Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to your music lesson today.

My name is Miss Al-Hanoush, and today, we're going to be looking at how melody can be accompanied.

So, in order to do this, let's begin with a warmup that looks at two different parts and how we put them together.

For today's warmup, we're going to sing a song that you might recognise from the previous lesson, but we're going to add a different twist to it.

So, let's just warm up our bodies first and make sure that they're nice and loose, so we're ready to sing.

So can you stretch up to the sky for me please? and then can you stretch down and touch your toes, and can you go to your left and your right? Excellent.

Just roll your shoulders, and make sure that your body is nice and loose.

Okay look down, and look up.

Look to the left and then look to the right.

Brilliant.

Okay, can you draw a figure eight with your nose? Nice and slow.

Brilliant, well done.

Okay make sure that your feet are shoulder width apart, and let's get started.

So you might remember this tune, I'd like for you to just copy me using la.

So, ♪ La la la la la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la la ♪ Your turn after four, One, two, three, four.

♪ La la la la la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la la la ♪ With z, ready? One, two, three, four.

♪ Z z z z z z z z z ♪ ♪ Z z z z z z z z z ♪ ♪ Z z z z z z z z z ♪ ♪ Z z z z z z z z ♪ Can you come hum it? Ready, one, two, three, four.

Brilliant, let's put, part one of the lyrics to it.

Here we go.

One, two, three, four.

♪ Papa's got a head like a ping pong ball ♪ ♪ Papa's got a head like a ping pong ball ♪ ♪ Papa's got a head like a ping pong ball ♪ ♪ Like a ping ♪ ♪ Like a ping pong ball ♪ Excellent, okay, this time, we're going to add a second part, which we didn't have the last lesson.

So the second part, repeat the lyrics after me.

A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake.

Here we go.

Three, four, A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake.

So this is exactly the same melody as part one.

There's the same tune, and it sounds like this.

♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ And a piece ♪ ♪ And a piece of cake ♪ Are you ready? One, two, three, four.

♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ And a piece ♪ ♪ And a piece of cake ♪ Ooh they're like , aren't they? You have to really hold your breath as well.

Okay, this time, I'm going to sing part one, and I'd like you to sing part two, at the same time.

Here we go.

One, two, three, four.

♪ Papa's got a head like a ping pong ball ♪ ♪ Papa's got a head like a ping pong ball ♪ ♪ Papa's got a head like a ping pong ball ♪ ♪ Like a ping ♪ ♪ Like a ping pong ball ♪ How did that feel? Okay, this time I'm going to do part two, you're going to do part one.

Here we go.

One, two, three, four.

♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ A cup of cappuccino and a piece of cake ♪ ♪ And a piece ♪ ♪ And a piece of cake ♪ Okay, well done.

So how does adding a second part affect what we are singing? Well, we're going to find that out later on in the lesson, and this is a song that you can perform with people in your household if you want to, and see if they can work out as well, what kind of happens when you start to put two, different pieces together? Let's find out.

I hope you are now nice and warmed up, and ready for today's lesson.

So, in this lesson, you will need, a piece of paper, a pencil, an eraser and a keyboard or an app if you don't have a keyboard, I'm about to use a free virtual instrument that's called Virtual Piano.

If you would like to use a virtual instrument with me, please ask your parent or carer, to help you find one.

Mine looks like this, and you can play all the notes that we're going to use on the keyboard today on here like so.

So I strongly suggest that you download one if you don't have a keyboard to be able to access everything that we're doing in the lesson today.

You will also need to find yourself a quiet space where you can work, and make sure that any apps and notifications are turned off on any electronic devices, so that you won't be disturbed throughout the lesson.

If you need to pause the video at this point to go and get yourself ready, and make sure you have all of your equipment, please do so, and then press resume, once you're ready.

Let's take a look at today's lesson agenda.

You're going to begin by defining what an accompaniment is.

You're then going to explore different styles of accompaniment, and compose your own accompaniment, and then see whether you can perform a piece of music with an accompaniment.

Let's begin by defining what an accompaniment is.

I'm going to play you Amazing Grace.

Here's the melody line.

I'm going to play it to you again, but this time, what have I done? What did I add in? And how did it change the feel, of the melody? That's right, I added in a left hand accompaniment part.

And it makes feeling of the piece completely different when we add in what we call a harmony line.

So, how do we do that? And what types of accompaniment can we use? An accompaniment, is an instrumental, or vocal part which supports or compliments the melody line.

