Last week I began my final creative process project with my music students. It was a beautiful, sunny day on Thursday so I allowed the choir to take twenty minutes at the end of rehearsal and "play" on the playground. My only stipulation was for them to be aware of the sounds they heard as the played. (I even learned a new playground game called "Box Ball" from my students this day!)
The following day in our musicianship class we began as usual with some folk song games and mapping out simple folk songs with "traditional" notation (aka. quarter notes, half notes ect.).
I then proceeded to explain how there can be music that is not "traditionally" notated. There can be music in situations that we normally do not consider to be very musical. I wrote on the dry erase board the title "Sounds of the Playground". My students suddenly perked up and said, "Oh yah! You asked us to listen as we played yesterday outside." This was absolutely true. My response was to begin a list on the board of sounds we heard/noticed on the playground. Everyone had 4 minutes to discuss and recall sounds that they heard the previous day. Then democratically each student wrote and idea on the board. I will show the pictures in class during my final presentation but the list looked something like this:
1. Balls Tapping
2. Kids Screaming (Tag)
3. Gossip
4. Birds chirping
5. Feet tapping
6. Kids Laughing
7. Wind Whooshing
8. Jump ropes clocking
After the ideas were listed we grouped off and began actually constructing these sounds with a partner. To this task I gave them about 10 minutes to really brainstorm and test out different sounds that might constitute "Balls Tapping" or "Jump ropes clocking". I also documented this process with photographs and sound recording.
We eventually regrouped in a circle and each team shared what they had come up with. I even had two students perform a hand game with lyrics. Actually to be honest many of the groups came up with lyrics whether they were actual games played on the playground or words that accompanied some sort of movement.
Once everyone had performed their sounds individually we began to string them together. Similarly to some of the situations that have been presented in our Creative Process classroom I cued the sounds in group by group and the outcome was fantastic. It truly sounded like a playground, made of voices!
We will continue this week with these notions and also begin thinking about how we might map our a "nontraditional" score to our composition "Sounds of the Playground".
I will update after this week!
The following day in our musicianship class we began as usual with some folk song games and mapping out simple folk songs with "traditional" notation (aka. quarter notes, half notes ect.).
I then proceeded to explain how there can be music that is not "traditionally" notated. There can be music in situations that we normally do not consider to be very musical. I wrote on the dry erase board the title "Sounds of the Playground". My students suddenly perked up and said, "Oh yah! You asked us to listen as we played yesterday outside." This was absolutely true. My response was to begin a list on the board of sounds we heard/noticed on the playground. Everyone had 4 minutes to discuss and recall sounds that they heard the previous day. Then democratically each student wrote and idea on the board. I will show the pictures in class during my final presentation but the list looked something like this:
1. Balls Tapping
2. Kids Screaming (Tag)
3. Gossip
4. Birds chirping
5. Feet tapping
6. Kids Laughing
7. Wind Whooshing
8. Jump ropes clocking
After the ideas were listed we grouped off and began actually constructing these sounds with a partner. To this task I gave them about 10 minutes to really brainstorm and test out different sounds that might constitute "Balls Tapping" or "Jump ropes clocking". I also documented this process with photographs and sound recording.
We eventually regrouped in a circle and each team shared what they had come up with. I even had two students perform a hand game with lyrics. Actually to be honest many of the groups came up with lyrics whether they were actual games played on the playground or words that accompanied some sort of movement.
Once everyone had performed their sounds individually we began to string them together. Similarly to some of the situations that have been presented in our Creative Process classroom I cued the sounds in group by group and the outcome was fantastic. It truly sounded like a playground, made of voices!
We will continue this week with these notions and also begin thinking about how we might map our a "nontraditional" score to our composition "Sounds of the Playground".
I will update after this week!
