learned to control this to create the sounds he wanted and then, spectacularly, to sit completely still for twenty minutes. People were now making something happen who had maybe never experienced this before.

Communication requires the ability to make choices and to convey them to others. Tom speaks of a "wordless communication that develops amongst musicians, working together to produce the end-sound, recognising their part in the whole and playing the most compatible part."

So for all their reputation for being social misfits off-stage, pub performers know of more ways to communicate than they are often given credit for. "Playing in a pub," says Tom, "you learn to observe how things are going between yourself and the band plus between the band and the audience. The same is true when working with people with PMLD (profound and multiple learning disabilities); noticing how they become engaged, how they react, and noticing in enough detail to see when they doing something they've never done before."

Such moments can be the key to great progress. B is a young woman who has been a regular visitor to the Music Gym since it started. She has no speech, is visually impaired and confined a lot of the time to a wheelchair. She is also blessed with two support staff who saw immediately the potential of the Music Gym. With their help she tried out the castle, pushed the huge ball, played the Soundbeam and walked, supported, with a metal frame - Tom and John noted that the sports hall allowed a lot more space for this than a house would. On the last day of the pilot project she walked without staff support for the first time in her life. She now enjoys the shadow-dancing as the contrasting images allow her to see her support staff making shapes on the screen.

But what of the people who couldn't be enticed to use the Soundbeam? What of someone with so-called 'challenging behaviour' whose energy could erupt in a disruptive manner?

Sometimes in a pub people feel they have a right to tell you what to play. Tom recalls a man asking for a number while he was actually singing - without halting he managed to let him know that that wasn't the right time AND he wouldn't be playing that. In a rowdy environment it can be vital to turn around stubborn or unrealistic demands quickly without getting into a conflict situation. Tom enjoys 'grabbing' people with something they weren't expecting, something beyond what they think they want. He brings the same attitude to his work with Decoda clients. He's always on the look out for ways to extend people's boundaries, to enable them to experience something new and unexpected.

So the Decoda team turned their attention to clients whose behaviours had previously been seen as wholly negative - something to stop, or get control of. What if someone who liked to punch were given a punch-bag fitted with sensors so that each time he punched it he produced a sound? What if there were a room full of similar devices? Plus space to move around and freedom to choose what to do?

This was the thinking behind the Music Gym. It took another two years to access the funding which would make it a reality, albeit for just one morning a week. The pilot scheme started in October 2005, funded by the local Learning Disabilities Development Fund and run in partnership with MCCH (a regional care-providing organisation).

Part of the funding was for an independent evaluation which found that 97% of questionnaires completed stated that their client had benefited overall from their participation in the Music Gym. 88% stated that the client had developed over time and 72% of clients had tried things new to them. In addition 55% of participants demonstrated sustained learning. These latter points are often not seen as potential achievements for people with such complex needs. It was observed that where staff believed in their clients' capacity to make their own choices and in their potential to develop, they were actively encouraged and clearly benefited. In addition to the activities, clients benefited from the opportunity to participate in the wider community, and from the space that the sports hall provided.

The Music Gym is now an ongoing weekly facility for people with profound disabilities, some of whom travel over 20 miles for the experience. In the huge sports hall they can be as energetic, creative, or simply relaxed as they like as they find their way around the fascinating array of technology, but what stuck in my mind after my morning with the Decoda team was the power of music under the direction of these gifted facilitators.

I watched John charging around with a young man in a wheel-chair, activating a patchwork of sound-emitting mats and boards. There was no pattern to it that I could see and I had no way of interpreting the signals John was clearly getting from the young man - but when they returned to us, and John said to his partner in the chair; "That was great - shall we do it again?" Even I could see the eager 'yes' in the eyes that answered him.

The Music Gym

The Music

Kay Green is an English teacher and editor of Earlyworks Press

About the Author

Writer, editor and English teacher, Kay Green is a lifelong lover of story in all its forms. Her collection 'Jung's People' was first published by Elastic Press and is now available through her own small press, which is also a club for the promotion of independent writers and illustrators. The club has an online forum for developing stories and poetry and 'enclaves' around the UK where like-minded writers get together for workshopping and discussion, and to organise book fairs and other activities.

