This
resource explores different sounds, moods and textures that students
can explore with instruments (found, made or traditional), body
percussion and vocalisations. Students will identify the different
sounds that they can hear in recordings of environments in New Zealand.
Students will critically analyse the ways in which different sounds
create moods and shape their feelings. This resource will focus on one
one sound environment - the New Zealand Bush - but will suggest other
possible soundscape environments that students could explore, including
the beach, or urban environment. Students will explore ways in which
they could recreate and perform these sound environments.
The aim of the activities suggested
in this resource is twofold.
Firstly, it aims to encourage children to
think critically about the sounds that exist in natural environments. Children
will be encouraged to respond to the sounds they hear. Children will engage
with the sounds they hear by identifying the source of the sound and analysing
the elements of music that are present in the sound. When describing the sounds
they hear children will begin to develop their vocabulary of musical
terminology.
Secondly, these activities aim to support
children in exploring ways in which sound can be created, manipulated and
shared. In this exploration children will investigate conventional ways that
people create sound, and will also be encouraged to think creatively about ways
in which they could create sound. Most importantly the activities in this
resource are intended to be fun for students and teacher, and should promote
enjoyment of music.
Created by Emma Hall,Andrew Matheson, Jonathan Phillips and Benjamin Wright.
Each numbered section has a range of ideas and activities that you can incorporate in your classroom.
Make sure to have fun with this resource, through your engagement with the resource your students engagement will follow!
Keep in mind suggestions from the New Zealand curriculum "In music education, students work individually and collaboratively to explore the potential of sounds and technologies for creating, intrepreting and representing music ideas. As they think about and explore innovative sound and media, students have rich opportunities to further their own creative potential." (Ministry of Education, 2007, p. 21)
Underlying all of these suggestions is that students through their creative exploration of sound are "able to view their world from a new perspective" (Ibid; p. 20) What is music? What is sound? How could teaching soundscapes explore both areas?
"In 1952, pianist David Tudor walked onstage, bowed, seated himself at
the piano, and closed the lid. For the next four minutes and 33 seconds,
Tudor did not play a single note. This was the premiere of John Cage's seminal silent work, 4'33" (Four minutes and
33 seconds), Cage's favorite but most disputed composition. A highly controversial composer to this day, Cage
pushed music's limits, forcing people to reconsider its possibilities."(Estrin,2010)
What is music? Could music education be broader than our conceptions of tonality, chords and pitch, could deeper philosophical insights into what is considered music, who decides what music is and what possibilities for new music exist all be explored in primary education? As Cage suggested in 1952 with 4'33" the presence, or paradox, of inaudible sound in a room could be very useful musically. As with any new music the invariable reaction is "its just noise" - this was the case at the preview of the Rite of Spring, when hiphop first appeared blasting out of boomboxes, or perhaps your reaction to the work of Christian Fennesz, a contemporary noise musician. However, these opinions have developed and changed through growing awareness and explore to the point where Cage is considered to be one of the most influential artists of
the twentieth century.
Included below are a range of quotes that question some notions of what "music" is.
"I don't care much about music. What I like is sounds."
Dizzie Gillespie, Jazz Musician
The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody"
Albert Camus, Writer and philosopher
"Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a
music school?"
John Cage, Composer
There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
Lord Byron, Poet and writer
Music is the poetry of the air.
Jean Paul Richter, Writer
My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require.
Edward Elgar, Composer
Key competencies. Thinking skills Thinking skills are essential to these activities. When attempting to identifying sounds children will be required to: • Listen carefully • Make connections to prior experiences with sounds and environments. • Think analytically about the sounds they are hearing. • Question, speculate, and reflect. When exploring the creation and manipulation of sounds, children will be encouraged to think creatively and draw upon personal knowledge and experiences. Using language, symbols, and texts In these activities children will be engaging with a range of texts; written, aural, and visual. They will also be beginning to develop the language of music so that they can communicate their ideas about music. Participating and contributing Most of the activities in this resource will require children to work together to solve problems and develop ideas. In doing so children will have great opportunity to develop the skills that are required to contribute appropriately as a group member.
