Welcome to Students Incorporated, a podcast where we dive into relevant topics and issues
related to the world of business, technology, education, and design.
I'm your host, Mr. Jason.
Episodes include student conversations, interviews with thought leaders, and inspirational stories
with an international flavor.
This podcast is created and produced with the help of students from the International
Community School of Bangkok.
In today's episode, we'll be discussing music and sound with Mr. Christian and Mrs. Sara.
We don't often think about music and sound and how it affects our daily lives, so we
are happy to hear from our guest about how their lives have been changed through their
work and their teaching in this area.
But before that, let's hear our quote of the day.
Thank you, Mr. Jason.
Today's quote is from Bob Marley.
He said,
One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.
Bob Marley was a Jamaican singer, musician, and songwriter.
His style was influential to reggae music and popularized the genre as a whole to the
mainstream.
Marley became a keys Rastafari figure, and his lyrics often had spiritual aspect.
A fun fact about him is that his full name is Robert Nesta Marley.
The San Francisco Police Department is now allowed to use robots in cases.
This allows police officers to stay safe while robots can use lethal force to defeat offenders.
Deadly force will only be used in extreme circumstances.
On a positive note, medical drones are being dispatched in the UK.
England's National Health Service will use drones to deliver chemotherapy drugs to patients
living on the Isle of Wight.
The drones help reduce the delivery time from 4 hours to 30 minutes.
Construction for a floating city is beginning in the Maldives.
It will house 20,000 people and will consist of houses, shops, restaurants, a school, and
a hospital.
The design for the island was inspired by the brain coral found in the Indian Ocean,
and the construction will be completed by 2027.
Thank you for the quote and the news headlines.
Let's welcome Mrs. Sara and Mr. Christian for this segment.
Thank you so much for joining us.
For our first question, can you please introduce yourself and let us know what inspired you
to get into music?
Yeah, I'm Christian Sarazin, and what inspired me?
I took piano lessons when I was younger, and so I had a little bit of a musical background,
but I didn't join band until I was a junior in high school.
And that was because my grandpa gave me his old trombone one time as a Christmas present.
He was a trombone player in the Army band back in the day.
So my mom signed me up for band without me even knowing, and there I was as a beginner,
as a junior in high school.
But I fell in love with it.
The director was really good, and I had some friends in the class, and I just really loved
it.
And I thought, where has this been my whole life?
I remember my band director saying after a great rehearsal one time, our song finished,
and he just looked around and said, I've got the best job in the world.
I remember I was a senior at that point, thinking about college and what to major in and what
to do with my life, and I thought, there it is.
That's the best job in the world, then I'll go for that.
So I got a music education degree, and I've been a band director ever since.
And I'm Sarah Nordblom, and I'm the orchestra teacher here at ICS.
This is my second year teaching here.
And when I was growing up, music always played a big part in my life.
As me and my three siblings all played orchestra instruments, my dad taught music and led choir
and band at church, and I attended a special music school for the most part of my school
years.
And I felt playing in orchestra and singing in choirs were my favorite hobbies and were
I felt at home the most.
And then during high school, my skills developed more rapidly, and then my best friends were
also pursuing the same goals.
And then I decided music would be my first choice as a career.
And that's how I ended up studying cello performance and music pedagogy.
Some people say that music helps them work.
What are your thoughts on the benefits that music and sound have on productivity?
Sure, music can affect your mood.
It can affect your attitude and your state of mind.
And it can drastically change the atmosphere of any room or event.
And I think it affects people differently, but I think we can say it affects people one
way or the other.
For me personally, I guess maybe because I'm musically trained, my brain just always wants
to listen to the music.
So it's very hard for me to have music on and do any sort of cognitive work at the same
time.
I love having music going on when it's just some sort of mindless chore like washing the
dishes or doing something that I don't have to think about.
I'll have music playing all the time.
But whenever I have to grade or study or write something, I got to have silence.
It's funny though, the things that I, the one genre of music that I can sort of study to
is like lo-fi hip hop.
And I've come to like lo-fi hip hop, like Studio Ghibli and things like that.
So I'll put that on sometimes.
But I can't have any sort of, especially classical music, because I just will listen to the classical
music instead.
Yeah, I totally agree with that.
Yeah, I can't listen to any actual music when I try to work, do any cognitive type of tasks.
But I really enjoy listening to music when I drive.
It can be anything when I drive in the car or when I do some like cooking or something
like that.