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Networking and storage at CES 2011: Faster, more connected

Knowing I was going to Las Vegas for CES, my friends said, "Have fun!" The truth is, friends, fun, whether or not the kind that stays in Las Vegas, is not the first thing one can expect from covering CES. It's always a lot of work.

I did have fun seeing my colleagues all in one place, however, especially those from the East Coast, whom I don't get to see very often. Now that we've all returned home or are on the way back, here are the things in the networking and storage categories that are sticking with me from the show.

In the networking department, faster is the main theme, and this is true for both wireless and powerline networking. Powerline networking is now pumped up to support 500Mbps by adhering to the latest IEEE 1901 standard (up from the 200Mbps of the HomePlug AV standard). There were several 500Mbps powerline products announced at CES this year, such as the Trendnet TPL 401E and Netgear's XAVB5004.

Networking vendors also introduced the first hybrid wireless routers that have built-in support for powerline technology, such as the WNXR200 from Netgear.

Wireless networking this year is seeing many vendors moving to the three-stream standard that offers a throughput speed of up to 450Mbps (as opposed to the 300Mbps of the popularly used dual-stream standard). Examples of these are Netgear with the WNDR4000, Trendnet with the TEW-692GR, and D-Link with its HD Media routers.

On the client side, the three-stream wireless standard is supported by Intel's Centrino N-5300 and Centrino N-6300 Wi-Fi adapters. These two Wi-Fi chipsets, also known as Intel's Ultimate N Wi-Fi Link family, can handle all standards of Wi-Fi, including the three-stream standard. Trendnet also released the first 450Mbps gaming adapter. In the future, networking vendors will also release USB adapters that support this higher speed.

D-Link's HD Media routers, by the way, are the first that sport an SD card reader, and some of them are also the first with built-in USB 3.0 to support faster network storage performance.

Speaking of USB 3.0, most storage vendors have now moved to this standard for their external drives. This is a natural move, as USB 3.0 offers a speed that's easily 10 times that of USB 2.0 and is backward-compatible with all previous versions of USB standards. External drives are now also getting tinier, and many of them now are also based on solid-state drives. Examples of these are the GoFlex Slim from Seagate, Verbatim's Titan XS, and the i-Disk Rex 100 from Pretec.

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Cap Barbell Weight Bench

Dumbbells are an integral part of every health club be it a regular or a house based mostly one. They're used for weight and power training for individuals of all health ranges and ages. These dumbbells are also very helpful to those that do not like heavy equipment training and prefer free hand exercises.

When it involves storing a single dumbbell or a set of dumbbells you need a dumb bell rack of the appropriate form and size. These dumbbell racks are usually present in any massive workout or exercise facility. They serve multiple purposes and at the identical time help to keep the workout space organized and free from scattered dumbbells in order that nobody trips and falls over them. These dumbbell racks are manufactured by many leading health and fitness companies and in relation to choosing a dumbbell rack in your gym, one of many main names that may be trusted for the acquisition of these dumbbell racks is Cap Barbell.

Cap Barbell and their diverse range of Cap health tools dumb bell racks are extremely in demand amongst many gym homeowners around the world. This firm is a dependable and trusted model and it ensures that the highest high quality and standards are maintained. Since dumbbells are round on their edges and sides they have to be saved someplace when they are not in use so that they do not roll about on the floor. The Cap health dumbbell racks have been specifically designed to carry dumbbells in order that they can be securely stored from the ground. They can be placed into any nook so that no one bumps into them. They are compact in design and so they can also be conveniently stored in opposition to a wall with ease too.

