MU:Pr4.l.T.la: Develop and explain the criteria used for selecting a varied repertoire of music based on interest, music reading skills, and an understanding of the performer’s technical and technological skill.
Haunted House Entry Project
Introduce the lesson with the following instructions: A local company is opening a Haunted House for the month of October. They have hired your team to create a 60 second recording that will be played at the entrance of the haunted house as the visitors enter. Collaborate as a team to create a sound file that would create the appropriate mood using at least 1 loop, 1 digital instrument of your choosing and 1 sound recorded with a microphone. Take advantage of available effects and plug-ins of the digital tool to create some spooky music and sounds.
Single Ladies and the Church
*This lesson has been adapted from the teachrock.org lesson plan collection with their collaboration with PBS’s Soundbreaking series. Links to the complete series and lesson plans can be found at the end of this document. The goal of this lesson is to encourage students to consider how personal musical influences, context and intent influence their choices in creating music and then create their own rhythmic beat drawing from their own musical influences. Begin the lesson by asking the students to think of music that they listened to when they were growing up. This could be memories of music that their parents or grandparents listened to and/or how their own music preferences developed over time. Think about music that they may associate with a particular event in their history or songs that they associate with a particular personal experience. The lesson will use resources from teachrock.org to learn how the producers of Beyonce's Single Ladies drew from their own musical influences to produce the song. The lesson concludes with the students drawing from their own musical influences to create a rhythmic beat for a composition.
aQWERTYon Remix
The students will create a remix of a song in aQWERTYon by transcribing either the melody, harmony or ostinato from a song of their choosing from the aQWERTYon library. Students will play along with a song of their choosing and figure out how to perform either the melody, harmony or ostinato from the song using their computer keyboard. Once they have been able to learn to play one of these elements along with the song, they should go to their DAW and transcribe the element into the DAW using step method entry or real time entry. The student will now create another unique element of the song to go with the transcribed element from aQWERTYon. For example, if they transcribe the melody then they will create a new harmonic accompaniment to go with the original melody, if they transcribed the harmony then they will create a melody, etc. Students will present their new remix with the class and share their process for making the choices that they made and the tools and skills that they had to use in creation of the remix.
Choose Your Style
This lesson will explore some of the basic styles/genres of drumming. Begin the lesson by playing some examples from different genres of music (country, jazz, latin, funk, rock, punk, metal). Lead a discussion about the importance of the rhythms of the drums in identifying and establishing the style of the music. The students will watch the Top Drumming Styles video demonstrating some basic drumset grooves as a class. The teacher will then lead a discussion with the class to identify some of the important distinguishing features and techniques that define each style. Share the link to the video with the students so they can watch it at their individual stations. The students must recreate one of the drum grooves on their DAW using either real time or step entry method or a combination of the two using their MIDI keyboard or pad controllers. The students must consider the complexity of the style and their own capabilities in analysis and performance technique in deciding which drum groove they will recreate.
History, Art or Basketball
*This lesson can also be used to address MU:Pr4.2 and MU:Pr4.3
The music technology class has been given an assignment to produce 3 different compositions for 3 upcoming events happening in the school.
- The first event is a guest speaker who is a veteran of US Army who is coming to speak to the 11th grade US History classes about the Vietnam war. The principal wants the class to produce a fanfare to be performed before his introduction to the students.
- The next event is an art show of contemporary, abstract art that the advanced art classes are having to showcase their work. The art teachers wants to have some music that will be played in the background while people are viewing the artwork.
- Finally, the basketball coach wants to have some new hype music that can be played while the team is being introduced before the start of their championship game. Something to really fire up the players and spectators.
Each team will use the Musical Planning Guide to map out a plan for each of the 3 compositions. The team should then discuss their musical strengths, backgrounds and preferences before making a decision on which of the 3 options they feel they could most successfully complete as a team.