What do we mean by Music?

What is music and why is it so important? In this last week of music workshop, we listened to various types of music and looked at the way the musicians are laying and answered various questions that was posed looking at various basic properties of sound such as length, volume, register, timbre(tone colour) and we worked towards the ways in which these are combined to create musical meaning.



Just a brief rundown of the musical terms:
Duration: the varying lengths of sound and silence. When organized into patterns, the refined concepts of rhythm and beat emerge

Dynamics: the intensity and volume of sound. When applied in musical works, refinedconcepts emerge such as cresendo (gradually getting louder), dimineundo (gradually getting softer), forte (loud) and piano (soft) and even ppp (extremely soft)

Pitch: the register of relative ‘height’ (low, medium, high) of a tone. When organized in musical works, refined concepts emerge such as melody (a sequenced organization of different pitches) and harmony (the simultaneous sounding of different pitches).

Timbre or tone colour: the quality of sound with a particular emphasis on the source of the sound (eg. wood, metal, skin) and the ways in which it is produced (struck, plucked, bowed, blown).

Structure: the ways in which sounds are organized in order to create musical works.

The above may be an overly simple way of thinking about music, but it should be the starting point for student’s “own investigations into the language and ideas through which music is described and defined” (Barrett, 2004, p. 66).

Here are a few quotes how some people tries to define music:

1. “Music hath charms to sooth a savage beast.” William Congreve

2. “You just pick a chord, go twang, and you’ve got music.” Sid Vicious

3. “A method of employing the mind without the labour of thinking at all.” Samuel Johnson

4. “Music is the arithmetic of sound as optics is the geometry of light.” Claude Debussy 

Songs we listened to during the workshop:
Carnival of Animals is an orchestral suite made up of 14 movements by Saint-Saëns. Each is based on the character of an animal such as a Lion, Swan and Kangaroo. The animals characters are portrayed by altering the elements, such as pitch and dynamics. Introduced with a poem performed by Roger Moore.

Ask students these questions:
- What part is the piano? (water)
- What part is the cello? (swan)
- Was it stegatto or legatto? (legatto – ask young students to move like it)

Naturally 7 – Wall of sound Naturally 7 is an acapella group who use their voices mimic musical instruments.

We focused questions on:
Tone colour – what instrument are they using their voices to be like/
Structure – come in one by one, layering, verse/chorus/bridge/interlude/coda, call and response.

John Williams (2001) Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter

 
We focused questions on:
Pitch – Brass Vs Woodwind
What kind of instruments were used?
What was the tone colour like? Was it plucked or bowed?

Danny Elfman (1989) Batman Theme – Dark Knight Rises

 
Just playing the first 40secs of the song, we can have students articulate what makes low, sudden loudness, slow to fast etc…
From there, we can get students to make use of apps such as Garage Band to create their very own spooky music (Just in time for Halloween!)

References:

Barrett, M., (2003). Musical children, musical lives, musical worlds. In Wright, S., Children, meaning-making and the arts (pp. 63 to 89). Pearson Education Australia.

Incorporating 5 stimuli for Dance compositions

This last workshop involved choreographing our own dance steps based on our group’s response to different stimuli. The stimuli were based on 5 different learning styles and they are: visual, ideational, auditory, tactile and kinaesthetic. We all got to choose which group we wanted to be in.
I reckon this would make for a very good dance lesson in the future as it would be great to give the children the same choice in the classroom.

Visual

• This should just be an object that is visually interesting/stimulating
• We had a wooden object that showed a woman. 
• We were to describe it visually, write down how it made us feel, and then create a context for this object.
• Students then use this to choreograph dance steps based on 2 counts of 8.

Ideational

• This is when a dance is created in response to a story.
• The picture book 'Henry and Amy' was used by Stephen Michael King
• The group that did this choreographed the dance steps based on the theme of friendship.

