We began our new unit ‘Swing-a-long with Shostakovich’ by listening to the piece of music and moving using a swaying motion. We tried to keep in time to the beat, thinking about not moving too fast or too slow. We chanted 1, 2, 3 as we did it to try and keep us in time. We discussed that this was called a 3-time beat.
In the second section of the song, the beat changes slightly. To show this, we tapped our knees on 1, then clapped our hands on 2. We found out this was called a 2-time beat.
We talked about the composer of this piece and how Dmitri Shostakovich was a famous composer who wrote jazz suites made up of dances. One piece called ‘Polka’ has a 2-time beat, whereas the ‘Waltz’ has a 3-time beat. We listened to both pieces and counted out loud to recognise the difference in beats, before we began to move our bodies to both beats.
We then became musical detectives and looked at how you could create 2-beat and 3-beat rhythms using body percussion. We listened to a selection of short pieces of music and used body percussion to help us decide whether the piece has a 2-time beat or a 3-time beat. We were really good at this and it shows we have a good ear for recognising patterns in music!
