Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to your music lesson today.

My name is Miss Al-Hanoush and in today's lesson, we're going to be exploring how composers use the pentatonic scale in folk songs.

So let's get warmed up.

Copy me.

Two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Awesome, okay.

This time I'm going to clap a two bar question.

So you're going to count six beats.

And I would like you to clap back a two bar answer.

So you're improvising.

Here we go.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Excellent.

Well done if you manage to keep up with that.

Okay, I'd like you to quickly think back to Amazing Grace, last lesson, lesson five.

And I'd like you to see if you can remember how many phrases were in Amazing Grace.

Four, excellent.

When we looked at Amazing Grace, we spoke about phrases one, two, and four being really repetitive in their use of rhythm and pitch.

And they also had long notes at the end of their phrases.

So what I would like you to do this time is in your answer to my question, I would like you to see whether you can repeat the first part of my question.

So you could copy the first part, maybe change the second bar.

Have a go.

I'll do it twice for you.

Here we go.

So, one, two, three.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

There you go.

Hopefully you managed to copy the first parts of my question.

I actually kept that the same in those first two questions.

I just changed the ending.

Keep that in mind with the rest of today's lesson.

Let's see what we're going to be doing.

In this lesson, you will need a piece of paper, a pencil, your body and the keyboard, or if you don't have a keyboard, you could use a app.

So I'm about to show you a free virtual instrument.

That's called Virtual Piano.

And if you would like to use a virtual instrument with me, please ask your parents or your carers to help you find one.

Mine looks like this.

And I can play all of the notes of the pentatonic on here.

So really, really well worth downloading for this lesson and if you don't have a keyboard.

Also, you'll need to find a quiet space to work in and make sure that you don't have any apps or notifications that might come through on an electronic device.

So could you take the time now to make sure that you've got all the equipment for today's lesson and make sure that you're ready and sorted, and nothing's going to disturb you, press pause now to do that, and then resume and join back once you're sorted.

Here is the agenda for today's lesson.

You're going to begin by playing the F major pentatonic scale.

And then explore how folk music uses pentatonic scales.

You will learn what a tonic and dominant notes are.

And then improvise a question, answer melody.

Can you remember the pictures of the F major pentatonic scale? A big clue.

They're the same pictures that were used for Amazing Grace.

Another clue, look at the screen.

Excellent, they are the notes F, G, A, C and D.

Can you remember where your fingers go on the keyboard to be able to play these notes? Where do the thing that is on your right hand go? Some goes on F.

Our first finger goes on G and our second finger goes on A, our other two fingers rest one per note.

Our left hand, our thumb goes on D, our first finger goes on C and then our other fingers rest on the other notes.

One finger per notes.

Let's see if we can play the F major pentatonic scale.

We're going to start with our C in our left hand, and we're going to work all the way up to our A in our right hand.

Here we go after three.

One, two, three.

And back down Excellent.

Can you copy me? We're going to start on F, then G, then A, then C, then D.

Here we go.

Your turn.

Copy me.

I'm going to play a question in three, four to you.

It's going to be two bars long.

I would like you to respond with a two-bar answer.

Here we go.

One, two three.

One, two, three, four by six.

Well done if you managed to keep that in time.

Let's see if we can improvise an eight bar passage.

So I'll do a question.

You do an answer.

I'll do another question, you do another answer.

Two bars each.

Here we go.

One two, three.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Excellent, well done.

for your first pause task, can you improvise your own two-bar question and answer phrases using the pentatonic in F major? If you have other family members present, can they play the question and you play the answer? Then swap.

You could also do this on your own instrument, as well as the keyboard.

As an extra extension, can you use a different pentatonic scale? Pause the video to complete your task, and then resume once you're finished.

Now that you've played the F major pentatonic scale and have started to improvise using it, you're now going to explore how folk music uses pentatonic scales.

Folk music is generally music, which has been made by people as part of their culture and tradition, or that is written in such a stope.

The music usually embodies the characteristics and pride of the country.

Folk songs can sometimes be nationalistic expressing love for one's own country or origin.

Usually, it's transmitted by ear, which we call the oral tradition from generation to generation.

The pentatonic scale features in music all around the world.

For example, Asia, South America, Africa, Europe, and closer to home in Celtic music.

So Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and even English folk music.