For example, if you had a solo piano piece, the right hand, would usually play the melody line, and the left hand, would play the accompaniment.

A song with a band accompaniment could be another example.

The singer would be singing the melody line, and the band would be playing the accompaniment.

Another example could be a concerto, where soloist may play a melody line, whilst the orchestra, plays the accompaniment.

Take a listen to Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Which instruments are playing the melody line? And why do you think the piano accompaniment is really low in pitch? Here we go.

Did you hear the accompaniment beginning that piece of music? And then, the instrument joined in.

What was the instrument that was playing the melody line? That was a saxophone, well done if you got that.

Which instruments were playing the accompaniment? That was the piano.

I gave that one away before it started, and the trim kit, well done if you got that.

So, did you work out why the piano accompaniment was low in pitch? Well that's because it allows the higher pitch sax to be heard over the accompaniment.

And that's the part, that really needs to be heard, melody line.

Bear that in mind when you're composing your own accompaniments later on in the lesson.

For your first pause task, on your piece of paper, write down, one sentence to describe what an accompaniment is.

If you want an extension, can you give me a couple of examples? Take two minutes, to write down your sentence and give me those examples.

Then resume once you're finished.

There are many different styles that you can use to accompany a melody.

We are going to explore four, different styles in today's lesson.

Two we've already seen before, which two are they? That's right.

We've already seen a drone and an ostinato, but it's really good to recap things.

So we're going to look at, a drone, an ostinato, triads and the oom pah pah accompaniment.

For the following accompaniment examples, I'm going to use the melody line from Amazing Grace, as we've already learned this previously in the unit, and so it will be a melody that hopefully you know, and are familiar with playing.

Whilst exploring the different accompaniment styles, we're going to be playing on the left hand side of the keyboard with our left hand.

So, here's my left hand, and here is the left hand side of the keyboard, I've switched my camera around so that you can see, what I'm doing particularly with my left hand this time.

I will be playing Amazing Grace though on the right hand side, unfortunately, you can't see it, here's my right hand.

And it will be playing up here in the treble.

And my bass, will be playing there so you can see it.

So, we're going to be playing with our left hand, because we want our accompaniment to be low pitched.

Do you remember when we listened to take five, and we said that we really want that high treble melody to be heard? So we're playing any accompaniment on the left hand side, in a low pitch.

So, let's start with a drone.

So a drone, is usually a long held note or repeated chord, which is usually what we call a bare fifth, and I'll explain that in a minute, which runs throughout a pier passage of music.

And it sounds quite serious.

So here's a drone.

Really serious, okay.

So when we usually play a drone, we usually hold down what we call, the tonic and the dominant.

Now you should know what the tonic and dominant are by now.

The tonic is the first note of whatever scale you're in, and the dominant is the fifth note of whatever scale you're in.

So if we were in F major pentatonic, which is what Amazing Grace is in, our tonic is the, F well done.

And our dominant is, C, well done.

So, this is why they call it a bare fifth, because we've got one, and then our fifth, and we don't have anything in between.

Okay, so it's literally a bare fifth we're not playing any other note in between.

So we call it bare.

So, you can hold both of those notes down, and that will create a drone, and you can play that, in time with Amazing Grace.

So let's have a listen.

So a long held note that's repeated in the base and our bare fifth.

There's also, something that's called a pedal note, that's very, very similar to a drone.

So a pedal is a single note, that's held on or repeated in the base, and for this you'll need to trust your ears to decide which pitch actually harmonises best.

So again, going between F and C for this would be a good idea thinking about your tonic and dominant, but you need to kind of think about that.

So let's have a go at putting in a single pedal note as well.

Here we go.

So I'm going to start on F because my piece starts on F.

Let's have a listen.

I'm going to stay on F.

go to C now because my top note goes to C.

Back to F.

Let's take a look at the next accompaniment style.

So this is another accompaniment style that we've seen before.

An ostinato is a repeated pattern.

Again, I'm still going to use the same notes F and C, and I'm going to this time instead of just holding them down, I'm going to alternate between them whilst my melody is in the right hand so, and so on.

And this will make the piece sound like it's continuing to gain momentum, and we know that if I'm playing that throughout, that actually our piece hasn't stopped yet, so it's going to keep going.

So let's have a little listen to what this ostinato might sound like There we are.

There we are.

An ostinato repeated pattern.

What happens if you play that even quicker? So.

Now I'm not really a pianist, so for me, I find that quite difficult.