Music - Sound Arts
Understanding the Arts in Context • Explore, share ideas about music from a range of sound environments and recognise that music serves a variety of purposes and functions in their lives and in their communities. Developing Practical Knowledge • Explore how sound is made, as they listen and respond to the elements of music: beat rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics, and tone colour.
Developing ideas • Explore and express sounds and musical ideas, drawing on personal experience, listening and imagination.
Communicating and Interpreting • Share music making with others.
The NZ forest environment provides a rich visual and aural landscape from which to draw inspiration for creating a soundscape. When engaging students in this topic, there are a number of activities you can do to provide inspiration and ideas.
Visiting the physical setting
This is obviously an ideal but not always practical, especially since a large proportion of our schools are located in an urban environment. If possible to do so, students can experience both the sounds of a forest and the atmosphere in which those sounds are taking place, getting a feeling for ‘mood’and texture in the landscape. Not all bush is the same and depending on where you go will dictate the aural experience i.e. some forest has a lot more birdsong and variety of birds. Visiting native bush also provides the opportunity to record specific sounds to use as samples in your soundscape.
Reading an applicable text to students
A good way to introduce the topic is to read students a picture book that tells a story that relates to the NZ bush and the animals in it. This video created by Ben Wright shows an example of a text aimed at around Year 1 to Year 3 students, “Down in the Forest” by Yvonne Morrison & Jenny Cooper.
Other suitable texts that relate to New Zealand bush- “Wild Pork & Watercress”, by Barry Crump- Year 6 to Year 8 students. “Fantails Quilt”by Gay Hay & Margret Tolland- Year 1 to Year 5 students. “Christmas in the Bush” by Lindy/Kriegler Kelly & Lindy Kelly- Year 0 to Year 4 students.
Exploring visual and aural elements through recorded footage
The next best thing to being in a forest is to experience visual material and audio that illustrates the types of sounds you would hear and the ambiance of the bush environment. You have a range of options here with documentary footage, youtube, recordings of different types of birdsong and so on. Below are some links to examples of visuals and audio from NZ bush settings.
Here is a collection of digital resources for the native bush environment that you could use in your classroom. Sample questions - what sort of sounds can you identify? what makes that sort of sound? what sort of sounds will we need to make in our soundscape to create the feeling of walking in the native bush? how might we make those sounds?
One of the most exciting parts about making soundscapes are the creative possibilities that are unleashed by realising sounds from an environment with found instruments, made instruments and vocalisations. Not only does the opportunity present challenges that need to be overcome through using some creative and critical processes, it allows students to ask questions, challenge the basis of assumptions and perceptions at what music can be and reflect on this learning. Also, and as Andrew and I can attest, it is so much fun trying to emulate sounds in nature. Through a process of experimenting and trialling different options it is really possible to create something fantastic. Included amongst this section is a collection of resources we have amassed to help you teach some creative responses to the challenge of making sound for a soundscape. Natural sounds
Exploring nature through sound is a great way of engaging students in creating soundscapes, the environments that surround the children are rich aural resources that students can draw on as prior knowledge. Students have strong ideas of what places sound like and creating the opportunity for them to explore the reproduction of those sounds enables students to develop some key musical skills of analysing sound, creating and improvising sound and developing those ideas into more sophisticated sound environments.
Included is a sound environment that featured on the previous page, students could identify the sounds that they can hear and then develop ways of creating those sounds with their voice, bodies and found or created instruments. https://www.youtube.com/embed/CTYE6nJAc3I?feature=player_detailpage
Students will use these sounds as a tool or resource to create their own sounds, through identifying different aspects of the sound, how the tone changes, what they can hear within the overall sound, what else they might expect to hear in this environment. The key is that sound from these natural environments will form the source material for expressive ideas in music and sound art. Again, thinking skills are really important for this process. They must listen carefully, make connections to prior experiences with sound, think analytically about sounds they are hearing and question, speculate and reflect. They will be working together in groups and as a class to realise their ideas about sound and how it can be utilised to create an idea of this location.
