Lesson video

Hello everyone, it's Miss Kilpatrick here for Lesson Five, on musical devices.

Today, we're going to be thinking more about drones and how we can use them as pedal notes.

Let's make music.

Hello everyone, its time for a hello song.

♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ It's good to see you today ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ It's good to see you today ♪ So, in today's lesson, we're going to start with our warm-up.

Then we're going to have a look at all the keywords that we know so far.

There's going to be a quiz.

Is it a drone or an ostinato, can you tell? We're going to go into our composition task for Lesson Five, and of course our goodbye song for the end of the lesson.

So in our warm-up today, we're going to play a little game called the Plasticine Man.

So, what I'd like you to do is to take your ball of cold plasticine and just give it a rub, make it nice and warm so you can mould it into a person.

Here's your person.

And this person is going to go for a wander down the road.

♪ Do to do, to do, to do, to do, to do, to do ♪ Can you do that with me? There's your person.

Let's go for a walk.

♪ Do to do, to do, to do, to do, to do, to do.

♪ He comes to a lift.

Ding! The lift goes up.

Wooop! Ding! Can we do all that together? Here we go.

♪ Do to do, to do, to do, to do, to do, to do.

♪ Ding! Wooop! Ding! He walks out onto the roof and it's really windy.

He sees a parachute and puts it on.

Ssh! Ssh! Click! Can you remember all that? Let's go from the beginning? Here we go.

♪ Do to do, to do, to do, to do, to do, to do.

♪ Ding! Wooop! Ding! Ssh! Ssh! Click! He walks to the edge of the building and jumps over the edge.

Wheee! Luckily he lands on trampoline.

Boing! Boing! From the very beginning, here we go.

♪ Do to do, to do, to do, to do, to do, to do.

♪ Ding! Wooop! Ding! Ssh! Ssh! Click! Wheee! Boing! Boing! What's going to happen next? That's up to you.

Find an ending to our plasticine man's story with a sound and an action.

Does he end up splat on the pavement? Does he end up flying off somewhere really exciting? That's up to you.

Make up your ending and I'd love to see it.

So here are our keywords for today's lesson: an ostinato, we should be really familiar with now, is a repeating pattern of notes or sounds.

The drone that we introduced last week, a continuous sustained musical sound.

Today, we're going to think about a particular type of drone called a pedal note, which is a single, repeated bass note.

You'll remember when we talked about ostinati, we talked about a ground bass, which is the repeated bass pattern as an accompaniment.

The pedal note is the same for the drone.

The bass note that stays the same throughout the piece.

The pentatonic scale we've talked about before.

It's that scale, remember, with five sounds.

And an accompaniment, we know that's exactly what we've been looking at.

We're going to use all of these things as accompaniments to a melody or to a piece of music.

So what are we learning today? As usual, we're reviewing, rehearsing, and composing.

So what are the accompaniments we already know? We've got the ostinati that can be vocal or melodic like a ground bass.

We've done them as rhythms. Last week, we learned about a drone that can be vocal.

So we've already got lots of musical things that we know and can use in our compositions.

Today, we're introducing the pedal note and the pedal note is a drone played on a bass instrument or the bass sound in a group.

And you're going to be using a pedal note in a composition of your own today.

So just to make sure you really understand exactly what we've been doing so far, I'm going to play a few different accompaniments to music.

And I want you to tell me whether I'm using an ostinato or whether I'm using a drone.

So, this is the first one.

♪ La la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la ♪ ♪ La la la la la la ♪ What do you think, drone or ostinato? It was a repeating pattern, wasn't it? It was a vocal ostinato.

Well done.

What about the next one? ♪ Da da da da da da da da da da ♪ ♪ Ooooooooooooo ♪ What about that one? A long continuous sound.

Yeah, it was a drone, and in fact, the first part was a bit like a pedal note where I repeated the same sound over and over again, like last week when we did our monkey monkey to the animal fair.

Let's have a go at the next one.

What was I playing there? On my ukulele, I was playing a drone.

I was keeping the same note running all the way through the song.

Absolutely right, well done.

What about this one? What was that? A rhythmic ostinato, excellent.

Well done.

Last one, here we go.