Chinese music uses a variety of pentatonic scales.

They're not necessarily using the same order of pentatonic pitches as the rest of the world is.

The beauty of the pentatonic is that there are no wrong pitches when you play them.

Which in turn, makes it nice and easy to compose or improvise melodies using them.

As they are only five pitches in the pentatonic scale to use, it makes it very easy for communities to join in and play with one another.

Listen to the song on screen called Fly Peacock, Fly.

This is a recording of a mother singing to her child.

Passing the song down through the oral tradition.

This is a Hungarian folk song, which also uses the pentatonic scale.

The lyre pentatonic.

It begins and ends on a minor.

What's really cool about the lyre pentatonic is that it's the same notes as the F major pentatonic, but it sounds and feels totally different.

In English, the lyrics say fly peacock, fly onto the roof of the council.

Set free those poor prisoners who are locked up inside.

Here's how it sounds on the keyboard.

Using your great detective skills, can you tell me how many phrases you think there are? Amazing, there are four, just like there were an Amazing Grace.

Let's take a look at where these are.

The first phrase can be found right at the beginning.

Up until a double bar line here.

So this is our phrase one.

Here is our second phrase.

Again, until that bar line here.

And our third phrase.

And then our fourth phrase.

How many bars is each phrase? Excellent, these are two bar phrases.

How many question answer melodies do you think there are? Fantastic.

There are two questions.

Here's the first one.

And here's the second one.

And two answers.

So a piece goes, question, answer, question, answer.

Does this mainly move insteps, so close notes together, or does it leap all over the place? That's right, it mainly moves instep.

Let's take a look at that.

So here we can see our melody is walking pretty much down insteps.

There's a couple of leaps.

The leaps tend to be at the ends of our phrases.

And again, mainly walking down instep.

We miss a note, it's mainly instep.

And then we leap at the end of the phrase.

Same again, leap at the end of the phrase, same again and again, leap again at the end of the phrase.

What do you notice about the rhythms in each phrase? Did you notice that phrase one and three are the same and phrase two and four are the same? So both of our questions use exactly the same with them.

And both of our answers use exactly the same rhythm.

Which phrase ends on a tonic pitch? Can you remember which pitch our tonic was? If we're an F major.

Excellent, it's an F.

So phrases two and phrases three, and on tonic in F.

How is this song similar to Amazing Grace? What do you notice that's similar? Brilliant, right to the beginning.

We know it's in three, four.

So there's a three, four time signature.

We also know that there's question and answer phrases.

We also know that it may only move instep.

So similar ideas to Amazing Grace.

Take a moment to think about what you found out was analysing Fly, peacock, fly, and what you can see here now on screen with Amazing Grace.

If you want to, feel free to pause the video or rewind the video so that you can compare the Fly Peacock, Fly song and Amazing Grace.

What did you see? We said that there was four phrases in both of these pieces.

Here's ours in Amazing Grace.

That's the first one.

Here's our second.

Here's our third.

And here's our fourth.

We also sort of talks about repeated rhythms. And when we did Amazing Grace before, in a previous lesson, we talked about the fact that the rhythms of phrase one, phrase two and phrase four all started exactly the same.

We also said that this has a three, four time signature, which is the same as Fly Peacock, Fly.

And we said that this mainly moves instep with a few leaps.

There's a leap there, but it's mainly moving instep.

And again, that's similar to Fly Peacock, Fly.

What's about the differences? Can you remember how many bars there were in each phrase in Fly Peacock, Fly? Two, well done.

And how many bars are there in each phrase of Amazing Grace? Four, excellent.

Well done.

Now that you've explored some of the ways that folk music uses the pentatonic scale, there's a quick quiz for you.

So folk music is music created and performed by people as part of their culture and tradition.

Is that true or is it false? It's true.

Well done if you said that.

Folk music is always written down.

That one's false, it's not always written down.

Can you remember how it's passed down? It's actually passed down by what we call the oral tradition, which is when we pass things down but through listening by ear.

The pentatonic scale is used folk music all around the world.

Is that true or false? It is, of course true.

And lots of folk music tends to use repetition.

Is that true or false? Think about Fly Peacock, Fly and think about Amazing Grace.

That one's true too, well done.

