User:Jeffrts/Rock the stars

Rock the Stars is a team building concept developed in 2002 that uses music to build bridges and create a bonding experience amongst participants. It emphasizes collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and confidence building. Rock the Stars founder Stewart Hall, a lifelong musician with a successful career in business, developed the program after observing how interpersonal dynamics within a musical group were similar to those found in the workplace. In fact, the collaborative, creative and problem solving skills used by a band of musicians are the same for any work group with a project to complete or a product to deliver.

Combining the team aspects of playing in a band with the positive response people have to music creates a powerful team building experience.

Rock Music In Team Building
There are several music oriented programs used for team building. Some involve primal skills like drumming while others involve interacting with professional musicians in a show. Rock the Stars incorporates these elements and more offering an interactive program where participants create and perform the most popular music of our time.

For 50 years rock and roll has been the dominant form of popular music around the world. It is the soundtrack of our lives, associated with positive feelings and memories. Rock the Stars starts with songs that are universally known. Then, depending on the program, groups are given the opportunity to put themselves into the song by learning, rewriting or performing it. They create their own soundtrack, a very empowering experience.

Collaboration
Music is a social art form. It is produced collaboratively and enjoyed collectively. Most people's first experience of music is during childhood. We all made music when we were children, by clapping hands or singing rhymes. The act of clapping or singing together is co-operation at a basic level. The fact that humans are the only species that can get in sync rhythmically suggests that performing music together is good for us. It is hard wired into our DNA.

If you ask a group of children to clap collectively they will immediately register the tempo and tone that is set by whoever is recognized as the leader. If the leader sets a tempo that the group sub-consciously decides is too fast or too slow, the group will modify that tempo. Music is most people’s first experience with creative collaboration.

Confidence building
Studies involving people’s response to music are complex and ongoing. Even if we don't fully understand why music resonates so deeply with people, it is accepted that there is a fundamental and complex relationship between music and well being. Musical therapy has become accepted as a valuable treatment for people suffering from any number of afflictions. It helps the uncommunicative to communicate, the stressed to relax and the introvert to come out of their shell. A musical performance can boost the confidence of someone who may be uncomfortable in front of an audience; either by allowing them to showcase a skill they’ve mastered or by letting them face their fear within the comfort of a group.

Critical Thinking
Performing or composing music requires constant and instant criticism. A performer who is improvising has dozens of note options but can only choose one at a time. When writing lyrics a composer makes a choice with every word. These choices require critical thinking. They rely on the ability to think about the “whole” and how all the individual pieces fit together. In a group the need for critical thinking is amplified since working collaboratively requires creating within the objectives of the group. Critical thinking means having awareness of what will work and what will not and using that knowledge to help you create.

Creativity
Performance is the physical creation of music. Improvisation is the spontaneous creation of music. Composition is when musical improvisation is notated to be later repeated and improved until it is a finished work. Each of these steps involves smaller processes. For example, performance requires the practice of a skill, as simple as a hand clap or as complex as a violin glissando. Improvisation involves instantly choosing to play one of an infinite number of timbres and rhythms. Composition involves deciding which melodies are fresh and appealing and which are cliché. Music involves making instant choices all the time, stimulating the creative process.