At the start of this week’s Music lesson, Penny played a piece of Javanese Gamelan music. ‘Gamelan’ meaning ensemble. The children had to appraise the music saying what they liked or disliked, what instruments they could hear and if they could describe the tempo and texture. Some comments included;
“Gongs”
“It’s not my style of music”
“It has a calming effect”
We then moved onto looking at music from China. We looked at musical features of Chinese music which included; ‘Timbre is important’ and ‘The texture is often monophonic’. Penny then told the children the types of instruments that are included in Chinese music including; ‘Dizi’, ‘Ruan’ and ‘Pipa’. The children then listened to a piece of Chinese music and talked about the way the musicians were playing certain instruments. Penny said that some of the instruments are very similar to English instruments, such as, a cello which is played with a bow is similar to a Chinese fiddle.
We watched and listened to someone playing a ‘zither’ who talked about what a zither is, how many strings are on a zither and when it is played.
The children then answered the following questions on a whiteboard and our comments included:
What does pentatonic mean? “A 5 note scale”
What does heptatonic mean? “A 7 note scale”
What does monophonic mean? “A solo”
What do we mean by timbre? “A quality of a musical sound”
Penny then said we would be practising the heptatonic scale on a glockenspiel. She said the only scales we would be using would be the white notes. She then said the children had to write down what their melody is before practising playing on the glockenspiel.
At the end of the lesson, some children shared their tunes and variations with the class and played their pieces of music on the glockenspiel.