For your second pause task, on your piece of paper, can you write down five pieces of information that you have learned about folk music and the pentatonic scale? Can you tell somebody in your household what you have learned? Pause the video to complete your task, and then resume once you're finished.

Now that you've explored how folk music uses pentatonic scales, we're now going to learn what tonic and dominant notes are.

A lot of the composers make use of what we call the tonic and the dominant degrees of the scale to make their musical phrases sound finished and unfinished.

By knowing how to work out the tonic and dominant degrees of the scale, will help you to be able to compose excellent question, answer phrases in the next part of the lesson.

Let's take a look at what they are and how to work them out.

In music, we tend to label our pitches using the Roman numerals from one to seven.

Can you see them at the bottom of the screen? Each of the Roman numerals represents one of our seven pitches.

We label them with number one, being our first note of the scale.

So for example, on the screen, you see C is circled in green and C for this example, is our first note of the scale.

If D was the first note of the scale, D would be number one, if E was the first note of the scale, E would be number one.

And so on.

We call our first degree of the scale our tonic.

We call our fifth degree of the scale our dominant.

If C is our tonic, can you work out what the dominant would be? Excellent, it would be G.

Take a look at this example.

This, time D is our tonic.

What would be our dominant? Amazing.

A would be our dominant because it's the fifth degree of the scale.

One, two, three, four, five, so A is our dominant.

Take a look at this example.

if G was our dominant, what would the tonic be? D, how did you work that out? Did you work out the G was one, and then you needed to find number five and counted up, or did you just look straight to the Roman numeral? Well done if you've got it.

This example, I've taken away the Roman numerals, so you need to work them out yourself.

So if F is the tonic, what is the dominant? C.

Well done if you got that.

How did you work out? Did you just count up the five, including the first one off tonic note F? Brilliant if you did.

So it's easy.

All you have to do is to find your dominant is to count to five, including the tonic as your starting point.

And to find your tonic notes, count backwards five, including your dominant note.

For your third pause task, can you find and play the tonic and dominant pitches for the following on the keyboard or an instrument of your choice? Take a few minutes, see if you can work them out and then resume, and we'll go for the answers.

How did you get on with that task? Were you able to play the tonic and the dominant pitches? Let's see if you've got them right.

So if A is my tonic and I need to find the dominant, A is number one, B, C, D E would be my dominant.

If G was my tonic, G, A B, C, D would be my dominant.

If C was my tonic, C, D, E, F, G would be my dominant.

If D was my tonic, D, E, F, G, A would be my dominant.

And the last one, if F was my tonic, F, G, A, B, C would be my dominant.

Well done if you've got all of those right.

Now that you know what tonic and dominant notes are, we're now going to improvise a question that answer melody.

Taking a look at Fly, peacock, fly and Amazing Grace.

Both of these folk songs use tonic and dominant pictures at the of their question and answer phrases.

What are the tonic and dominant notes if we begin on F? That's right, F and C, well done.

So can you see where F and C are in Fly Peacock, Fly and Amazing Grace? In Fly Peacock, Fly, our answer ends on an F.

And it's the same for our answer in Amazing Grace.

What about our Cs? That's right.

In Fly Peacock, Fly, our questions end on the C and the same for Amazing Grace.

Our questions and on the C.

Which means that their answers are ending on the tonic, which makes it sound finished.

And our questions are ending on the dominant, which makes it sound unfinished.

Let's listen to these two examples again.

This time, I'm going to point when it is our dominance at the end of a question, and I'm going to point when it is a tonic at the end of the answer, Here's Fly Peacock, Fly first.

Did you notice the tonic and the dominant being played? Here is an Amazing Grace.

What happens if we swap them around? What happens if actually I didn't end my question on a dominant and I didn't end my answer on a tonic? What happens if I did it the other way around? So I ended my answer on a dominant.

Let's try that.

I'm going to end both answers on a dominant.

Here's Fly Peacock, Fly.

And here's the same with Amazing Grace.

Does it sound finished when we end on a dominant instead of the tonic? I don't think it does.

So that is why we try to end our phrases on the tonic note.

It makes it sound complete and it makes it sound finished.

We are going to improvise two four bar question answer phrases using the F major pentatonic scale.

We're going to use a metre of three, four.

Let's count the length of four bars.

Here we go.

One, two, three.

