Dizzy Crabs and Thinking about Numbers | Sprog Blog
Artist: Greg Sinclair
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Greg Sinclair is a composer, performer, musician and one of Starcatchers’ Associate Artists. He’s worked with us across all areas of our work, including recently as composer/performer in MamaBabaMe; delivering Creative Skills music sessions, and bringing music to the babies at Expecting Something. Greg’s also a member of Sprog Rock and right now, he’s preparing for the final two gigs at LYRA this weekend. In this blog he gives a wee behind the scenes tour of the Sprog Rock workshops, and his favourite moments.
Dizzy Crabs and Thinking about Numbers
Hello! I’m Greg, the lazy one in the band that’s always sitting down having a rest. Actually, it’s just because I have to sit down to play my instrument – the cello. I love being a part of Sprog Rock. It’s fun, exciting and shamelessly silly at the same time as being massively valuable and unique.
This year it’s been fun working with different nurseries to get the children to help us write songs for the band. I wasn’t totally sure how that would work out. They are very young but we’ve managed to find a way really quickly and easily to incorporate the children’s ideas into our songs.
I’ve been working in Craigmillar in Edinburgh visiting two nurseries: Moffat Early Years Centre and Greengables Nursery. Both are brilliant.
Moffat have this really bright space to work in full of lovely wooden toys and furniture and natural light. It is a great space to get creative in and because there’s so much room we had the kids up dancing straight away. It was fun to let them hear music from diverse artists such as David Byrne & St Vincent, Battles, and PJ Harvey. Dancing to Battles with 4 year olds is probably one of the most joyful experiences you could ever wish for! And because of all that dancing the kids started speaking about things that make them dizzy. Which is what their song is about that we’ll play in the gig.
Just so you know, things that make 4 year olds dizzy include: the green roundabout, dancing, spinning and tornadoes.
“What would happen if you were in a tornado?” “You’d get flung aboot.”
The Moffat kids’ band is Moffat Muffins. It’s a pretty cute band name, democratically voted for by the children, although I’m a bit gutted that their second choice didn’t make it: Peter Rabbit’s Mum. How rock ‘n’ roll is that?!
Greengables Nursery is another fantastic place to work. The children there have giggled and made us giggle so much every week. We’ve played a game of spiders a lot (basically just an excuse for the kids to tickle us), played music in the playground and written 2 songs with them! One song is a little ditty about DJ the Crab.
Their main song is called Don’t Be Scared and it’s about things they do to make themselves feel better if they’re feeling a bit scared or sad. Hearing them list these things of was one of those lovely bittersweet moments when little kids make you feel a bit teary even though they themselves are having a lovely smiley time! Some things that make them feel better: playing outside, talking to granny, cuddles from mum, thinking about numbers, and dancing. So we’ve written a song which is a bit melancholic but then ends as a life-affirming fist-pumping anthem. Oh and the Greengables band name is totally art school cool: I’ve Got Two Ponytails, I’ve Got Two Buns bluhbluhblubluh (all whilst pretending you have spiders crawling on your face) – those kids are wild!
Watch: Greg and Ger as they work on some music for the gigs!
The Sprog Rock 2017 Tour continues at LYRA:
LYRA | 4 November | 12:00 & 14:30