Meter Exploration

Lesson #10: Name that Meter

Today was my last lesson with my Spanish Oaks Elementary third graders! For our last lesson, I decided to use a lesson plan from one of my professors at BYU (Rob Dunn). He taught this lesson to our class and I loved it! I was very curious how this lesson would go with non-college music majors. So I taught it to this wonderful class and learned a lot! 

First, each student received a tennis ball (after going over the rules for the tennis balls). Then I directed the students to bounce the tennis balls in unison to form a common beat. They discovered this was hard. Simply bouncing the ball and catching it was harder too than I expected! Then we sang "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and bounces the ball to the beat. This was much easier--because there was a beat to follow that we were all listening to.

I demonstrated bouncing the ball on the floor (beat 1) and then catching it (beat 2). I drew visuals on my whiteboard that looked like this.

12       12       12       12

The students recited this with me and bounced their tennis balls in a 2 pattern.
This later turned into strong/weaks--like so:

Sw       Sw      Sw     Sw


This is an example of meter. Meter can be defined as: the regular groupings of strong and weak beats. The meter that has groupings of 2 is called duple meter.

We also learned triple meter! Instead of just the down-catch, down-catch pattern students now do down-catch-catch, down-catch-catch.

123      123    123    123

Sww     Sww   Sww    Sww

Then we listened to a bunch of different recordings of songs and bounced the tennis balls with the meter of each song. At the beginning, I told the students which meter it was in and also tapped the beat on my fingers so they could see the beat. Towards the end of the lesson, I tapped the beat but did not immediately tell them which meter the song was in. On average, about 3/4 of the class correctly figured out which songs were in 2 and 3.

If the song was slower, we could stand and bounce the tennis balls. If the song was faster, than it was easier to sit/kneel down and bounce from there.

Here's some of the songs we listened to that will be familiar to most people (if not by title, then by listening):

• Pachebel's Canon in D (2)
• Rossini's William Tell Overture (2)
• Copland's Variations on a Shaker Hymn (2)
• Copland's Rodeo: Hoe Down (2)
• Ravel's Bolero (3)
• Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers (3)
• Star Wars Main Theme (2)
• Pirates of the Caribbean (3)
• Polar Express (2)
• Spider Man (2)
• Lord of the Rings (4)
• We briefly learned compound duple (4). (Down, catch, catch, catch)

This lesson was slightly crazy but fun! The kids were able to listen to a wide variety of music and to improve their listening skills while listening for strong and weak beats.

So Long, Farewell

Teaching in this classroom has been one of my favorite experiences I've had while at BYU. Each of the students also made me their own thank-you cards! They are so sweet. I'm grateful for the opportunity I've had to teach them and for all that they have taught me this semester.

Dividing Music

Lesson #9: Learning about Form

Yesterday we had another fun lesson at Spanish Oaks Elementary! I had decided that we would do another listening lesson. Listening to music is a skill that can be learned and improved! The class will also soon begin division. So this lesson focuses on form--how we can divide up a song into sections. 

I began by drawing this candy bar on the whiteboard. You were lucky enough to be given a KitKat, but you also have three friends with you who want to eat it too. You are a pretty generous person, so you divide the KitKat into four sections--one for you and each of your friends. But you don't just divide it anywhere--you follow the grooves that are part of the KitKat. So just like this KitKat was divided, we were going to divide a song into sections.

Form Piece

Then the class listened to a creation I had made called a form piece. This essentially is a combination of songs put together that leads to a very basic understanding of form. Before listening to this song, I directed them to raise their hands high when they heard a new section. HINT: the sections would be REALLY obvious.

Form Piece

We listened to the form piece, the students raised their hands at new sections, and there were a lot of laughs from the class. Then I drew a dot on the board. This dot represents the start of the piece. Then I drew an arc and asked the class what was the very first song they heard ("Be Our Guest"). I wrote the title beneath the arc and then drew a second arc ("Do You Want to Build a Snowman"). Next I explained that letters were going to represent these sections. The first section is A. The second section, because it is very different than the first section, is B. After listening to the song again, the class helped me draw and label the rest of the arcs. They caught on to this idea much quicker than I expected! 

After it was all written out, I explained that we divided this song into seven sections and discovered the FORM of the piece. The form of this piece was ABABCDA.

