Primary Music Magazine
Introduction We watched a video of Dizzy Gillespie playing A Night in Tunisia and talked about his extraordinary technique - those cheeks (don’t try this at home children!), and his unusual trumpet with the bell bent upwards. We noted the difference between playing the tune (or the ‘head’ in jazz) which is set, and improvising which is free (within set parameters). Activity In groups, the children were set the task of coming up with word phrases using vocabulary referring to Dizzy, jazz and brass instruments and then fitting the words into ta (crotchets), ti-ti (quavers) and sh (crotchet rest) over a count of four. We worked out how to write the rhythms on the whiteboard, alongside a picture of the relevant un-tuned percussion instrument that had been allocated to each group.
Issue 3.1 Spring 2019
Using words as a starting point for KS2 Composition
An example lesson by Kay Charlton
Beats: 1 2 3 4 Group A Jazz Jazz trum-pet Jazz woodblocks ta ta ti-ti ta Group B trum-pet plays ve-ry loud scrapers ti-ti ta ti-ti ta Group C trum-pet trom-bone sh tu-ba claves ti-ti ti-ti sh ti-ti Group D im-pro- vise we like mu-sic tambourines ti-ti ta ti-ti ti-ti Group E trom-bone trum-pet jazz sh maracas ti-ti ti-ti ta sh
24
