Girl 1: Everyone stop.
Girl 2: But we've never sounded better.
Girl 1: It all just sounds like noise. We need to listen to each other.
Boy 1: But whenever we do, it ends up sounding like a broken washing machine.
Nitin Sawhney: I think I can help you with that.
Wow!
Boy 2: Nitin Sawhney!
Nitin Sawhney: You guys need to think about the texture you want to create together.
Girl 3: Texture? What's that?
Nitin Sawhney: Well...how many of you like painting?
Girl 1: Me!
I tried painting my saxophone once.
Mum said it looked like a gravy jug.
It came out orange because I mixed red and yellow paint.
I wanted it to look gold.
Nitin Sawhney: Well, You created a brand new colour by mixing two together and just like in paintings, we can mix and layer musical sounds to create texture.
Girl 2: I just mixed all my drums together!
Boy 1: So all our instruments are like a musical palette to paint tunes and songs with?
Nitin Sawhney: Yeah and the whole world is your palette!
You can mix together so many sounds from so many places.
Let me show you…
So we could take little bit of flamenco guitar in Spain...
Add some add sordu drum in Brazil...
And put it together with some vocals in India!
This is how I arranged my song Homelands.
Girl 1: Wow, that sounds... different!
Girl 2: I love the drums!
Girl 3: Yeah, we know!
Boy 1: It sounds great but we can't do that.
We don't have those instruments or voices.
Girl 3: We got all our instruments from the UK.
Nitin Sawhney: But you can listen to anything from anywhere.
You can even copy the rhythm of a train to make a drum beat.
Or Asha could play saxophone to copy a police siren.
And Ruby, you could play your bass to sound like a heartbeat.
Boy 2: Awesome.
Nitin Sawhney: The whole world is your palette and you can paint musical pictures with layers of sound.
Playing all together, or playing separately, at different points in the song changes the musical texture.
It's up to you and your imagination!
Girl 1: I could mix my saxophone and Ruby's bass with the same line, like this.
Nitin Sawhney: Now you're getting it.
Boy 1: Thanks, Nitin.
Nitin Sawhney: My pleasure, have fun.
