Battle of the Bands - the result!

The 6th Form presented the inaugural Battle of the Bands on Friday night and it was a roaring success - quite literally in some cases!

A big congratulations to the winning band - 'Give Me The Sun' who beat 9 other bands from Welling and beyond, and performed to hundreds of very excited 6th formers.

Lewis O'Brien
Ben Pabla
Jake Cox
Jacob Luker

Here's a sneak preview of the night - Liam Penny's band 'The Inferno':



More to follow so keep your eyes peeled on Soundswellgood for more vids. DVDs of the entire event will be available to purchase from Gerry's fantastic We-Film crew soon!

Music Clubs!

Bored after school? End up going home and staring at the walls? If you love Music and want to jam with like-minded people, go on trips and perform in and out of school, take a look at the Music clubs. They are all free and you can just turn up. You may even get cake, sometimes.

Voices For A Better World

Following the superb performance at the O2 last July of the Beatles extravaganza The Long and Winding Road', the date and theme of the 2010 project has just been released:

'Licence to Thrill'

If you want to take part in this exciting project involving 6000 students, celebrities, singing, dancing and light shows, join the Choir who rehearse on Tuesdays after school in the Music Department. All are welcome! There will also be the chance to audition for a solo spot in the O2, as won by Ellie Smith last year in this video.

Click here for more details of the new show.

Battle of the Bands!

The VI Form are proud to introduce the first Battle of the Bands at Welling School!

The Battle commences on Friday 20th November at 6pm in Berwick Theatre... be ready to clash swords and guitars. Snacks and drinks will be available.

If you play in a band which has at least one member who attends Welling School, you can enter. See Miss Beer in her office, or Mrs Warren in the Music department to sign up.

May the best band win...

Trust's Got Talent - The Final!

The Final is here! Please come and support our fantastic 4 finalists who have battled through the Welling Heats and the Welling Final to win the chance to perform at the Grand Final at Kemnal Technology College in front of 3 top secret celebrity judges. There are cash prizes: £100 for the winner and £100 for the winner's Performing Arts faculty, £75 for the 1st runner-up and for their faculty, and £50 for the 2nd runner-up and for their faculty. We know our fab performers will do Welling proud.

Tickets are available from Reception and are selling out fast so get your tickets asap - £5 for adults and £3 for students. Please don't think 'Oh I'll just turn up on the night and pay then' because it will most probably be a sell-out, meaning you may not get in. Remember, there are 3 schools involved and we want the cheers for our acts to be the loudest!

Trust's Got Talent - The Heats! Acts 6-10

Here are the next 5 acts from Welling School's Heats for the Trust's Got Talent competition... enjoy!

Trust's Got Talent - The Heats! Acts 1-5

Here are the fantastic first 5 acts from the Trust's Got Talent Welling School Heats. More to follow - keep checking the blog for more!

Comments are now enabled - who are your favourites?

Musical Celebration - more videos!

Some more videos from March's 'Musical Celebration' concert. Enjoy!

Voices For A Better World - the gig!

On Wednesday 1st July, the choir took to the O2 stage along with 4,700 other people to perform 34 Beatles songs in the Voices For A Better World concert. It was an excellent day of rehearsals followed by a great concert. Photos to follow, but for now here's a couple of videos. Poor sound and visuals - they're probably from mobile phone footage - clips from official DVD to follow in a later post. Click here to buy the DVD!

Here's 'Get Back'. If you look at the people in orange t-shirts closely, you'll see the Welling choir in the back 4 rows!

Here's Ellie's solo in 'Let It Be', sung with Kway of 'I'd Do Anything' fame. At this point in the concert, a drama of John Lennon being shot had just been played out and the lights went out as he was shot... then all the performers lit a torch and the pair begin to sing. Spine-tingling stuff, I think you'll agree!

Y7 Orchestra Project

Y7 have been learning about the Orchestra. Here are some of their compositions, based on the piece of music by Benjamin Britten - 'Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'. The original has sections for each family of instruments to play, so we did the same and wrote a section for each family - Strings, Woodwind, Brass and Percussion before combining them for a Tutti finale. Here's the original piece:

... and here are some of our own compositions for orchestra.

Rosie and Libby -

Chloe and Manmeet -

KS3 Music Prizes

The KS3 awards evening was held last week, where we celebrated achievements in every subject, with entertainment from Ellie and the Guys performing 'Innocence' and Kwame performing 'Me and Mrs Jones'. Here are the Music prizewinners of 2008/09:

Y7

Jack Glidewell - for piano skills

Nghia Dai Tran - for piano and vocal skills

Y8

Amelia Phillips - for vocal skills

Liam Penny - for drumkit and technology skills

Y9

Ellie Smith - for vocal and guitar skills

Jack Smith - for piano skills

The Performing Arts trophy was awarded to Kwame Boateng for outstanding achievement in Music. He sings, plays piano, guitar, bass and could probably get a lovely sound from any other instrument you care to put in front of him!

Well done to all our award winners and a big thank you from the Music Department for your contribution to a successful year.