“Early one morning when Henry was out walking backwards, trying very hard to walk forwards, he bumped into Amy.”
Henry and Amy (right-way-wound and upside down), by Stephen Michael King
Scholastic, 199, reprinted 2005

Iris read the book to the class. We talked about types of contrasting movement which the two characters have. We can elicit these contrasting terms from our students:straight/wiggly, look up/look down, right/left, front/back, back-to-front, topsy-turvy, upside down
We will then get students to explore these movements. Then compose a set of 2 counts of 8 beat movements.
*Note: There are other picture books that we could use. Some activities with The Island (Armin Greder) and My Place (Nadia Wheatley) are outlined in Gibson & Ewing (2011, pp44-48)
Reference: Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the arts. Palgrave Macmillan, VIC, South Yarra.

Auditory

• We listened to the first few bars of a song.
• Create a dance of 2 bars of 8 beats
• an integrate Music into a lesson such as this – focus on the pitch, mood and dynamics of the song in musical terms before allowing students by trying out moves and actions.

I was in this auditory group because when I heard the song, I immediately thought of the dance moves and I really really liked the melody of the song. It was very Christmas-sy and I could in my head imagine a couple dancing in each others arms. We decided to choreograph an up beat and more swinging and lyrical sort of style for this song. With an open-ended task it was a very enjoyable and imaginative process, and one which really promoted collaboration.

Tactile

• Before introducing the other stimuli, Iris passed an object in a bag – and we weren’t allowed to peek. What we needed to do was reach in and feel what it was.
• This involves the students feeling but not seeing an object
• In this case, it was a something that was wooden, and very prickly and thorny. (I immediately thought of a durian).
• Students then use this to create choreography

The students in my workshop were able to recognise that it was an object that was bursting and prickly. They created a dance about a something in the middle shooting to get out from the confines within. 

Kinaesthetic

• This was based on the quality of the movement itself and meaning was made out of those movements and actions.

Soundscaping

In this workshop, we focused on creating soundscapes. In groups of 3 or 4,we came up with an idea or theme and create a sequence of events that can be represented in a soundscape.

We drew them on a piece of paper, and then used the various pitch and untuned instruments to pair up with the story.

Our group came up with a day at the circus. We made use of the metallaphone to represent an acrobat ascending and descending from a tightrope and the drums to signify a round of applause.

As an introduction to this main activity, we tried to link music with literacy. We read The Billy Goats Gruff and used instruments to add to the character. We learned to match the character with the tone and pitch of the instrument.

I think it’s an excellent way to link music with literacy! It would be a very fun lesson for my students in the future! I can foresee myself doing an activity like this!

Just Dance!

Warm Up:Follow the Leader

• Every person is allocated a word to move to with the music e.g. swing, lyrical, percussive, sustained
• Follow the leader’s movements and move around the space
• Change leader so every person gets a couple of turns as leader

I really really liked this warm up activity. It gave us all freedom of expression and creativity. I think it’s also a great warm up for PE lessons as well. We were all really engaged.
Today’s workshop saw us learning the dance steps to the Hairspray song. In the “real” world of teaching, it could probably take a few weeks to teach children the steps. I am beginning to understand how the dance instructions are being broken down. It gives students the chance to practice and be familiar with the steps, at the same time, allows for the teacher to spot mistakes and give feedback on individuals.

We then learnt some choreography to 'You Can't Stop the Beat'. The focus was on timing, characterisation and performance.

How we learnt the steps to a song in just an hour: I think this is a fantastic way for teachers to help break-down the steps, one which we can employ in our future lessons:

• Break up into rows.
• Teach dance steps.
• Students line up in rows of 6 behind a leader at one end of the dance studio.
• Teacher to repeat and demonstrate the first step of the song.
• Play music and allow students who are first in line to dance towards the other end of studio.
• When all steps have been rehearsed and students, teacher puts all the dance steps together.

Half the class then performed the dance to the other half, which was good as it allowed you to pick up good techniques from the others in your class, while at the same time there was safety in numbers.

During lecture, we explored:
SPACE: Where, Dimensions (forwards, backwards, up, down), Pathways (curved, linear, zig zag)
TIME: When, Tempo, Duration, Rhythm, Beat
DYNAMICS: How, Quality (Swinging, Lyrical, Sustained Movement, Vibratory, Percussive), Movement, Force

Singing: Dynamics, Tone, Structure

In workshop this week, we focussed on singing. I was really excited to learn that because I love going to karaoke! I took home a lot of strategies for teaching music this week. I find myself filing away many activities that can be done in the future.

