Are you controlling my mind, Mr. Composer?

Music is powerful!  It can stir up strong emotions, making us feel peaceful or excited or sad or silly.  This week students have discovered that these feelings do not happen by accident.  In reality, composers use special tricks to control our feelings and responses to their music.  They tell the performers how loud to play, how fast to play and even how to shape each note, all in the hopes of creating a specific mood for their piece.

Click HERE to listen to "Fossils".

Students in Grade Three read the book, "The Drumheller Dinosaur Dance" which imagines what it might sound like if the fossilized skeletons of dinosaurs reassembled for a dance party.  Then we listened to a piece called "Fossils" by Camille Saint-Saens while moving our bodies like the dancing bones.  Very exciting!  But after all this fun, we stepped back and considered how this music made us feel and what tricks the composer used to make us feel that way.  

Listen to the music by clicking on the link to the right, and then see if you can figure out how the composer controlled your mind.  Don't forget to use the musical terminology below to justify your response!

	Musical Terminology	Means  . . .
How fast is the music?	largo	slow
	moderato	medium speed
	presto	fast
How loud is the music?	forte	loud
	piano	quiet
How do you play the music?	legato	smooth and      connected
	marcato	choppy

High and Low Melodies in Many Forms

Improvising melodies with the
Singing Puppies. 

Every person is unique.  Whether you are learning how to kick a ball, add numbers, tell a story or sing a song, every person learns in different ways and at different speeds. Every individual brings their own learning style and different background knowledge, so it is important that we explore new concepts in many different ways.



For example, Grade One students have been been learning how to recognize and manipulate high and low sounds through a variety of activities.  If you had peeked into the music class room in the last few weeks, you might have seen singing, stories, movement, reading and writing music - and puppets of course!  


In the course of our learning, students have:

Labelling high and low notes on
an illustration of the story of
Tic and Toc.

     - echoed teacher melodies
     - moved their hands and bodies to show high and low pitches
     - sung a given melody to respond to a sung question
     - used a puppet to improvise their own melody
     - used a xylophone to represent moving "up and down" a hill in a story
     - drawn high and low notes on a picture
     - finding high and low pitches on a one-line staff

Composing melodies on a 

one-line staff.

After all this experience, the next step for Grade One is to use the formal melodic notation of the one-line staff to write and share their own melodies.  What a powerful experience to create and write down a melody, and then hear it performed by a friend!  

Listen with Your Whole Body

Music just makes a person want to move!  We have all felt that twitch when we hear a catchy tune, and suddenly our chin begins to bob a little and our fingers start drumming along.

Click HERE to listen to Semper Fidelis.

One way we can respond to a song is to mark the beat, which is the steady pulse in music.  A piece may have a fast beat or a slow beat, but it is always, always steady.  Grade Two and Three students have been performing the beat of J.P Sousa's Semper Fidelis.  Click on the image to the right to listen again and create your own beat pattern!

Click HERE to listen to The Royal March of the Lions.

We also respond to the mood of a piece, showing how a piece makes us feel deep in our hearts.  Music can inspire powerful emotions, but each person's reaction is unique.  It says as much about the song as it does about the person who is listening to it.  To one person's ears a piece of music can be peaceful, while it makes another person feel sad.  Our bodies can reflect these deep personal feelings and reflect the story that the music is telling.  Grade One students have been exploring C. Saint-Saens' The Royal March of the Lions.  Click on the image to the right to listen again and express your inner lion!