Cap health tools dumbbell racks can be found in many different types, lengths and heights. They are excellent to retailer any kind of dumbbells regardless of their size and weight. You've got the option of purchasing vertical, horizontal and tiered styles. These Cap fitness gear dumbbell racks are sturdy and sturdy for utilizing completely different dumbbells of any form or size. Since folks within the health club use totally different dumbbells for various workouts these cap health equipment dumbbell racks are ideal for storing dumbbells and keeping them out of the best way of people that exercise. They are additionally easy for the folks to access the weights each time they're required for coaching purposes.

Cap fitness equipment dumbbell racks are made of high quality heavy gauge steel building to ensure that you get the steadiness and durability. In addition they have an electro statically applied powder coating so as to resist scratches, corrosion and chipping. They also have chrome plated parts within the excessive contact areas. They are fitted to any kind of common or house gym. They provde the best quality assurance and on the identical time the lengthy lasting sturdiness that you are looking for. They have been specifically designed to deal with the weights of the dumbbells and so when you are investing in a single you have to ensure that you get the right dimension on your gym.

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Using Stability Balls And Wobble Boards For Lower Body Training

One growing trend in gyms across the country over the past decade has been instruction with weight although balancing on an unpredictable floor. The utilization of stability balls, Bosu balls, wobble boards, as well as the like has taken off as people today have begun for making simple or tough movements even more difficult. It can be not uncommon to see individuals squatting with dumbbells even though attempting to stability on a rubber ball. But it would seem that couple of folks have ever taken the time to ask themselves if these kinds of unstable floor training is helpful in increasing sports or athletic overall performance.

The use of unstable floor education for higher human body movements could have a good deal of worth. The arms and higher system is usually not in make contact with with the ground or any solid appear, in particular for the duration of athletic contests or games. For numerous get hold of sports activities such as football or basketball, getting speak to with a secure surface area is more the exception. Possessing contact with an each and every altering surface area this sort of as a ball or an additional player is a lot more usually the rule in these actions. Therefore, some kinds of volatile surface training for upper physique strength could possibly be a excellent thought for athletes and active people, along with the use of stability balls and wobble boards to prepare the arms and shoulders may have advantages.

But really should people ever do squats, lunges, or other lower body actions although attempting to balance on an unpredictable floor? Unless these people are generally moving about throughout earthquakes though the bottom is shaking beneath them, the typical position of the bottom is fairly dependable. And it can be not necessary to make use of an unpredictable surface area to practice the stabilizing muscles with the legs -- single leg workouts may be considerably more tough and challenge the stabilization of your system and legs. Therefore, it looks to produce sense to keep at the least one leg on the dependable ground when education.

Furthermore, the body has a natural tendency to adapt to whatever teaching stimulus it's given. It follows that teaching the legs on an unstable area will prepare the system and mind to anticipate a lot more instability throughout athletic competition because of this previous coaching. The truth is, this can make the legs slower to react to dependable surfaces if the lower body has been subjected to a great deal of volatile appear teaching. Speed can lower, and even power production with the muscle groups from the lower body may very well be compromised like a end result of this style of training.

Training the stabilizer muscles with the system is vital, but the correct kind of training ought to be carried out. The upper entire body is considerably more receptive to volatile surface area instruction, due to the simple fact that arms and hands are often forced to deal with unstable objects. Unstable appear coaching for the muscle tissues in the lower human body, nonetheless, may possibly result in a lower in athletic overall performance when the legs must be connected towards the steady earth (as in virtually every sport). Therefore, the use of balance balls, wobble boards, and other this kind of gear has its location, but need to not be utilized in approaches that may in fact decrease velocity and energy.

Nick writes articles discussing the utilization of spinal decompression, as well as other therapies for lower back injuries, among several other well being and fitness problems. He focuses mainly on providing facts that folks can use inside the treatment of low pain, including sciatica, herniated discs, bulging discs, and tissue damage. If you are thinking about understanding a lot more about how spinal decompression performs, please visit his site and download a free e-book explaining how the procedure operates, the price, and what you are able to expect right after a series of treatments: http://www.spinalcaredirectory.com/

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