Round Two

Next we did almost the same activity, but with a real song! We used "All Star" by Smash Mouth (famous mainly because of "Shrek").

"All Star" recording

We did arcs and labelled the first half of the song. When the class wasn't sure of an answer, we went back and listened to the song again to check. 

Round Three

For this last song, I had students vote to pick a song they wanted to do. We ended up with "Moana." This round was to be a game! For the first listening, the class raised their hands at ends of sections and I drew arcs. The students had whiteboards and then copied the arcs I had drawn onto their whiteboards. They then had two more times to listen to the song and write in the letters. While the song played I pointed at the arc that we were in as the song progressed. 

"How Far I'll Go"

The students had a minute or so (we were running out of time) to wrap up. I walked around and looked at their whiteboards. The first half of the song, I think every student got right (ABC). The second half was where answers started varying. I gave one freebie answer in the second half of the song that the class was struggling with.

When time was up, I wrote the correct form on the board. Then the students counted up the number they got right and then added their number with the other members of their house. The house with the most points won! Ravenclaw won! The form of this piece was ABCABC.

Wrap-Up

This was a fun listening lesson! I really was surprised at how well the students not only heard the sections but also how they caught on to labeling sections with letters and those letters repeating when those sections came up again in the music. I hope that they can now spot more of this in their own music-listening outside of the classroom!

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy

Lesson #8: Musical Tradition

The Spanish Oaks third grade class had a fun time yesterday with this lesson! We began by discussing what a tradition is. The students gave many examples of various Christmas traditions their families have. We established that a tradition is a type of custom that is repeated over time. Traditions have meaning to us, often have some kind of order, may evolve over time, and we sometimes aren't happy when traditions are abruptly changed.

We then talked about some musical traditions. For example: singing "Happy Birthday" at a birthday party, singing patriotic songs around a national holiday, singing church songs at church, and so forth. 

Music as a Tradition (Music History Time):

When people first began writing music, there were all kinds of rules that governed how to write a song. Certain notes could be played together and other notes were avoided. Songs had a specific order (or form) to them. Certain kinds of songs were either sacred or secular. As I explained all of this (on a very simple and general level) to the students, I drew on the board a mini-time line. I drew a box for the 1600's and earlier, for the 1700's, 1800's, 1900's, and 2000's. Each of these different time periods had some different musical "rules" or traditions that composers followed up to the 1900's. But in the 1900's composers got sick and tired of following all the old rules about writing music! So they wrote whatever they wanted. Nowadays in the 2000's we hear music from all of these periods. New music written today is based at least somewhat in musical rules that have been taught in the past.

An Arrangement

I then wrote the word "arrangement" on the board. The students first defined the word in terms of "a flower arrangement" and then applied that knowledge to what a musical arrangement might be (a different version or assembly of a song). In class we would listen to an original song and then an arrangement of the same song.

• Original song: "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from "The Nutcracker" by Tchaikovsky, written in the 1800's
• Arrangement: "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" sung by Pentatonix, written in the 2000's

Listen, Listen, Listen:

Most of the students immediately recognized this song when they heard it. I gave each student a scarf and modelled how I wanted them to use their scarf whenever they heard a specific melodic motive (the quickly descending wind instrument, or bass voice). The students caught onto this quickly and listened to the whole piece, using their scarf to show when they heard that motive.

Next we listened to the whole song again. This time the students were instructed to move their body to the sound of the music. Move their feet, legs, hands, arms, head, and scarf. If the music was quiet or loud, they should do something with their body that reflects that. If the music is sharp, smooth, fast, or slow they should show that with their body.

We did this activity! Most of the students got pretty into it!

Original Orchestral Recording

After the song was over, the students sat and got to listen to the Pentatonix arrangement. They still did the same motion with their scarfs, but nothing else. They were to raise their hand whenever they heard something musical that was different in this recording. They were very enthusiastic in noticing that they heard something different.

Next we listened to the Pentatonix version again and the students moved around like they did with the original orchestral piece. 

Pentatonix Arrangement Recording

Then we gathered again and had a class discussion about what was similar and what was different between the two recordings. We also talked about why we would write arrangements anyways when we have the original song. Each of the students had insightful observations that showed how they had been active and critical listeners while listening to the two pieces.