One way of potentially engaging students with this activity is getting the whole class to attempt to replicate this performance, and then getting small groups to go off and create their own attempts at creating a sound environment from a different environment with just their bodies and voices. They then come together and perform their pieces and the class guesses what place the students are trying to create with their soundscapes. Students will identify areas where the groups strongly created a sense of being in the place, and areas where the soundscape could have been improved and suggestions of other ideas that the group could have included in their work.
Using a resource such as the percussive choir Perpetuum Jazzile, here is their website featuring other youtube clips, could really help the class identify ways in which to create these sounds. As the choir vividly portrays the potential for sounds to represent a sound idea - in this example of rain, the conception that music education is limited to ukeleles and singing choirs goes right out the window and is rained on by a talented choir of musicians who don't even need to sing.This resource is a great tool to get the students to consider ways of using their body to create a sound environment.
Taonga pūoro - music, literacy and te reo
Looking at instruments from a local perspective. Taking inspiration from the continuing exploration of Taonga pūoro and the opportunities that such traditional Māori instruments create for genuine cultural engagement, you could explore these instruments in your classroom.Furthermore through incorporating such taonga into your classroom environment value is placed upon the musical heritages of New Zealand's diverse cultures.This would enable some learning experiences that value the diversity of New Zealand and validate the cultural heritage that Māori bring to New Zealand. Here is a great website giving some good information about Taonga pūoro and how they link to Māori customs, values and mythology.
This is a video of Richard Nunns who is a contemporary master of Taonga pūoro and Hirini Melbourne, both of which bring a world of experience and knowledge to the performance of traditional Māori instruments.Another great source of information/inspiration is this article from the School Journal with Richard Nunns.
Make your own kōauau, School Journal Part 4, Number 2, 1997.
In this article, Richard Nunns explains how to make your own kōauau from a shank-bone.
A great way to integrate literacy, music and te reo in a meaningful way.
This is a resource from Te Papa entitled "Music to Māori ears". Students could use these resources as inspiration for their own soundscapes or for their research into traditional instruments, or to gain some valuable insights into Māori culture and traditions and assess to what extent the traditional instruments have been maintained or adapted for the modern world.
Creating your own instruments - science, technology and music
We loved this American scientist who uses the example of making a bullroarer to explore some of the underlying science. Nothing like a little integration in a music classroom for some great opportunities to explore some of the science of sound.
These great resources are the work of Steve Spangler, another American who uses a range of ordinary objects to make some really interesting sounds that could be incorporated in your classes soundscape.
The great thing about the internet is there is essentially a tutorial at making any instrument, some - like the paper flute that you may see lingering around on some websites promising a beautiful flute sound are not that easy to make, we didn't succeed! Some of the bullroarer tutorials require a stronger heavier piece of wood - which could be dangerous for five year olds, however you can effectively use 30cm classroom rulers. You have to consider some of the safety considerations of these instruments.
With all the knowledge you have gained about making instruments and linking it to the local New Zealand context, you can get started on making your own soundscape with your class!
Processes and incorporating musical ideas
In music education, students work individually and collaboratively to explore the potential of sounds (Ministry of Education, 2007). Students will explore sound sources, sound creation and sound manipulation.Through their exploration of possible sounds they can create with their mouth through to creating instruments , students are aiming to explore the relationship between sounds and musical concepts such as tone, pitch, timbre, tempo and volume. Students are aiming to see what they sounds they can identify, create, explore and develop through the use of their voice, their made instruments, found instruments- as in our Youtube example.
