Music Strand

MishMash Productions have the great privilege of leading the Music Strand alongside the wonderful Jeanie Barton, on behalf of Broxtowe Borough Council.

In partnership with colleagues from Chateauroux in France; Falun in Sweden; Grudziadz in Poland; and Gutersloh in Germany we have identified the following projects to collaborate on over the next three years:

1. A collaborative song – the CCity Blues - made up of any number of verses from individaul musicians, groups and ensembles creating a medley celebrating our 5 city-districts.

2. An exchange programme – for student ensembles, amateur groups and teachers – to exchange practice and musical cultures. 

3. A festival of music as part of the 2025 Gutersloh celebrations – to include performances from multiple groups from each city; of many different genres; in concerts halls, clubs, shopping centres, railway stations bringing music from the 5 cities across the City of Gutersloh. 

CCities Song

The CCities Song is an opportunity for individual musicians, bands, singers, choirs, songwriters, composers and ensembles from across the five districts to collaborate on a community music project by submitting their own 12 bar verse to our Blues in CCities.

How it works

Anyone can submit a verse, in any musical style as long as it sticks to these rules:

• Must be recorded at 110 beats per minute

• Must be 12 or 16 bars long

• Must be in C Major ending on a G Major Seventh chord (to allow a loop round into the next contribution)

At the bottom of the page we have provided the chord progressions as both a chord chart and in notated form and invite you to either compose or improvise your own melody to record and submit (you’ll find them below in separate forms for instruments in C, Bb and Eb). You can also download a backing track if you’d like to sing or play along.

For those who don’t like making stuff up and would rather contribute a recording of a piece that’s already written our friend Cameron Wedgeworth has kindly arranged sheet music for the traditional folk tune - English Country Gardens - which helpfully fits wonderfully alongside the C Blues. We’d love to receive your versions of this quintessential english tune for our CCities mash-up.

And here’s more of a jazz example from our very own Jeanie Barton…..

Filming Guidelines

Filming on your camera phone is totaly fine, and just what we want! Please film in landscape mode and make sure your performance is at 110 beats per minute. This is crucial as only if all submissions are at the same tempo (speed) will we be able to patch them together!

You can use this handy metronome to make sure you’re in time - just remember to put it on silent for your recording!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sF0Pq1w2SQ

Backing Tracks:

This project is being supported through Broxtowe Borough Council’s UK Shared Prosperity Funding.