But I also don't like working in complete silence.
So I prefer like cafes where there's a bus around me.
So that's where I can focus the most.
But I totally understand that for many people listening to music, like for example Mozart,
Beethoven or any kind of music you like, can enhance your productivity.
Like if you don't focus on the actual music so much.
Speaking of work and productivity, could you please describe your roles here at ICS?
For me, I teach four string orchestras, three different levels in middle school and one
in high school.
And in addition to this, I teach AP music theory.
And we put together four concerts a year.
So in addition to the day to day teaching of different instruments and their basic techniques,
we prepare a lot of music for these concerts.
And then we really organize the events and this takes quite a bit of time.
It's good to do it in collaboration with Mr. Krischer.
It's true.
Yeah, my job matches Mrs. Sara's except for I do band instead.
And I also don't teach an AP class.
Instead, I do the choir.
So we have one class of middle school choir as well.
And I direct that.
How is teaching music at ICS different from your past experiences?
Yeah, I'll tell you the number one thing that is different about this job.
I've had three different appointments before here and in each place I started the band
program or the school did not have a program before.
And so I started with beginners and kind of grew it up for the duration of my tenure there.
Here is the first time that I'm filling someone else's shoes.
So Mr. Cody has here for the last three years.
And it's been it's been good because I'm coming in with experienced students.
So I don't have to start back at the beginning again.
But it's also hard because I want to try to build upon his legacy and make sure that it
improves.
For me, on the other hand, this is my first time actually teaching in this kind of program.
In Finland, we even don't have the similar types of programs at schools.
But I would say I just really love being in a community like this with great admins.
And I think here we all support and encourage each other.
Moving on, since music plays such a significant role in your life.
What do you think life would be like without music?
That's a hard question to answer because it's like a hypothetical world.
I don't know what life would be without music.
I would probably just choose something else instead.
Something else to be passionate about.
But music is a it's such a combination of many things.
It has history and the arts and mathematics and teamwork like like a sport in many ways.
So it's really the culmination of a lot of different passions kind of into one.
That's one reason why I love it.
Yeah, I really don't know.
I'd have to fill the void with something else.
What would you feel?
Oh, wow.
That's deep.
I didn't even go that deep.
I just thought about like my life very selfishly.
So at least for me, it would be much less satisfying and colorful.
As for me, music is an important way of just being and expressing myself.
And I'm so much more content when I have music in my life.
Because there was a time in my life when I went long periods without playing music or
giving it much time because of other commitments.
And however, every time I taught cello lessons or joined orchestra projects, even my friends
commented how those clearly were the things that made me the happiest.
So what are some challenges that came with organizing and producing a large concert?
Is that just the Christmas concert that just happened?
I think some of the biggest challenges are that I have to think so far in advance.
I'm already planning the next concert as far as choosing music, because you've got to choose
the music well in advance so you can start rehearsing it.
And that requires me knowing my students, what strengths I have, what styles and try
to get a good diversity of different styles of music in different key signatures.
I got to think of my percussionists playing different instruments, not being on the same
instrument the whole time.
So there's a lot of things to think through far in advance.
And then closer to the concert, there's a lot of details that I think sometimes go unnoticed.
I'm always worrying that I'm forgetting about something.
But just last night I was going over the program, making sure I spelled all these really long
tie-last names correctly and things that maybe people wouldn't think that you had to think
about as far as planning a concert.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, the same for me.
I think it really takes a long time and there's trial and error when you're choosing the right
music for your ensembles.
And you might even need to change some music last minute.
And then there's the concert organization, which he explains really well.
Our next question is, how has music improved your students' lives in terms of academics,
attitude and health?
Yeah, my students would probably have to answer this themselves.
But what I see in many students is that music clearly provides them the same kind of home
and creative outlet that it has been for me.
And this way it can improve their lives holistically.
But obviously playing instruments is not pure bliss.
You need to work hard to make progress.
And anyway, that's ultimately a very rewarding process.
And you will see the fruit of your labor when you can play even the hard spots in your songs.
And then it becomes enjoyable and it's stressful.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing.
I got to ask my students.
So PK is right here.
You can answer the question for me.
Oh yeah, sure.
I mean, I feel like band is like a getaway for me because from all the stress and like
the work and stuff from school, I got pretty stressed sometimes of like whenever I hop
into the band room, I grab my saxophone and start playing, I feel like everything's like
off my shoulders.
Yeah, it really like helped me relax in the school days and stuff.
