From Ideas to Plans
In two of my previous posts (here and here), I wrote up some of the lesson ideas that I'd had for an HSC Music 2 class. The lessons were based on Matthew Hindson's "Pulse Magnet" and Andy Akiho's "21". The basic premise I was working from was that interesting features of the compositions should move naturally into lessons where analysis, composition and performance activities are using key features of the work. In a way it's part of a wider philosophy that Matthew Hindson articulates, and that I agree with, that music comes first and the analysis comes in its wake.
Ethan Hein says a similar thing in a series of blog comments following his provocative post, "The title of this book is everything wrong with music education". Hein points out how the rules of Western classical music theory were developed AFTER the great masters like Bach and Mozart had written the works that came to be considered as master works. So Bach didn't sit down with a list of rules for music and then compose to fit the mould. He wrote music, and later musicologists came along and developed principles that would help people understand the music. As a music teacher I really want my students to be aware of this distinction, of music coming before analysis, so that they are not restricted by the "rules" of harmony or rhythm or anything else.
Lesson Plan Drafts
Here is a draft of 6 weeks of lesson plans, working on the presumption of 90 minute periods for each class and 2 classes per week. From here I'll probably expand the lessons out to 8 weeks, then I'll write them out in full, and then write some detailed lesson plans.
Week-by-week summary
Week 1
Lesson one: Introduction to “Pulse Magnet”
Students perform mixed bag arrangement of mm. 296-307 --> then talk about cross rhythms (30 mins)
Have a short work in 6/8, then 6/4, then the 6/4 – 4/4 thing
First listen through the work with the score --> then in pairs given one concept and write 5-10 features of the work by the concept using a mind map (30 mins)
Research the composer, their background and major themes of their work --> finish for homework
Lesson two: musicological context and percussion notation
Listen to mm. 344-367 --> discuss pop music influences in the work (10 mins)
Class discussion about whether classical music should draw from popular music (5 mins)
Group research on modernism and postmodernism --> could create powerpoint resource with some helpful pointers on these domains (30 mins)
Listening: percussion sounds and rhythm dictation (15 minutes)
Musicology: Different types of notation used in the score --> students to reinforce at the end of the lesson with a worksheet of alt. notation
Week 2
Lesson one: Triadic harmony
Sing major and minor triads – sing them all together, then play root note and groups of four sing the 3rd and 5th (10 mins)
Aural/musicology: “Pulse Magnet” mm. 325-326; 368-380 (30 mins)
Students analyse and name chords --> play and sing the parallel movements
Discuss use of 3 parallel triads vis-à-vis absence of “melody”
Baby steps composition: in groups of 4, students are given three parallel triads; need to create a three different motifs using the three triads and then a short work built on those (40 mins)
Come back together and perform the two works
Lesson two: Propulsive rhythm
Performance: Create your own propulsive rhythms (15 minutes)
Demonstrate how you can choose any three notes on the keyboard, play them constantly, and the pitch fades away
In pairs, students are to use a chordal instrument to develop a propulsive pattern to perform
Listening: mm. 344-367 (Q-R) (30 minutes)
Discuss how sense of propulsion is created (octave displacement, rhythmic unison, kick drum, constant semiquavers from R [increasing note density], non-functional harmony
Baby steps composition: use three of the techniques discussed to create a propulsive musical concept [need more steps than this; look into MUED3603 processes]
Week 3
Lesson one: The “super-piano”
Listening: mm. 368-380
Discuss use of antiphony in this section
In pairs, choose an instrument and think about what you could do with that instrument doubled --> link to students' own compositions
Melodic dictation: choose a different work (maybe another work by Matthew Hindson) for melodic dictation
If you can find repertoire that draws on previous lessons it’ll be a more related exercise --> so do the dictation and then talk about it
Performance: in groups of 4, students are given the same three “motifs” from Week 2; need to create a short work that establishes antiphony in some way while using all three motifs (30 mins)
Lesson two: Rhythmic ostinatos in “21” (part 1)