Structuring a piece of music doesn't have to require any complex computer equipment or software, such as the multitrack DAW above. For many of the soundscape activities that your class could engage an audience, students will be making the layered sound themselves as a live performance piece. But recording the music digitally or performing a soundscape live still requires the students to have an awareness of how they can impact the mood of the sound they are making, the impact that this music will have on a potential audience. It requires an awareness of elements of music, beat, rhythm, pitch, tempo, dynamics and tone colour. It requires students to "structure the sound".
For example, for the choir to create their sound art piece of a thunderstorm they needed an awareness of how the tempo of their fingers clicking out of order created an impression of light raindrops falling, how the deeper pitch of peoples legs pounding on the ground sounded very similar to thunder and how this compared to the earlier sounds of fingers clicking - bringing in ideas of dynamics- the volume of the piece changed as more members of the choir clicked their fingers and then got suddenly louder with the thunder. The piece followed a narrative structure, it didn't start in the middle of the storm, the rain picked up and it raised to a crescendo of thunder and rain. A piece of sound art requires some awareness of music theory.
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Within the topic of
soundscapes, you may have the opportunity to introduce some basic music
elements. When discussing the elements of music try and get students to think
about the impact that these elements have on the audience response. Encourage students
to think about how a change in each element changes the mood of the soundscape.
E.g. “If the tempo increases how might that make the audience feel?” or “If the
soundscape is really soft, and then gets suddenly loud how might the audience
feel?”.
Here are some definitions and supporting ways of teaching such concepts in your classroom.
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Rhythm
Is there a certain rhythm to any of the sounds?What
rhythm would footsteps make if you were walking through the bush?
Rhythm is made up of beats and
rest. Rhythm can be thought of as patterns in the sounds . . . think of the
rhythms that are in nursery rhymes or clapping rhythms.
A good game to play with
children when introducing the concept of rhythm is a simple game called the
clapping game. It encourages good group work and listening skills and can help
to develop the children’s sense of rhythm.
There are 2 teams, 1 team
consists of the teacher and the other is the whole class. The teacher claps a
pattern and the children then copy the pattern. If the teacher only claps once
then the children must not clap. If they do then the teacher gets the point and
if they do not then they get the point.
Tempo
What is the tempo of the piece? Is there more
than one tempo in the soundscape? Can the tempo change?
Tempo is the speed or the
pace. An easy way to describe the tempo a piece could be comparing it to the
speed we walk/run. Walking, jogging, sprinting etc. Tempo can affect the mood
of the piece. A fast tempo can sound exciting or frantic. A slow tempo can
sound peaceful or sad. In a sound scape of New Zealand bush the tempo may be
determined by the footsteps we hear. The person may be walking so soundscape
may sound quite relaxed, or the person could be running which again would give
the piece a completely different feeling. Think of how tempo of someone’s
breathing changes the mood. To understand tempo students to attempt to create a small clapping piece where claps stay in time with a rhythm, the rhythm can increase in tempo until the students are clapping so fast that it is extremely hard to keep in time with the beat.
This is an interactive lesson that introduces the concept of tempo for younger children
What low sounds can we hear in this piece? High
sounds?
High sounds, low sounds and
everything in between.
To introduce pitch to children there is a game called high,
low and middle.
Just play a note on a pitched instrument (you don’t
have to play the instrument to do this - just play random notes one at a time),
this could be a piano, ukulele, guitar, glockenspiel etc.
Then play either a high note (they stretch up), a low
note (they curl up like balls) and middle note (make a cross with arms). You
can always turn the game into a challenge and eliminate any children that get
it wrong or are slow or the last to act.
Melody
What are the tunes that you can hear in the
piece? What things in this sound scape are creating the melody? Are there
repeating melodies?
Melody is the tune in a piece
… a catchy tune that has notes that change in pitch. For the purposes of soundscapes it depends which sort of approach you want to take, some melodies such as bird calls could be used as a repeating motif in the piece.
Dynamics
Is this piece loud or soft?
Dynamicsare related to the volume of the
piece
Dynamics can change suddenly,
soft straight to loud, or the dynamics can get gradually louder (crescendo) or
gradually softer (decrescendo).