One of my favourite activities during the music workshop this week was the Rap on school bullies. I would absolutely incorporate it in PDHPE or Literacy lessons in the future!

We also sang two simple songs: Beachcombing and Wet Day Blues. We sang beachcombing with little actions which I fell would really help students remember the lyrics.

Here, the class was split up. We were singing Wet Day Blues and had the class singing different notes in harmony.

The most important thing I took away today was the difference between Rhythm and Beat. Like majority of my course mates, we had no clue there was a difference at all.

So, what’s the difference between beat and rhythm?

Beat is the underlying basic unit of time in music while rhythm is what goes on top of that. A good way of demonstrating this to students is to chant a rhyme while keeping beat with your hands. The words represent the rhythm, while the clapping represents the beat.

 

Some useful resources for singing lessons are:

www.jazzbeat.com

www.welcometomusic.com

www.karaokeversion.com (good quality backing tracks)

Dance Warm Ups

Having just ended our Professional Experience, I was geared up for the Creative Arts Dance and Music classes. In my prac school, my supervising teacher was the dance coordinator and was heavily involved in the SCHOOL SPECTACULAR and WAKAKIRRI dance competitions.She had personally cheographed the songs and I saw how students from Years 3 to 6, both boys and girls really enjoyed the whole experience. I was amazed that the students were able to remember the moves and actions. The actions were so sophisticated! I wondered if I would be able to teach dance in the future!It was wonderful for me to watch the dance group dance together during rehearsals, as it was so joyful and free.
When people dance together, it is "the ultimate in aesthetic and visible rendering of coming together, being in one another's heads and bodies, and joining in mutual support and interdependency" (Heath, 2001, p. 14 from Ewing, 2010).
During the first dance lecture, we watched a Hyundai Ad by Pilobolus Dance Company. It was such an amazing ad!

I was excited to learn more that I can implement in the school context – and during the dance workshop, we were taught many activities. I thought that it was pretty similar to some of the Drama workshop’s techniques, in that we made use of free-walking, freezing, levels and the like.
IN THE WORKSHOP, this is what we learnt:
The aim during a warm up is to:

• Increase the body’s core temperature
• Increase heart rate
• Increase blood flow
• Improve muscle resilience

Some warm-up activities for creative dance include:
Chain Tag

• Good for cardiovascular
• One person as tag – the rest of the students traverse around the room using movements the teacher calls out e.g. bounce, walk backwards, twirl etc.
• Once students are tagged they link to form a chain and move in sync with each other to try and tag the other students

Huggy *

• Free walk around, being aware of space around. Teacher will call out “Huggy *″  and students must form groups with the people closest to them based on the number and instructions given by teacher
• Student forms shapes according to the teacher e.g. “Huggy 3, low height, square”

As conclusion for this post, I’d like to share a video of my favourite flash mob. Sound of Music at Antwerp Train Station. I absolutely love how dance brings people together. It knows no bounds. It’s in itself a language.

Reading, Learning and Playing Music

I took away so much just in this 2-hour session alone! I am looking forward to the next few weeks of music!

The instruments we were introduced to. Barred instruments - which are the xylophones (those made of wood), glockenspeil (small metal 'xylophones') and metallophone. The 2 sticks with hit the notes with are called mallets. The other instruments that have no defined pitch are called untuned instruments such as the tambourine, two-tone block, maracas, cowbells etc...

In just 2 hours, we did a MULTITUDE of things! We learned to read beats and rhythms, read musical notes, learn musical terms and even played barred instruments - for a class with students who largely had no background in music! It was amazing that in half hour, we were able to practice and play Purcell's Cannon in C - which sounded amazing to my ears.

I can foresee myself doing this with my Stage 2 or 3 class in the future. I feel that in learning to read music, I could incorporate Math into it. In introducing beats and rhythms and the number of counts of each bar pattern or each note to the students, I could make a little Math activity out of it!

I found a couple of youtube videos of Grade 3 and Grade 5 students playing the very same piece. It's a great way to slowly introduce students into gaining confidence through reading and playing music.

A Grade 3 class in all engaged and performing this tune so well!