Brainstorming Lesson Ideas: Part 2

I've been doing some more brainstorming, this time for lesson ideas based around Andy Akiho's "21". I've been particularly thinking about how to teach the main rhythmic ostinato, as I'm assuming it would be quite challenging for students to get their heads around it. There's an interesting element where you could just learn the rhythms verbatim through repetition without understanding any of it, which might be fine if you are just performing, but I want students to be able to take some of the rhythmic concepts embedded in Akiho's work and use them in their own compositions! I suppose it comes back to Chris Azzara's point about the difference between reading and understanding.

Anyway... here's what I've got so far:

Lesson ideas building on “21”

• Rhythmic ostinatos – taking the main cello ostinato apart as a rhythmic device

• Start by aurally learning the ostinato

• Spend a long time with it, getting it in your ear

• Then eventually move to transcription, experimenting with different ways to notate it

• Link to ideas about notation not being an omnipotent unquestionable being, but rather being a way to communicate your musical ideas

• Listen to some other songs that use this dotted quaver pattern:

• Entertain Me – Tigran Hamasyan (4 groups of 5 then 5 groups of 3)

• Shape Of You – Ed Sheeran

• Heaven for the Sinner - Bonobo

• Performance: take 3 notes and make an ostinato using the dotted quaver rhythm; tie certain ones to make a unique groove and perform in groups

• Option of notation (make a Sibelius-derived PDF with 2-4 bars of dotted quavers, that students can then add ties to as needed)

• Use of looping software to expand capabilities of instruments

• Pizzicato and other extended techniques on cello

After this I'll need to turn all these ideas into actual lessons!