Two, two, three.

Three, three, three.

Four, three, three.

This time, let's count how long two bars is, because our question will be two bars long, and our answer will be two bars long.

Here we go.

One, two, three, Two, two, three.

Okay, they're quite sure.

Let's see if we can see how long that two bar gap, where the answer is going to go is.

I'm going to play a question and we're going to count out loud, the gap where the two bar answer will go.

So, one, two, three.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

And that's the length that you've got to play your answer.

Let's do that once more.

One, two, three.

One, two, three, four, five six.

Excellent.

This time I'm going to model a question and an answer.

Both improvised, but I'm going to end my answer on a certain pitch.

I'd like you to tell me which you think that is.

Here we go.

One, two, three.

Which pitch did I end my answer on? Well done.

It was the tonic, our F.

This time I'd like you to play with me.

I'm going to play a question and I would like you to respond with a two-bar answer.

But this time I'd like you to try and end your answer on the tonic note of F.

Here we go.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Well done if you ended on that F and you managed to play in time.

okay, this time I'm going to play a question.

You play an answer.

I'm going to play another question.

You play another answer.

Again, two bars each.

Here we go.

One, two, three.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Did you manage to end on an F? Hopefully you did and you managed to end on that tonic.

Did you spot what I ended my question on? Or were you really consumed in what you were doing with your answer? Well, I ended my question each time.

On our dominant C.

You could always rewind if you don't believe me and have a quick check.

Let's take one more look and listen.

What do you notice about the rhythm at the beginning of phrases one and two of Fly Peacock, Fly? Here they are.

Well done if you worked out that the very first bar of each of those phrases has the exact same rhythm.

And what do you notice about the rhythms in phrases three and four of Amazing Grace? Here they are.

Again, they're very, very similar.

The first two bars are exactly the same.

It's only the second two bars that change.

So my question for you is how could you use that in your question and answer melodies? I would now like you to take 10 to 15 minutes to improvise your own eight bar piece containing two questions and two answers.

Make sure that you include the tonic and the dominant notes, and I've put a chart on the screen for you to help you see which pictures they should end on.

So your question one should end on a C, the dominant, your answer one should end on an F, the tonic and the same for question two and answer two.

Use mainly steps, only a couple of leaps, use what you've learned from Fly Peacock, fly and Amazing Grace.

Your three, four time signature to get family members' clap, or say one, two, three, and keep you in time if you don't have a metronome.

And try to use similar rhythms for your question and answers.

They can be exactly the same if you like.

Folk music uses lots of repetition.

If you're struggling to use all the notes, just use two or three and play at simple rhythms. As an extension task, you could notate your composition onto the stage, or you could play it on your own instrument.

I'm going to give you the pitches for a few different instruments if you want to write them down.

If you play tenor sax, clarinet, trumpet, play the notes G, A, B, D, and E.

If you play alto sax, play the notes D, E, F sharp, A and B.

If you play the French horn, play the notes C, D, E, G, and A.

That will make your notes sound the same as the notes that we've been playing on the keyboard.

You could also create a simple accompaniment, for example, adding in a drone or an ostinato.

Pause the videos to complete your task and then resume once you're finished.

Let's revisit today's agenda and see what you've learnt.

We began by playing the F major pentatonic scale.

You then explored how folk music uses pentatonic scales and learned what a tonic and dominant note work.

You then improvised a question and answer melody, putting in your tonic and dominant notes where appropriate.

We're now coming to the end of our lesson.

And I would like you to reflect on what has been done today.

So on your piece of paper, can you answer the following question that was on the green screen, right at the start of the lesson? How does folk music use pentatonic scales? Pause the videos to complete your task, and then resume, and I'll go over the answers.

How did you think he did? Well, what do you remember? The beauty of the pentatonic means that there's no wrong notes and that makes it nice and easy to compose or improvise using them.

There's also only five pitches to a pentatonic scale, and that makes it very easy for communities to play along with each other and improvise as well.

Using the pentatonic scale also makes it really easy to replicate through the oral tradition.

And that's why folk songs are so easily passed down through generation to generation.

One last thing before you leave today is don't forget to complete the quiz to show how much you've learned.

And if you would like to share any of 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.

Go and give your hands are well deserved rest, and I will see you shortly.

Goodbye.