Music Monthly Update #2

Continue to learn nursery rhyme style songs and add appropriate accompaniments using un-pitched percussion instruments.

Explore the variety of sounds that we can produce on non-pitched percussion instruments in the classroom.

Listen to examples of orchestral instruments and learn how sound is produced. Learn about the four major orchestral families: Strings, woodwind, brass and percussion.

Continue to listen to and play different examples of beat and rhythm and learn how to conduct different beat patterns such as two beats in a bar or three beats in a bar. Using instruments to create classroom arrangements of songs such as “Old MacDonald has a band”. Look at how an orchestra is made up and the role of the conductor.

Look at the way animals are used as the subject matter of many songs and pieces of music. Examine the way composers attempt to convey qualities of movement by using different sounds and sound patterns. Explore “Carnival of the Animals” by Camille Saint Saens.

Students continue to look at patterns in music. The way in which composers use different types of structures to compose music. We will be playing pieces of music that incorporate ostinato patterns such as Pachelbel’s “Canon” and Tubular Bells 2 as well as other examples often used in popular music.

Linking with their current Unit of Inquiry, Migration, we will look at the influence of the African slaves in America in the development of current day Afro-American music. We will learn and perform some Negro Spirituals, Blues and Ragtime.

Students will explore the way composers use various musical devices and conventions to convey certain meanings in music. They will examine how tension can be created in compositions by exploring semitones and silences.