What about that one? It was a ground bass.

I was doing ostinato in the bass to accompany the chord pattern.

Well done if you got all of those.

So for our task today, we're going to go back to our song, "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" because we know it really well.

And you'll remember when we first learned it, we talked about it using the pentatonic scale and the pentatonic scale with our five notes.

Using a xylophone to have a look at the notes we have is going to be the notes ♪ One, two, three, five, six, five three, two, one, ♪ or in this case, ♪ C D E G A G E D C.

♪ Have a go at singing that through with me so you get that scale into your head.

I'm going to have a go first, then it's your turn.

♪ One, two, three, ♪ ♪ Five, six, five, ♪ ♪ Three, two, one.

♪ ♪ One, two, three, five, six, five, three, two, one.

♪ And of course in this case, we've also got that top note as well.

So we've got one, two, three, we've got five and six, and you've got that top C, which matches the bottom one.

♪ One, two, three, five, six, eight ♪ Or ♪ One, six, five, three, two, one ♪ ♪ One, two, three, five, six, one, ♪ ♪ Six, five, three, two, one ♪ Making the pentatonic scale that we have to work with.

And what we're going to do is choose one of those notes from that pentatonic scale to use as our pedal note as we sing through "Old MacDonald." So you can choose any of those, you can have a play around and see what sound you like the best.

You can use your voice to sing the pedal note underneath "Old McDonald," or you can use an instrument that you might have at home.

Please ask your parent or carer to help you if you want to use the online xylophone that I'm going to use from playxylo.

com.

So I'm going to give you a little bit of an idea of what you could do at home while you're doing your task.

I, of course, I have got some instruments in my house that I could use, but if you don't, there are a few online options.

I've got here the online xylophone.

Please ask permission from your parents or carer for them to help you find this website, if you'd like to use it.

It's got all the notes here, you can see.

All the way up to the top.

So you'll remember we're using the pentatonic scale and for that, ♪ One, two, three, five, six, five, three, two, one.

♪ I can use any of those five notes to choose as my pedal note.

I'm using "Old MacDonald." ♪ Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O.

♪ I'm going to have a little play around and see which note I like the best.

Perhaps I'll try the D, note number two.

♪ Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O.

♪ If I don't like that sound, I can have another go.

Maybe I'll choose the G, note number five.

♪ Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O ♪ That might sound quite nice.

Maybe I could choose both the C notes.

There are two.

♪ Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O ♪ Maybe I like that one.

I could try more than one note from the pentatonic scale.

Maybe I could try note one is C and note three, the E.

Play them together.

♪ Old MacDonald had a farm, E I E I O ♪ I like that one.

Perhaps that's the one that I'll keep.

If you can find a melodic instrument in your house, you can do that, or please ask a parent or carer if you can visit the website, PLAYXYLO, to play your pedal note.

Pause the video now and have a go at completing your task.

You can resume the video when you're finished.

Let's look at all the amazing things we've learned so far about musical accompaniments.

What do we know about ostinati? Well, we've done rhythmic ostinati using body percussion, we've done vocal ostinati, repeating patterns using our voices.

We've played melodic ostinati on instruments and thought about how to use a ground bass.

For drones, we've done vocal drones, repeating the same word or the same note, or creating a sustained sound with our voices.

Today, we've done instrumental drones and pedal notes, so creating one sound that we hold and play throughout an accompaniment to a piece of music.

So now when you're doing your compositions, you've got lots and lots of options to think about how to make your music a little bit more interesting and how to add texture or layers of sound to the pieces that you're making to make them really interesting.

It's time to sing our goodbye song.

♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ It was good to see today.

♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ It was good to see you today.

♪ Now we've come to the end of today's lesson and a really big well done as always for all of the fantastic learning you've achieved today.

If you're able to, please take a picture of your work and ask your parents or carer to share it with your teacher so they can see all the wonderful things that you've done.

And if you'd like, ask your parent or carer to send a picture of your work to at @OakNational on Twitter, with the hashtag #LearnWithOak, then I can see your lovely work as well.

I'm really looking forward to having a look.

All that's left for me to say is goodbye, everyone, and have a lovely week making some fantastic music.

Bye.