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.