Week 5 Music 1

PERFORMING & PLAYING

Before our first Music tutorial started, we reviewed the music concepts learnt from Creative Arts 1, which are:

l  Duration;

l  Pitch;

l  Tone Colour;

l  Dynamics;

l  Structure

We started with three world-known musical pieces to refresh our memories of the musical concepts and draw students’ prior knowledge to the class. The three music pieces were “Carnival of the Animals – The Swan”, “In the hall of the Mountain King” and “The Ice Dance”. Nancy also gave us a list of questions about music concepts to think while playing the music clip. After listening, students discussed and analysed how the music concepts had been used properly to perform and organise sound. This strategy is advised for teachers to use while teaching music in the class. It could engage students and help them to analyse and comprehend this music piece better through making a sequence of questions. For example,

“In the hall of the Mountain King”

l  Duration: How was the speed of the piece? Was it getting faster or slower?

l  Structure: What is the main piece of the song piece of the song? How many times could you hear in this piece?

l  Tone Colour: How was the cello played? (e.g. Tapping.) Is that different from using strings?

l  Dynamics: Was the music getting louder?

l  Pitch: How did the song make difference to you?

The questions based on the music concepts are useful to guide students build their comprehension of music. For Stage 2 students particularly, they need to learn to respond to music and “identify the use of musical concepts and musical symbols in a range of repertoire” (NSW Board of Studies, p. 25). Furthermore, the questions about music concepts are set for “developing the variety of children’s intelligence” (Gibson, R. & Ewing, R., 2011, p. 112). Robyn Gibson mentioned in Transforming the curriculum through the Arts that “music is another way of knowing and expressing ideas, moods and feeling. By using music, children can draw on additional avenues of learning.” The thinking process is vital for students to comprehend the music concepts beyond performing and playing.

References:

Gibson, R. & Ewing, R. (2011). Transforming the curriculum through the Arts. Palgrave Macmillan: Melbourne.

NSW Board of Studies. (2006). Creative Arts K-6 Syllabus. Sydney: BOS.