Performance group work (25 mins)
Teach the first two patterns from 21_rhythm_exercises as a whole class --> foot stamp the whole time
Then split into two groups; groups work through the patterns
Don’t need to finish them all, but helpful if they do
Come back and perform the last one they have mastered
Listening: mm. 1-7 --> what on earth is going on? (30 mins)
Start by listening for a pattern
Then try to clap/tap the pulse underneath the melody
If it’s too much, move away from the recording and work conceptually with groups of crotchets and dotted quavers --> talk about rhythmic displacement
Then give the first note and do melodic dictation
Get people to write up their different ways of notating it
Link to concept of notation as a way to express ideas rather than an immutable edict
How do we describe this? (syncopation, metronomic, displacement)
Performance/composition extension (20 mins)
Having discussed the use of G minor, take another scale, choose 3 or 4 notes and go back to the clapping exercises at the start and play through them all on an instrument
If the group can play all of the exercises, make a new one or try to play the one from “21”
Week 4
Lesson one: Rhythmic ostinatos in “21” (part 2)
Listening to other songs using dotted quaver concepts: (15 minutes)
Shape Of You – Ed Sheeran
Heaven for the Sinner – Bonobo
**Extension** Entertain Me – Tigran Hamasyan (4 groups of 5 then 5 groups of 3) --> Discuss the processes, effects, variation and some concept-related things
Extended composition baby steps: dotted composition (65 minutes)
Choose 4 notes and a time signature
Create a 2 bar rhythmic ostinato for one instrument (single notes)
Then expand the concept through one of these: diminution or augmentation; rhythmic displacement; turning single notes to chords; octave displacement (piano in Pulse Magnet); adding notes to fill in the pattern (Entertain Me piano part); adding more instruments and/or interacting parts (drums in Entertain Me)
Then teach your compositional pattern to someone else
Lesson two: Extended techniques in “21”
Sight singing: marimba part (10 minutes)
Model HSC stipulations by giving everyone 30 seconds to look at it and then do it individually rather than all together
Listen to the work from the start --> focus listening on expressive and extended techniques (30 mins)
Use of looping software to expand capabilities of instruments
Pizzicato and other extended techniques on cello
Use of percussion --> have a go playing the kick drum and tambourine parts
Group work: drawing a structural map of the work
Then link to students’ own compositions, needing structure
Week 5
Lesson one: Whole tone harmony in “pulse magnet”
Mind map on board of what students can remember about the work --> emphasise that people can do their own analysis for essays (10 mins)
Listen through the whole movement and add to the mind map (10 mins)
Listen to section T (bars 384-388) (20 mins)
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 --> talk about there (essentially) only being two whole tone scales
Composition baby steps (40 mins)
Choose 3 augmented chords --> could be all part of the same whole tone scale or not
Compose a 2 bar chord progression using the 3 chords; free to adapt rhythms from previous lessons or works, or could make new thing
Once you’ve composed your progression then go to Sibelius
Then compose a melody on top of the whole tone chords
Lesson two: [Lesson set aside for individual performance program review]
Students bring their instruments; teacher to spend 10 minutes with each student going through their program and listening to them perform excerpts from their works
Week 6
Lesson one: Macro and micro structure in “Pulse Magnet”
Group work: in 3 groups, name as many different kinds of structure as you can, and write a 2 bar rap for each one (15 minutes)
Then it’s a knockout comp where each group/pair has to get up and spit their rhyme e.g. Listening to music, I’m hearing binary Like two types of grapes when I’m chilling at the winery
Teacher to write each form up on the board
Discuss macro structure (3 movements)
Listen to excerpts of first two movements; link movements named according to tempo marking to Baroque/classical vibes
Discuss micro structure (within the movement)
In the rap groups, draw a structural map of the work
Then come back as a class to discuss how we might separate the work into sections à reiterate that theory comes after action --> music always should come first and then people come along later and work out how to analyse it, not the other way around
Lesson two: Essay question for “Pulse Magnet” and “21”