But I do have a record function on my keyboard so, I've already played it in Amazing Grace, you can do the same, and you can try and play an accompaniment on top of something that you've already recorded in, if your keyboard has that function.

So let's try it.

Here's Amazing Grace, and I'm going to put in a quicker ostinato.

And there we go.

I actually added in an extra note into my repeated pattern there as well, I don't know where that one came from.

So, you can do any different types of repeated patterns, and add those in.

So we're now going to look at what we call triads.

So in funk or rock music, an accompaniment would usually be, what we call root position triads.

And these consist of the pitches of a chord, which are known as the root, the 3rd and the 5th.

In F major, our root position triad would be F, A and C.

F, A and C.

That's because, F is our first note, our tonic note.

A is our third note, one, two, three.

And then our fifth or dominant note, is a C.

So one, two, three, four, five.

So if we play those together, that's what we call a triad.

Think, tri, triangle, tricycle, it's three pitches.

So the triad F, would fit quite nicely with Amazing Grace.

Can you think of another triad that you think, might fit nicely with Amazing Grace? That's right, good work if you managed to guess that a C triad, I'll play it down here for you.

A C triad would also work really well with Amazing Grace, we've got our tonic and our dominant.

So, you can play these as what we call block triads.

So F, and then down to C, back up to F.

Let's try that with Amazing Grace.

Let's see if we can put some in.

Again, you'll have to use your ears, to see which one do you think fit, best with the melody line.

I'm going to start on an F triad, because my melody after the first upbeat starts on F and we're in F major pentatonic so that makes sense.

Here we go.

Did you spot one that didn't quite work then? So my last line sounded a bit funny when I went down to the C.

Maybe I did that a little bit too early.

Let's try that again.

Down to the C, Back to F, because it goes onto an A, which is in an F chord.

Now I can jump to the C because there's a G in my melody which is also, in the C triad.

And then, back to my F to finish it off.

That worked better.

So I jumped the gun going to C too early.

Like I said earlier, you will need to use your ears to try and work out which triads work best in the melody line there.

With triads again you don't just have to play them as block chords.

Okay we've tried, you can also play them as broken chords.

Which are also known as arpeggios.

Again, whilst you're learning, I think it's a really good idea to put the record function on, and play along with it.

Let's play this, playing separate notes one at a time.

So F then A then C, and I'm going to play the C triad, C, E and G.

Here we go.

So that's another way that you could play your triads, playing them broken.

So the oom pah pah style is one of my favourite styles, and I've really liked this because it's really fun.

And it is a little bit less serious than an accompaniment such as a drone.

You often hear this at fair grounds and when people are dancing and communities, et cetera, and it's usually used to accompany waltzes and it's always used in 3/4 time.

And you get this, ♪ Oom cha cha ♪ ♪ Oom cha cha ♪ ♪ O-Oom papa ♪ ♪ Oom papa ♪ rhythm to it as well.

So, it often supports music with a 3/4 time signature, such as waltz or folk music, and it consists of a bass note, in beat one that is then followed by a chord, that is played twice in beats two and three.

That sounds complicated, but it's really not.

Let me show you.

So I'm going to take an F chord.

So our F triad.

And all I'm going to do is play my root note first, so F first.

And then I'm going to play the A and the C so my third and my fifth, together at the same time twice.

So I get this.

So there's a really good example of an oom papa accompaniment style, in a very famous musical.

However, for copyright reasons, I'm not actually allowed to name what it is.

So if you're desperate to know, and you want to find out more, please ask your music teacher because I'm sure they will know it, and they will point you in the right direction.

So let's see how this sounds, with Amazing Grace.

And there you have it, there's the oom papa rhythm.

I have just shown you four different accompaniment styles, the drone, an ostinato, triads, and the oom papa.

In your left hand on the keyboard, can you explore each one of these accompaniment styles? Can you work out which pitches of the pentatonic scale, sound nicer to use for the accompaniment? Think tonic and dominant here.

If you have other household members present, can they play your melody line for Amazing Grace, whilst you play the accompaniment? And if you already play an instrument, can you play any of these styles of accompaniment on your instrument? For example, if you play guitar or ukulele, you might be able to do strummed chords, which has strummed blocked chords, versus picked arpeggiated chords.

If you play the violin for example, you might be also able to play spread chords or arpeggiated chords.

And as an extra stretch, you don't just have to use Amazing Grace for this, can you create an accompaniment to your pentatonic melodies that you composed before.

Pause the video complete your task, take about 10 to 15 minutes to do this, and then resume once you're finished.

