Thursday, 20 Nov 08
Overview World Music Attentive Listening Imaginative Composing Improvising Using Vocabulary Teaching Notation AppendixTeacher feedback: Teachers do not really find it hard to explain and demonstrate most musical concepts. But their pupils are not then automatically able to apply appropriate vocabulary themselves in fluent and accurate sentences when appraising music, and this is the aspect that is considered hard to teach.
KS3 context: The English National Curriculum for Key Stage 3 music requires that pupils should be able to "identify the expressive use of musical elements, devices, tonalities and structures" (2.1g) and "communicate ideas and feelings about music, using expressive language and musical vocabulary to justify their opinions" (2.2c). In KS2 children frequently think about musical elements and talk about music expressively. In KS4 the ability to use music vocabulary accurately is the exam boards' weapon of choice for assessment of listening skills.
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There are two areas of skill/understanding associated with using musical vocabulary:
The second of these builds on the first (and is apparently harder to teach). Teachers should try to provide regular opportunities for pupils to develop both types of skill.
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The KS3 Strategy for Music identifies three types of vocabulary that are important in music lessons. To some extent these are hierarchical but all are equally important:
|
type: |
general/technical | genre/technical | linguistic/expressive |
|
examples: |
pitch, ensemble, inversion | blue notes, raga, cadenza | soulful, exploratory, demonic |
|
explanation: |
general words relating to common features of elements, performance or composition | genre-specific words relating to particular music | usually common descriptive words but occasionally associated with particular styles or genres |
Teachers should try to be aware of all three types and plan for progression in their use. There is more information about this at http://www3.hants.gov.uk/music/unit5-resource3.htm and reference to an example colour-coded vocabulary grid for South American dance music, which can be found as document 5e at http://www3.hants.gov.uk/music/unit5-resources.htm. (See idea 3 below for an ICT perspective on this.)
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Live, authentic, practical music making is always the starting point for Musical Futures activity, always with clear tasks and structure. Pupils develop an implicit understanding of what they are doing and why they are doing it.
Teachers introduce vocabulary and terminology as students are working, when they can see the relevance of it. For example, a student trying to work out a guitar riff or an ostinato on the piano may have a discussion with their teacher about what they are doing, and the teacher can introduce the terminology at this point..
Appropriate terminology and vocabulary in Musical Futures models therefore is rarely the starting point, but it is brought in at a point when the learners are engaged and motivated. Find out more about the Musical Futures approach at www.musicalfutures.org.uk.
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Interactive tools are often designed for free creative composition, but can also be used to learn how to construct a specific musical device. In this context it is helpful to give pupils some form of step-by-step guidance in what to do. A guided interactive experience works well because pupils are creating something for themselves, despite following a set recipe. This improves their chances of remembering not only how to construct the device (analytic), but also how the music feels different once the device is in place (expressive).
As an example, look at the simple exploration of syncopation on the SoundJunction website at www.soundjunction.org/whatissyncopation.aspa?NodeID=329.
Partial screenshot of a page from the SoundJunction website
This guides users through a few simple operations that produce syncopation from a non-syncopated starting point. Pupils can hear the result at every stage. There are other guided explorations of various elements and devices linked from www.soundjunction.org/howmusicworks.aspa.
Teachers could write similar step-by-step guidance for whatever interactive tools (e.g. sequencers) are used in their departments. Learning will usually be more efficient when pupils load a pre-prepared starting point rather than building from empty, at least in the early stages of using such tools.
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Ask pupils to listen out for examples of a particular musical feature in any of the music they encounter. For example, you might ask them to spot examples of sequence in TV music, ringtones, peer compositions, etc. that they hear. Get them to make recordings if possible (many mobile phones can make basic audio recordings). Collect these into an 'electronic library' and make this available on the school intranet. Pupils will enjoy the reward of public recognition for their contributions.
You will find a link below to an example template that you can use as a starting point for expansion. This template is a Word document but other formats would be equally suitable. This example concerns sequence, but can be copied/adapted for other musical devices.
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Principle 2 above summarises the three types of musical vocabulary. When pupils struggle to find appropriate words when talking about music you could display a suitable word bank on the whiteboard. Pupils might suggest more words to add. Teachers could keep different spreadsheets for different topics. A spreadsheet is a good tool here because it has separate tabbed sheets that can be used to group words under different categories.
SouthAmerican.xls is an example spreadsheet containing vocabulary for South American dance music from the Strategy example mentioned above in principle 2.
Excel spreadsheet showing the three tabs at bottom left
Teachers will have their own ideas about how to use spreadsheet tabs effectively. For example, words could be grouped by complexity or further tabs added for sub-topics and specific listening tasks.
A spreadsheet is more flexible than a printed sheet because:
To add audio to a spreadsheet
There are several ways to include audio in a spreadsheet. The simplest is
perhaps via a text hyperlink to the audio file. In Excel this is done as
follows:
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You don't actually need movie footage to do this – just an audio file. The idea is to encourage pupils to develop their ability to pick out significant points in a piece of music and write about them clearly using well-chosen vocabulary.
Most video editing packages allow you to import an audio file into an otherwise empty project. If you were to view the movie at this early stage you would see a black screen, with the audio file as the soundtrack. Most video editing software (but not all) allows you to add and remove onscreen text freely at various points in the timeline. This is intended to allow subtitling of camcorder footage. But if added over a blank background it is an ideal way to give a commentary on music in the soundtrack.
Screenshot from Magix Movie Edit Pro, with audio on track 1 and texts on track2
Encourage pupils to add comments relating to musical devices and any expressive effect these might have on the listener. You could perhaps give the same task to different teams and compare outcomes.
For practical reasons, pupils may need to prepare their commentary on the audio using the timer readout from a standard media player. They could plan their comments in a chart or table and use the movie software at a later stage.
Secondary music teachers may not be familiar with movie editing software. It is more usual for music departments to have a sequencer capable of composing a soundtrack to a fixed segment of video. But a sequencer does not allow users to add text overlay – movie editing software will be necessary to achieve this. KS3 pupils will probably already have experience of using movie editing software from their IT lessons.
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You can build your own interactive word games for musical vocabulary using Hot Potatoes software (http://hotpot.uvic.ca). This is a suite of six applications that allow you to build interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. The software is offered free of charge for those working for publicly-funded non-profit-making educational institutions and who make their pages available on the web. Other users must pay for a licence.
Because the games are designed to work in web pages, they can easily be placed on the school intranet (for use in class) or on the school website (for use at home). They should present no problem for inclusion on a Learning Platform or Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). Unfortunately they cannot currently integrate audio files, but a little ingenuity will allow you to make relevant audio files accessible while working on an activity.