About Screech

Screech' is an 'open-source' piece which needs YOU to complete it! 'Screech' is part of a set of three pieces called 'badluck birds' for the recorder quintet Consortium 5, and the title comes from old British name for a mistle thrush. It was believed that mistle thrushes could speak many different languages and would sing to herald storms, and continue singing noisily and joyously throughout them.

I wrote lots of little musical fragments for the quintet inspired by these ideas, and used the tiny, high sopranino recorders down to the long, low bass recorders. Watch the videos first to familiarise yourself with the fragments and see how they are played.

To compose your own piece simply drag and drop the fragments onto the tracks on the timeline below. You can remove dropped fragments or rearrange them over the five tracks. To listen to your composition, click play at the top of the page.

Everything else is up to you! Think about what sort of piece of music you want to create: is it going to be very repetitive, with the same fragment coming back again and again? Or is it going to be unpredictable and unusual-sounding? Remember you don't have to use all the fragments, and there doesn't have to be five recorders playing at once! You could even create a piece for solo recorder only.

Because the fragments are unusual, your challenge is to spend time carefully trying out different combinations and sequences, until you find something that works for you.

Once happy you can save or share your work: simply copy the link (URL) provided and save it, share it on a social network, or send it to a friend or yourself via email.