Now that you've explored different styles of accompaniment, you're now going to compose your own accompaniment.

For your next pause task, can you compose a left hand part to Amazing Grace? If you want an extension, you could do this for your question and answer melodies.

If you find this tricky, so you find it hard to play both in an accompaniment and the melody at the same time, sometimes most keyboards have a record function, and you could record an accompaniment or a melody into that, and then play along with it, or, you could record yourself using a recording device, most mobiles have a microphone recorder already in built, and you could play along to that as well.

You could always get a household member as well to play the accompaniment whilst you play the melody and vice versa.

Couple of other extensions for you, you could notate your compliment, on to a safe, and you could compose an accompaniment for your own instrument or for the keyboard to accompany your own instrument.

Again, take another five, 10 minutes, do this task, and then pause the video and resume, once you're finished.

Now that you've composed an accompaniment, you're going to perform, your piece, with your accompaniment.

I'm going to model a weak performance for you.

Can you tell me why it is weak? Why was that a weak performance? I switched between fingers that I was using constantly, on my left hand part, which I didn't need to do.

I also only played one note, each time.

I switched between them, I wasn't quite sure which C I wanted to play.

So I hadn't quite thought about it when I was playing.

And also I was out of time, in quite a few different parts there as well.

So I wasn't listening to the melody line when I was playing.

This time I'm going to model a strong performance for you.

I would like you to tell me why you think this one is a strong performance.

Why was that one a strong performance? Well, I made sure that my fingers were in the right position, and I had one finger per note.

I made sure that my hand position wasn't flat down on the keyboard as well.

I was in time with my treble melody, and I used my tonic and my dominant notes, so my F, I used my chord there, my triad of F, and I use my triad, of C as well.

Which fitted nicely with Amazing Grace.

And I listened, to check which pitches I wanted to play there.

So, that's how you can perform a simple accompaniment, make sure you're using the right fingers, make sure you're using your tonic and your dominant as the primary things to be playing in your left hand, for the accompaniment.

And also, make sure, that you've placed your fingers in the right position, one per note.

For your next pause task, can you perform your accompaniment and melody together? If you find it hard to play both an accompaniment and melody line, use the record function on your keyboard, and you could record an accompaniment or a melody, and then play along with it, or using a recording device, which most mobiles have.

Remember that you can always get a household member to pay the accompaniment whilst you play the melody as well.

And if you wants an extension task, what are other accompaniment styles do you know? Can you add those to Amazing Grace? Or your own question and answer compositions? Can you also compose another compliment for a different instrument, to fit with your composition? For example, the drum kit.

And this way you could build your piece into an ensemble, composition or performance.

Pause the video to complete your task.

Take about five minutes to do this, and then resume once you're finished, let's just revisit what we've done today.

We started off by defining what an accompaniment is.

You then explored different styles of accompaniment, and composed an accompaniment to Amazing Grace, or your own question and answer melodies.

You then performed your composed accompaniment with Amazing Grace, or your question and answer melodies.

Amazing, well done.

How did you get on composing your own accompaniments and being able to perform? Were you able to perform in your right hand and your left hand so your melody in your right and your accompaniment in your left? Were you able to actually put that onto a different instrument, and create an ensemble performance, with lots of different accompaniment lines? Really exciting to be able to do it.

So, final pause for this lesson, is on your piece of paper, I would like you to write down, why composers add accompaniment? Can you name the four different accompaniment styles that we have looked at today? And how can a melody be a accompanied? Take a couple of minutes just to write those things down, pause the video, and then resume once you're finished.

How do you think you did? So why do composers add an accompaniment to their pieces? Well, it's there to support or enhance the melody line.

Can you name the four different accompaniment styles that we looked at today? There was a drone, an ostinato, triads, and the oom papa accompaniment.

And then how can a melody be accompanied? Well, we generally play a melody in a higher pitch and the accompaniment in a lower pitch.

So the higher pitch can really shine through on the instrument.

And again, the melody can be accompanied by any of those different styles, they're not the only styles, they're just a few that I've shown you today as an example.

So I suggest if you want to know more, go and have a little look, and see what other accompaniment styles you can find, and see if you can put those into your own pieces.

So before we end this lesson, please don't forget to go and do the end of lesson quiz, and see how much you've learned today and what knowledge you've managed to attain.

And, then if you would like to share your work with Oak National, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

That's all for me today.

I hope you have a brilliant day, and I'll see you soon in the next lesson.

Goodbye.