Course
MUSIC SUMMER CAMP
A course in which you join a group of musicians, who start as strangers and throughout a week learn how to become a band. At the end of the week, this new band plays a show!
For anyone who plays an instrument and is 18 years or older.
What is this?
Spend a week with a group of musicians in a nice town in the Netherlands. You’ll start as strangers, and through the week you’ll play, socialise, bond, eat together and party together. All of this will be used to create music as a collective. At the end of the week, you’ll play a show together.
These are the skills we’re focusing on in this Summer Camp:
- collaboration/cooperation, using bonding experiences to create music;
- taking creative risks;
- conceptualising and setting up a show.
Most days in the Camp will have three parts:
- full group practice, lead by a senior Jam With Humans teacher, in which we’ll rehearse the repertoire for the show, as well as doing creativity and improvisation exercises;
- a surprise activity – it can be anything, and no, we really won’t tell you in advance, but we can say these will be fun and meant to expand our disciplinary boundaries (i.e., they won’t all be about music) as well as developing the bonds between you and the other participants;
- group work time, in which you’ll be free to create music with the other participants in your group, while coached by a senior Jam With Humans teacher.
What’s included?
Classes! It goes without saying, but all pedagogical and recreational activities in our schedule are included with registration in this camp.
Meals! Meal time is bonding time, thus all meals will be included with registration in the camp (see schedule bellow for details).
Show! The camp will end on a show in a known music venue in Leeuwarden (the Neushoorn). We’ll spend a day at the venue going through everything related with the experience of putting on a show, including a small technical workshop.
Accommodation? Upon registration, we’ll ask you if you’ll be interested in us facilitating accommodation for the days in Leeuwarden, for a fixed fee of €200. We’ll confirm the accommodation details in June (or July, if you register later), and you’ll only need to commit to it then. It might not be possible to arrange accommodation for everyone interested – see “Practical information” section bellow for more details.
Schedule
We’re not telling you everything in order to not spoil the fun, but here’s the general shape of this summer camp. We expect many refinements to be done to this schedule.
Day 0 | Saturday Aug/8
15:00 – 17:00 | arrival and check-in
17:00 – 19:00 | Introduction, ice-breaker, jams
from 19:00 | dinner and free time
Days 1 to 5 | Sunday Aug/9 to Thursday Aug/13
10:00 – 13:00 | Practice session
13:00 – 15:00 | lunch and free/practice time
15:00 – 17:00 | Surprise activity
17:00 – 19:00 | Group work
from 19:00 | dinner and free time
Day 6 | Friday Aug/14
11:00 – 13:00 | Stage set-up and sound check
13:00 – 15:00 | lunch and free/practice time
15:00 – 16:00 | Focus time
16:00 – 18:00 | Rehearsal
18:00 – 20:00 | dinner
20:00 | Show
Day 7 | Saturday Aug/15
11:00 – 13:00 | Show and course de-brief, check-out
12:00 | goodbye lunch
Register
only 10 early bird tickets available until May 31st
You’ll only be charged €20 now
Optional €200 accommodation for all nights between Aug/8 and Aug/15
optional €200 accommodation extra
From June 1st
Practical Information
If you are 18 years of age or older, and you play an instrument, you can participate in this Summer Camp!
There is no restriction on which instrument you play – this includes vocals and less common instruments. There is also no restriction on your degree of proficiency on your instrument, plus, the Summer Camp is designed such that you’ll both learn and have fun either as a beginner, professional, or anywhere in between.
You do need to be able to bring your instrument with you, as well as any equipment necessary to make it work, unless the instrument and equipment is already present at the locations (see “locations” section for more information).
We will help understanding your instrument and your relationship with it and with music in general during a short call after you register.
There will be music shared with you which you will be expected to get familiar with before the start of the camp. That repertoire, as well as the way it’s notated and shared with you, will be tailored to the common interests and needs of the whole group. We will determine these interests and needs by having a short call with everyone who registers, shortly after they register (from June 1st).
During the Summer Camp, there will be time every day for you to compose music in collaboration with the other participants. We will also incorporate exercises of improvisational music during the morning rehearsal and practice times.
The final show will feature the music sent to you before the camp, the music composed by the participants during the camp, and moments of improvised music.
You are free to arrange your own accommodation for the duration of the Summer Camp. However, we will help facilitating the arrangement of accommodation to those who register. Once you register, we’ll get in touch with you to ask about your accommodation needs. The accommodation arranged by us will cost €200 for the nights between August 8th and August 15th.
We will arrange accommodation in June for those who have registered before June 1st, and requested accommodation facilitated by us. For those who register in June, we will arrange accommodation in July. Before the end of these months, you will be given a final option on accommodation, and only then you will have to commit to it by paying the extra €200 fee.
It’s possible that we won’t be able to facilitate accommodation to everyone who has requested so (you will know if that is the case by the end of June or July, depending on if you registered for the Summer Camp before or after June 1st).
There is a small chance the €200 fee will have to be revised. You will not have to commit to any fee until all accommodation details have been given to you.
The pedagogical activities of the Summer Camp will be taught by the group of senior teachers and band directors of Jam With Humans: Daniel Matias Ferrer, Nicolas Raspail and Albert Manders. They will be your mentors for the week. There will also be some pedagogical activities taught and mentored by teachers external to Jam With Humans, as well as members of the Jam With Humans Orchestra.
The Summer Camp activities (pedagogical activities, meals and social time) will happen at Podium Explore and Neushoorn in Leeuwarden, the Netherlands, with the final show happening on August 14th at the Neushoorn.
These locations will have plenty of equipment available, which we’re sure to cover most if not all the equipment needs of the students. Namely, there will be a PA system, microphones, guitar and bass amplifiers, and keyboards (and potentially an acoustic piano). However, to make sure everyone’s technical needs are met with no surprises, we’ll discuss your specific equipment needs in a short call after you register (from June 1st), and will work with you in making sure that the equipment you need will be present at these venues.
If you wish to cancel your registration, please inform us by replying to the registration confirmation email message. If you cannot find this message yourself, you can get in touch with us via jamwithhumans [at] gmail [dot] com.
If you only paid the €20 pre-registration fee, you will receive a full refund if you cancel your registration.
If you paid the €20 pre-registration fee but don’t pay the remaining registration amount within the requested period, your registration will automatically be considered cancelled, and you won’t receive a refund for the €20 pre-registration fee.
If you paid the registration fee in full and cancel your registration until and including June 30th, you will receive a refund of 75% of the value of the registration fee.
If you paid the registration fee in full and cancel your registration after and including July 1st, you will receive a refund of 25% of the value of the registration fee.
Our approach
In Jam With Humans, we believe in starting where the student is already at, and teaching tools to expand their creativity from that point.
Our teachers like teaching material which wasn’t taught to them in music school, and we are very careful to make sure that we don’t end up teaching how to play like our teachers, but instead teaching the students how to play like themselves.
Our courses, albeit rooted in theory, are mostly practical, as we trust the best way to explore an instrument is by playing it.