Duration long
introduction
short
ABOUT THE STARTER ACTIVITY Stopwatch sounds WB – investigating the duration of sounds made by classroom instruments and finding ways to control their duration.
pulse
rhythm
silence
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT DURATION Music is made up of sounds and silences of different duration, eg – a hum may last until the singer needs to take a breath; – a hand clap makes a very short sound. The duration of a sound may be controlled, eg – the clash of a suspended cymbal tapped with a beater dies gradually; – the clash of the same cymbal held by its edge while being tapped is a very short sound. Patterns of sounds and silences make rhythm. Often, music is based on a regular underlying pulse or beat – like a ticking clock. Sometimes, music has no pulse.
Stopwatch sounds
What you will need WB 1
1
1. As a class, time the duration of a selection of percussion instruments, tapped once with a beater. Record the results on the printout graph, eg
• Stopwatches. WB • Beaters and a selection of classroom percussion instruments, eg tambour, Wood block, chime bar, cymbal, triangle. • Printouts of the blank graph. • Enough of the above for a few small groups of children.
2. Play the game again in small groups, each with its own selection of instruments, a blank graph and a stopwatch.
Questions you might ask • Which instrument made the shortest sound? (Wood block, xylophone, claves, tambour.) • Which instrument made the longest sound? (Chime bar, glockenspiel, triangle.) • What do you notice about the instruments which made short sounds? (They are made of wood, skin, beads, etc.) • What do you notice about the instruments which made the longest sounds? (They are made of metal.)
3. In the same groups, the children find techniques for altering the duration of the sounds they made before, eg – to make a short sound: hold the rim of a cymbal while tapping it to prevent it from vibrating freely; strike a metal chime bar once then quickly touch it to stop the vibrations; – to make a long sound: use two beaters to play a ‘roll’ – quickly alternating hands, R L R L; scrape the skin of a drum with a fingertip; roll a marble inside a tambour.
4. Ask the groups to demonstrate the techniques they have found.
Listening to Music Elements Age 5+ • © 2017 HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
3
Duration Mu min xin ge long
short
pulse
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT MU MIN XIN GE
rhythm
silence
ABOUT THE ACTIVITIES
Mu min xin ge (moo min hsin gay) is an instrumental arrangement of a traditional Chinese song about a Mongolian cattleman.
Crocodile snap WB – experiencing long and short sounds made vocally.
Among the instruments playing are the Chinese bamboo flute and the yang quin (yang chin), a stringed instrument played by striking its strings with two bamboo beaters.
Sounds in space: Journey 1 – making a sound picture of long and short vocal sounds. Sounds in space: Journey 2 – substituting long and short instrumental sounds for the vocal sounds of Journey 1. Listen to Mu min xin ge – relating the experience gained in the previous activities to the long and short sounds in Mu min xin ge.
In the first section, the instruments play long sounds: the flute player has to take deep breaths to control the sound, and the yang quin player beats the strings very quickly, RLRLRLR, which keeps them vibrating. The second section describes the cattleman galloping on his horse and rounding up his cattle (but don’t reveal this to the children before playing the activities). This time the instruments make very short sounds to give the impression of speed and movement.
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Listening to Music Elements Age 5+ • © 2017 HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
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