Crew Marsh – Music 🎶

1st February 2024Sarah Mcglone

We have been looking at a chant called ‘Football’ in our music lessons. We started by looking at the rhythm of the chant, practising clapping to the beat together and staying in time. We then looked at the lyrics, thinking about how we could perform them rhythmically and with clear diction.

In our next lesson, we then applied clapping to the beat whilst performing. It helped us to think about keeping in time with one another as this piece does not have a backing track. Once we had mastered this, we then added our own percussion accompaniment to keep the beat.

As a snapshot, to showcase our skills, we practised a song called ‘Rain is falling down’. It teaches us all about how our voices move up and down. We added some actions to match the pitch of our voice and even split into two groups to create a call-and-response version of the song!

Music – Crew Hamill, Crew Shields and Crew Thompson 🎶 ✨ 🎄 🎅🏼

5th December 2023Sarah Mcglone

This morning we have been perfecting our Christmas performance songs. We have been looking at making sure we are singing in time to the beat, adding in body percussion where needed, and getting the lyrics absolutely spot on! It is sounding really beautiful – we just need to keep practising our lines at home so that the whole performance really comes together ready for next week!

We finished off by continuing to learn how to play the recorder. We applied our knowledge of the notes B and A and put them into a short piece of music. We clapped out the rhythm before adding the instruments. Great work! 🎵

Music – Crew Marsh 🎶 ✨

24th November 2023Sarah Mcglone

Continuing our work on Colonel Haithi’s march, this week we looked at applying our skills of finding and maintaining the beat to the untuned percussion instruments. We worked hard to keep in time with each other and only play our instruments on the correct beat. Once we had had a go at marching on the spot with our instruments, we went on a march around the classroom! We then decided to go on a march around school, playing our instruments and counting the beat like the elephants did on the original video. It was extremely fun and the further we got round school, the more united we sounded in our time-keeping. Great work Crew Marsh! 🥁

Music – Crew Marsh 🎼 ✨

23rd November 2023Sarah Mcglone

We have been looking at Colonel Haithi’s March from The Jungle Book in our music lessons. It is a really good piece of music to begin learning about different instruments and finding the beat. We listened to the track and began to find the beat by tapping our knees in time to the elephants counting 1-2-3-4. It was great when we all found our rhythm and started to tap totally in time with one another! We decided to build on this by marching on the spot, making sure that each step was in time. We were really good at this! We finished off by discussing what trombones are and how they were used in this piece of music to sound like an elephant. We looked at how they are played, and the musical ‘family’ they fall into.

Music – Crew Mcloughlin 🎶

22nd November 2023Sarah Mcglone

This week we have continued our exploration of ‘Hey, Mr Miller’. We started by completing a vocal warm up focusing on scales and arpeggios – this helped us to exercise, not only our vocal chords, but also our facial muscles and mouth.

We looked at the word rhythms of select lines from the song, and working in small groups, clapped out the rhythm being sure to think about any pauses, as well as working hard to ensure each member of the group was in time. Once we had practised in our groups, we layered each of the lines so that every group was performing at the same time. We then added in the element of untuned percussion instruments in place of clapping the rhythm to create an ostinato. We worked well in our groups to make sure that every member was in time – it was tricky but the more we practised, the better it sounded! It was really lovely to see some children naturally falling into the role of a conductor, ensuring everyone knew what they were doing and that everyone stayed in time. Special shout out to Lydia B who did a fantastic job of conducting her group, whilst also playing her instrument at the same time!