I really want to be able to give my students what I got as a student.
And I remember just loving band so much and just I can't believe that anyone would love
band as much as I did.
And so sometimes I'm always afraid my students are going to every time they make a complaint,
I take it personally.
Oh, they don't like the music or oh, it's too hard or too easy.
But I have to remember there's more important things.
But I do really care about my students passing on that same love for music.
Even if they don't become band directors themselves, they can look back and appreciate the things
they learned and feel like they were part of something really awesome.
We would like to end this segment on a lighter note.
What are some of your favorite movie soundtracks?
I love a lot of very different kinds of music.
And it's hard to name favorites because it totally depends on my mood.
It can be basically almost anything.
But I'm oldish and who doesn't love the Lord of the Rings soundtrack.
And then I have a newer favorite composer, Ola Gjelå, a Norwegian composer residing
in the States.
So he composes mainly choral and piano music, and I found his music during a hard time in
my life a few years ago.
And his music is very calming, hopeful and uplifting.
And for this season, his album Winter Songs is amazing if you look for something peaceful
amidst the usual cheery holiday songs.
This is a great question because I love soundtracks.
And when I'm so old that when I was in high school, I was still buying CDs.
So that's what I would spend my money on is CDs, not of the cool popular bands that my
friends were buying, but of soundtracks.
So I would watch a movie and think, oh, I got that soundtrack and I would buy it.
So I still have at my parents' house, stored away in an attic, this big cage collection
of CDs that I can't get rid of.
But choosing a favorite is very difficult.
You've got to go with John Williams since he's just the all-star film track composer.
Probably a close second favorite would be John Powell.
And he's done some funner tunes.
He did the Shrek, which was just performed, the movie music for that.
He also did How to Train Your Dragon, which is one of my favorite soundtracks.
So much so that that was actually my walkout music to my wedding.
So me and my wife got married and How to Train Your Dragon played right after that.
It was pretty epic.
OK, with that last question, thank you so much for joining us.
It's been a wonderful experience to have you on the podcast.
Now let's hear the PSA before our next segment.
One, two, three, four.
Don't forget, everybody, exam week is coming up.
Put on your anxiety hats and begin studying now so that you're not cramming everything
last minute.
If you have any conflicting exams, inform your teachers to ensure you can take all your
exams.
You may be wondering why are exams important?
There are two types of exams, summative and formative.
Summative exams, also known as assessments, assess the learning of the participants at
the end of a program.
It's not only a reflection of what the students have learned, but also measures the effectiveness
of the curriculum taught.
Teachers are also tested through them.
And remember, no matter what grades you get, it's totally fine.
Grades do not define who you are.
Good luck with all your exams, everyone.
Thank you for that announcement about upcoming exams.
We are back for part two and I am with Mr. Christian and some student musicians.
We are currently all in a place where a lot of music magic happens, AKA a band, strings
and choir room.
Can you all say hi to our listeners?
All right, thank you.
Okay, a while ago, the Students Incorporated team asked Mr. Christian if he could recreate
the intro music we use in our episodes.
It was a big request, so we are super thankful you all took on the challenge.
So we are here today to get a live recording of what you have all come up with.
All right, but before we get into the music, Mr. Christian, could you describe the process
of how you did this and if you ran into any challenges along the way?
Well, we just got sent the music and I listened to it and tried to transcribe it, which is
kind of a fun process.
Some people have really good ear can just copy something the moment they hear it.
For me, it took a few times listening over and over again and trying to figure it out
and then writing it out in a music notation software and then handing it out to the students
and they nailed it the first time.
So it was a fun, fun project to work on.
All right, we are ready.
I'll turn it over to Mr. Christian now.
Thank you.
whoo celebrateuries
celebrate's
Yeah!
As we end this episode, we'd like to thank our guests for joining us.
It's been fascinating to learn about music and sound and how it impacts all of us in
different ways.
A special thank you to the ICS band students as well.
We wish everyone in the strings, band, and voice concert the very best as you continue
to pursue excellence in music and sound.
Please stay tuned for more episodes about exciting and engaging topics.
We will be joined by some special elementary students for next week's episode.
You're not going to want to miss.
As always, this podcast would not be possible without the hard work and support of our international
student production team.
All music and sound effects are courtesy of Pixabay.com, a vibrant community of creatives
sharing copyright-free images, videos, and music.
And we are signing off until next time.
We're Students Incorporated because your voice matters.