Music

This week in Music, students continued to explore how music can tell a story and create mood through the various musical elements, such as tempo, timbre, dynamics and melody.

We warmed ourselves up with a fun sound effects game. One student created a movement and another invented a matching sound effect using their voice. Together, they performed the movement and sound, it was very funny!

We then went on to learn about the fascinating invention of the Fotoplayer (also known as the American Photo Player). This instrument was used to create live sound effects and music for early silent movies. Ever since I first heard about it I have been keen to share it with our students, it is worth a look up if you are not familiar with it. 

But then I wanted our students to do more than just identify the musical elements, I wanted us to manipulate them. So we discussed when each would be important, for example;

• Tempo to match walking and chasing scenes
• Timbre to create sound effects, or distinguish a character
• Pitch to represent climbing and falling actions
• Dynamics to cue the mood

What next? We naturally turned to classic Tom and Jerry. To begin we listened to the music and made a prediction of what might be happening with the cheeky mouse and cat. 

Then we watched some scenes in silence, and using glockenspiels and percussion instruments we created our own music to match.