Brainstorming Lesson Ideas: Part 1

I've been working my way through the compositional features of "Pulse Magnet", trying to think of ways that I could turn interesting features of the work into lessons. As well as building directly outwards from the composition itself, it's also a requirement of this assignment to build in a number of aural/ear training activities, since in the HSC Music 2 course, 10% of the HSC mark is purely down to this trainable skill (i.e. 5% sight singing, 5% melodic dictation). Here's what I've got so far in my brainstorming:

Lesson Ideas

• Building an understanding of cultural context of music --> the paper I read about debates of modernist vs. postmodernist concerns

• Bring in discussions (that have already been had in Year 11) about concerns for originality and progression

• Could look at a Smetanin work from the same period, when he was supposedly concerned with total originality

• Research task about the composer, their background and philosophical concerns

• Performance of sections of the work, or arrangements of key features:

• Take bar 296-307 and make a mixed bag arrangement OR a body percussion thing --> play up the 6/8, 6/4, 4/4 thing

• Propulsive rhythm performance – can improvise but you can’t stop playing fast quavers

• Students given three melodic/chordal motifs --> in small groups have to perform antiphonally, arranging the parts to have call and response

• Composition

• Writing for 3 non-diatonic chords moved around in parallel

• Compose based on 311-319 --> octave displacement

• Write for a “super” instrument i.e. two of the same instrument

• Write time signature changes as a way to subvert expectations

• Use parallel chord shapes as replacement for melody

• Experimenting with relative pitch contour in percussion

• Whole tone/augmented harmony

• Listen to section T (bars 384-388) --> make a little GarageBand recording of that section so that it’s easier to hear

• Analyse the score and work out what the chords are

• Sing the chords as broken chords

• Link to whole tone harmony --> sing whole tone scale

• Experiment with groups of 3 augmented chords

• Compose 4-8 bars of whole tone material

• Percussion notation:

• Percussion clef – indefinite/relative pitch

• 320: cymbal

• 332: cymbal with dot over the top

• 344: open hi hat

• 368: temple blocks --> pull out some blocks, get students to play the part

• 375: woodblock different stem

• 384 – cymbal “hit on hoop”?

• 390 – cowbells

• 417 – rimshot

• Essay question??

• More things still needed!