Trust's Got Talent - The Finalists

Here are the finalists who will perform on Thursday 2nd July in the Welling Final:

‘Love Story’ sung by Sophie

Dance by Sam, Josh and Jack

‘Pump It’ dance – Y7 girls

‘These Four Walls’ performed by Ellie and the Guys

‘Use Somebody’ sung by Amelia

‘Mad’ sung by Liam

‘Let Me In’ performed by Darkness Beyond Motion

‘Climb’ sung by Laura

‘I Surrender’ sung by Debbie

Voices in the Metro!

The Voices For A Better World concert was featured in the Metro newspaper today. Click here for the full story...

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson passed away on 25th June 2009 at the age of 50. At Welling School today, many of us celebrated his life by listening to his music and watching his dancing on YouTube videos. Students from the Dance department remembered their trip last term to see 'Thriller', the musical dedicated to him, in the West End. In Music, we remixed 'Blame it on the Boogie' and compared the original of 'Man in the Mirror' with a Hed Kandi remixed version.

Since the Jackson 5 signed to Motown Records in 1968 with Michael as its youngest member at 11, Michael has spent a life in the spotlight for his amazing talent, and often his more controversial lifestyle. His 1982 album 'Thriller' is the bestselling album of all time, cementing his position as the King of Pop.

Here are several links, where you can learn about the life of this extraordinary man, listen to his music and watch him dance.

Wikipedia biography

AllMichaelJackson.com biography

Rolling Stone biography

Playlist of MJ videos

Playlist of Jackson 5 videos

How to Moonwalk

Trust's Got Talent Heats!

The Welling School Heats for the Trust's Got Talent inter-school talent contest were held this week, and the judges and audience were treated to a visual and aural feast. Out of 28 fantastic performances, the judges had the difficult task of picking 10 finalists to go forward to the Welling School Final on the 2nd July, where they will perform their items again with more polish and pizazz. Four acts will then be picked to perform in the Grand Final at Kemnal Technology College, representing Welling School against acts from Kemnal and from Debden Park School. There will be celebrity judges at the Grand Final as well as cash prizes, so we need to take the very best talent we can offer! Videos and photos of the Heats to follow...

Voices For A Better World - Band Call

We travelled up to Ware in Hertfordshire for the Band Call, where the choir sang with around 1500 other children in a rehearsal. The rehearsal took place in a stadium and even then had to be split into 3 separate sessions to accommodate the huge numbers of children taking part! Ellie sung her solo in 'Let It Be' very well and is confident about next week's performance in the O2. The choir are polishing their lyrics, melodies, harmonies and moves for all 34 of the songs and are very excited about the gig. If you would like a ticket, See Tickets have now sold out, but you can still get tickets by visiting the O2 website.

Acoustic Sessions

Some of our singers choose songs to cover in an acoustic style, accompanied by Tom on the guitar. We loved taking well-known songs and making them our own.


Session 1: Amelia Phillips covers Kings of Leon's 'Use Somebody'

Use Somebody - Amelia.mp3 -

Session 2: Holly Hunter covers Rod Stewart's 'Baby Jane'.

Baby Jane - Holly.mp3 -

GCSE Music showcase

Here's a selection of some of the best pieces of coursework completed by the GCSE Music class of 2009. They're all studying hard for the rest of their exams, safe in the knowledge that they did their very best in Music and IT'S ALL OVER!!!

GCSE coursework

Introducing... 'Give Me The Sun'

The band have been rehearsing every week for several months, and have now completed several covers as well as making a stab at writing some of their own material. Here is their first studio recording session:'Better' which they wrote themselves and they will perform at the Danson Festival.

Better - Give Me The Sun.mp3 -

A Musical Celebration - videos pt.2

Here are a few more videos of performances from the Musical Celebration evening. Enjoy!











See Ellie, Jack, Kwame, Amelia and more perform new material at the upcoming 'One Night Only' concert at Berwick Theatre on 9th July and the Danson Festival on 4th July.

Congratulations Ellie!

Breaking news! A massive congratulations to Ellie Smith, whose audition video has been chosen by Voices For A Better World to sing a solo in front of 15,000 people at the O2 Arena. She will sing the 2nd verse of 'Let It Be' by the Beatles (the most wanted solo spot of the show!) and half of the 3rd verse too, as a duet with a special guest male singer and with a backing from the other 4699 singers present and the professional band. This an outstanding achievement and Ellie is a credit to Welling School and the Music department.  If you'd like tickets to the concert, please visit the Voices For A Better World website.

A Musical Celebration - videos pt.1

We held a Musical Celebration concert in March, which was a resounding success. Students performed a wide variety of music to an appreciative audience, who enjoyed a glass of wine afterwards in a toast to Welling students' musical talent. Here are a few of the items - more to follow.







If you enjoyed these videos and didn't make it to the March concert, please join us for the Performing Arts 'One Night Only' performance, which will include music, dance and drama and promises to be a night to remember. 14th July in Berwick Hall.

Studio recording...

Ellie Smith had a recording session with our technician Tom Ross, and this is the impressive outcome. 

Ellie Smith - Climb -

If you fancy trying your hand at recording vocals to a professional standard, see Tom to arrange a session.