To continue with our unit on ‘Down there under the sea’, we recapped our physical warm up from the previous lesson. We then reminded ourselves of the lyrics to our song and used picture prompts to help us think about the content of each verse.
We then listened to the sounds of the sea being made using percussion instruments and thought about how we could use the instruments in our classroom to create similar sounds.
We represented seagulls, crabs and waves using different percussion instruments and performed as a class to create a seaside soundscape.
We finished the lesson by looking at the notes C-D-E on the glockenspiel. We worked hard to keep in time with our partner to play each note.
We began work on our new unit of work called ‘Down there under the sea’ by first of all warming our bodies up, thinking about making big movements with our arms and legs to represent different activities you would do at the beach – swimming, surfing, making sandcastles, and jumping over waves.
We discussed lots of different sounds that you might hear at the beach, and thought about how we could represent or make similar noises using our voices. We talked about the noise of the waves, seagulls, a rain storm out at sea, as well as a foghorn blaring to help keep ships safe! We worked together as a crew to create short soundscapes for each of the sounds.
We then listened to and responded to a piece of music that represented being underwater. It was accompanied by a video that showed lots of different sea creatures and how they moved in the water. We responded by moving our bodies to the music in different ways and at different speeds.
We finished the lesson by listening to and beginning to learn our new song ‘Down there under the sea’. We listened carefully to the words and started to try singing along at the same time as the song, thinking about how we moved our voice up and down to sing different notes.
Today, we finished our work on ‘Twinkle Variations’. We began by recapping what we had previously discussed around variations and how they can be altered through tempo, rhythm and pitch. We were introduced to passacaglia, which is a repeating bassline and composers often use passacaglia as the basis for their variations. Working with a partner, we chose a short section of ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star’ to use as the bassline. We spent time perfecting this short section on the glockenspiel.
We then looked at how we could adapt it further. We started by changing the rhythm to make it sound like a happy, dancing passacaglia. We found this quite tricky as it required us to play at a faster tempo and required more notes.
We then looked at adapting the same section, only this time taking away the rhythm and slowing it down to create a more solemn passacaglia. This was easier in terms of the amount of notes, however, it required us to think more carefully about keeping in time and remembering to rest between notes.
Once we had practised different passacaglia options, we split the class into 2 groups. One group played a passacaglia bassline whilst the other group layered an improvised piece. The group who were improvising were allowed to make their own decisions about what they wanted to play, however, they needed to consider fitting in with the bassline, playing at the same speed as the bassline, starting and stopping at the same time, and staying within the correct pitches.
We finished our unit on ‘Trains’ by layering up different rhythm notations to create a whole class piece of music that represented the movement of a train. We split into 3 groups, drums, shakers and guiros. Each instrument represented a different rhythm notation and we practised our individual rhythms before playing at the same time and creating a layered piece.
We finished our unit on ‘Musical Conversations’ by creating whole class written notations to allow us to work in small groups using untuned percussion instruments to perfect a musical conversation. We worked really hard to ensure that everyone had a role, we even made amendments to the notations for those groups that had more/less children in them.
We have continued our work on ‘Latin Dance’ this week by recapping information about Cuban music and how it is influenced. We then practised finding and maintaining a 2-3 clave rhythm, and a 3-2 clave rhythm using untuned percussion instruments. We then applied these rhythms to some traditional Cuban pieces of music.
We practised our piece ‘Latin Dance’, reviewing the lyrics and reminding ourselves of the structure of the piece. We noticed that there were two instrumental parts within the song and we decided to create our own Cuban rhythms to add to the existing instrumental parts.
Once we were happy with our rhythms, we practised the song as a whole, making sure that we were following our conductor to make sure we kept in time with each other and the backing track.
During this lesson, we began looking at performing the Twinkle theme on pitched instruments. We used glockenspiels and worked hard to use the notations to ensure we were playing the correct notes with the correct rhythm.
We then thought about how we could create a new variation based upon the changes we had discussed in our previous lesson as well as some new suggestions. Working with a partner, we created a short variation before sharing these with the rest of our crew. We tried to identify how the performers had created their new variation as well as praising and offering critique for improvement next time.
We continued with our work on ‘Trains’ during music by thinking of different sounds that you would hear on a train or that a train makes. We thought about how we could use our voices and body percussion to create these sounds.
We then practised following a conductor using crescendo and diminuendo actions whilst performing the train sounds we had decided upon.
Miss McGlone played us a rhythm using a drum and after a discussion, we decided that this rhythm could be used to represent the wheels of the train. She then used a shaker to play a beat that was twice as fast as the drum. We said that this could represent the passengers on the train jiggling along as the train moved. Finally, she played a guiro that went twice as fast as the shaker. This represented the sound of the engine. We talked about how the drum and the shaker could stay at their original beat whilst all being layered on top of each other. We listened to an example of how each individual beat could be played at the same time to create a piece representing multiple different parts of a train journey.
We are ready to begin creating our own compositions next lesson that include lots of rhythms layered on top of each other, as well as using crescendo and diminuendo techniques.
We began our new music unit ‘Trains’ by thinking about different modes of transport. We then listened to 4 pieces of music inspired by different modes of transport. We had to listen carefully and draw the type of transport we thought was represented by the music.
We were then introduced to the musical terms ‘crescendo’ and ‘diminuendo’. When the music gets louder it is called a ‘crescendo’. When the music fades away and gets quieter it is called ‘diminuendo’. We looked at the symbols that are used in written music to show this.
We practised a short rhythm and repeated this multiple times. We decided on a visual prompt that our conductor (Miss McGlone) could use to show crescendo and diminuendo and as we repeated the rhythm, we followed the actions of the conductor to make it louder or quieter.
