My aim for the orchestra is to make a learning environment, where people can build up musical skills & confidence with plenty of friendly support. The enjoyment will come partly from not being able to do something and giving it a try anyway, and keeping at it till you find you can do something new :-)
A couple of areas where I would like high standards are paying attention during rehearsals, and thoughtfulness about each other's practical needs. But there's no minimum musical standard.
If you're thinking you're "not good enough", you're probably not the only person thinking that, and all of you will gradually find your feet :-)
Even if you've played other kinds of music before, you'll probably find some things feel unfamiliar and new when you first play in a conducted group. So at first, you might just be getting used to things and following along. You might not actually play many notes! But a few rehearsals in, it won't all be so new and strange any more.
Here's a page for people new to reading music dots.
"Rusty" players welcome
Perhaps you played a string instrument at school for a while, or kept it up until you got too busy, and now you're not sure how much of your skills you still have. This will be a friendly place to get a re-start, where it doesn't matter how much "comes back to you" or whether you have to re-learn some things.
Even though support for beginners is a key parameter for the orchestra's "niche", I'll be glad to welcome more-advanced players who feel the orchestra would suit them. It's beginner-friendly, not beginner-only.
I wouldn't be surprised if we got a few advanced musicians who hadn't been back to their regular orchestra since covid, as well as perhaps some people who are "rusty" now, but had learnt a fair amount 10 or 20 years ago.
Perhaps you'd already got good on a different instrument, and now you've decided to try violin, viola, cello or double bass. Or perhaps you've been playing "by ear" in bands - and now you're dipping your toe into classical music for a change, and starting to read "dots on the page" type music.
The mix of skills and levels gives me the tricky challenge of organising music where more advanced players and beginner players can enjoy collaborating. Advanced players don't want to be bored, and beginners don't want to feel "out of their depth". But to me, that mix isn't a disadvantage, because as a composer and arranger, I find the challenge of it really interesting :-)
A fair amount of the "blueprint" for NBFSO comes from my past experience with this other orchestra for adult learners, Da Capo. I've written for Da Capo and conducted them, and at one stage was doing the behind-the-scenes organising.
I don't envisage doing one-off sessions with NBFSO. People would commit to a series, so that the group can feel the satisfaction of gradually learning a set of pieces, building up from week to week.
Amateur orchestras typically have the same music for the length of a school term, and players typically commit for a term. But I'm considering having shorter terms, to give players more flexibility to drop in or out.
Even if we do have some full-length terms later, my plan would be to start with a short series of maybe 3, 4 or 5 rehearsals, and treat that as a sort of pilot/experiment mini-term. And then we'd see.
Even if you've played for a while, you might never have bothered taking an exam, or learning any pieces which have particular grade labels applied to them. And that's fine! I'm just putting this here for information.
English music grades traditionally go from 1 up to 8. A "typical" amateur orchestra will take players who've got to about Grade 4 or 5. The "Music for Everyone" adult orchestral events currently start at Grade 2.
When I talk about coming in at "Grade zero"... there isn't really a grade zero :-) That's just my way of saying, it's okay to come and take part even if you don't know what you're doing. No minimum musical standard!
The "Keep me updated" form has some questions about whether people are new to music or what they've done before.
If you've already been playing a while, I might get you to email me a snapshot of a music page that you're practising at the moment, just to give me some idea of what would be too easy or too hard.
If we can't quite work out at first what level you're at, there's ways to work round that too. For example, I could offer you a part which might turn out to be a bit too easy, and you could see how you get on. There would be wiggle room to switch parts from one play-through to the next if the first one wasn't at the right level: if you felt your current part was a bit too hard, you could switch to a simpler one for now, or if your part felt too easy, you could try a slightly less simple part next time.
There's bound to be a bit of trial and error, till we find out the level which is "just right" in terms of difficulty for the different players. As I get to know players, and get to know what the orchestra can do as a group, that'll become smoother.
One of the advantages of having custom-written (or custom-arranged) music is that we don't have to worry about having particular instruments for a particular term.
So I don't mind if the new orchestra is "unbalanced" in terms of instruments. It's actually quite likely we'd have lots of violins and not so many of the other instruments, at least at first. Over time, I might encourage some violin players to try out the cello, viola or double bass if they like the look of it :-)
I know there are people who would like to play, but don't currently have their own instrument. As yet, there's nothing in place for that scenario, but it's something I'm going to be looking into.
If you have a violin, viola, cello or double bass which you're not using, and you'd consider lending it to an aspiring player - even if only for a month or so - then please let me know :-)