In a soundscape the there may
be different dynamics for different sounds at the same time. The sound of the
river may start to fade out as the rustling of the trees gradually comes in;
this would indicate that you are walking away from the river towards some
trees.
This is another great interactive lesson that introduces the concept of dynamics for younger children
How many layers does this piece have? How many
things are going on at the same time?
Texture of a piece is
essentially the amount of layers a piece has and how those layers are related.Clicking on the bold links will link to some midi examples.
To get technical …
Monophonic – only one thing
going on, one melodic line
Homophonic– there is one
melodic line but there is an accompaniment (normally chords) going on
underneath it to support it (you could compare this to a backing track, you can
tell something is missing)
Polyphonic – two or more
melodic lines going on at the same time, each melodic line could stand alone
and still sound complete. Good examples of polyphonic texture are
rounds/cannons.
Throughout one piece, it may
have different textures.
In a soundscape you may want
to start off with just one thing happening (monophonic) and gradually layer
things onto as Andrew and Jonathan have done in their soundscape. If the
soundscape is based on taking a walk in the bush, the layering of the sounds
will depend on what you are ‘walking past’ at the time.
Timbre/Tone Colour
Does this piece sound light or dark?
Timbre is how the instruments
sound, the tone colour. It can be described in many different ways, bright or
dark, thick or thin, harsh or soft etc. The timbre of a instrument/element will
have a direct effect on the mood of the piece. Think of the sound of wind. We
could use bullroarer to create the sound of wind, the timbre of that could be
described as dark. Or a group could make soft whooshing sounds, the timbre of
this could be described as gentle.
This website will be an interesting example to explore on structuring sound in a modern recording, in this example a music video from the Grammy Award winners Arcade Fire can be "remixed" and the different elements of the song can be removed. Students can identify what different elements or layers of the song achieve and that music can be comprised of layers.
As students work structuring their sounds they can create with their voices, found and constructed instruments and body percussion, they need to keep in mind what story the sounds are telling, how will this contribute to the audience's understanding. Utilising some effective feedback and feedforward with students can help in this process, scaffolding students understanding and getting students to develop their own ideas of how to improve their piece of music. A good idea is to record the students work on Garageband so that they can hear themselves and then address any issues with the sound, perhaps the rustling paper they are using for leaves is rustling too loud.
Students performances of their soundscapes could take many forms. Here as some possible ideas.
A soundscape choir
Students perform a range of soundscape ideas to an audience, emulating the example from the choir Perpetuum Jazzile. Presents a different approach
A walkthrough environment
Audience walks through the sound art experience, students will create the sound live and audience will be lead through while blindfolded. Create an experience for the audience where the sensation of being in the environment is reinforced by the disorientation of being blindfolded.
An installation
Students works are recorded separately and then made into a collage of sound that the audience engages with. Possibly the clearest link to the idea of "sound art", where the very performance of the art is an sculptural installation. Furthermore the notion of a "native bush" environment coming out of technology poses some interesting questions.
A silent movie soundtrack
Students use their soundscape to soundtrack a silent movie of a location, recording sounds on garageband/imovie and layering the sound to create the required effect. Nice link to foley work on films where professionals aim to recreate sounds as a profession.
Storytime
One student reads a picture book to audience, while the class creates a soundtrack related to the picture book.
Set to visuals Have previously discussed students performing to a silent movie, however this doesn't have to be the only option. Students could make a slideshow of images from nature and soundtrack those images. Possibilities with recorded music also include the possiblity for students to create rhythms from their sound samples by looping the sound on software such as Garageband.
Dance and sound art
Students choreograph a dance to the soundscape. Students could choreograph, in the example of the native bush context, a piwakawaka dance where the soundscape relates to the dance - branches could shake as the piwakawaka follows a tramper walking through the bush, the footsteps created by pebbles, and the ambient sound of the bush created by a range of created instruments, body percussion and vocalisations.
