Continuing our work on ‘Nautilus’, we started by making large and small shapes with our bodies. This was a good activity to get us thinking about how music can make different shapes using different beats and length durations. We repeated this activity only this time we had to make a big shape, and become a small shape over 8 counts. We worked hard to make sure that we were all taking our time so that we all became smaller shapes at the same time. We then repeated this again, only this time we started as smaller shapes and we had to grow to become bigger shapes, again over 8 counts.

We then moved on to explore sounds as images and how the shapes used within the animated music video match closely with the sounds used within the piece of music. We noticed that the shapes at the beginning of the video looked like jaws opening and closing and they moved in time with the music.

We then looked at examples of music graphic scores and talked about how images and marks on a page might tell a story of how the music changes or how a piece of music is played and performed. We listened to ‘Nautilus’ again and created our own music graphic scores to match the sounds we could hear and the shapes we thought the music was making.

We began our next unit of music ‘Nautilus’ by learning all about the composer Anna Meredith. She composed the piece of music ‘Nautilus’ and her music covers lots of different styles. We listened to the music with our eyes closed whilst thinking of the following questions:

Whilst continuing to listen to the music, we explored feeling the beat using our bodies to move in time with the music. We listened carefully for any changes in the music and considered how we would use our bodies to show that change. We worked as a crew to follow a listening map that matched the music as it changed throughout.