Listen to how this sounds. The metronome helps to highlight the beats.

British English CC

Recording your melody: video

Check A bar 1-4

Check B bar 1-4

Check C bar 1-4

Check A bar 7-11

Check B bar 7-11

Check C bar 7-11

Listen to this recording of the melody and complete the table

Improvising using target notes from the melody

Free improvisation video 1

Free improvisation video 2

Free improvisation video 3

Task C feedback

Improvising around a melody

Music

Polyrhythm in batucada

Extended chords in Brazilian songs

Developing a bass line in a Brazilian song

This unit introduces pupils to Samba as a type of Brazilian dance and music, including batucada. They learn the context of the style and about the instruments, ensembles and features of the music, including polyrhythm and develop a Samba-style composition.

Understanding samba

Some notes sound better than others when improvising.

All notes sound equally good when improvising.

It is best to use lots of notes when improvising.

It is often effective to use only a few notes when improvising.

because these notes fit with the key of the song, so sound effective

because the G major scale is always a good set of notes to improvise with

Why do we improvise in our Brazilian song using only the notes of the G major scale?

a note we aim to land on in our improvisation

a note in the melody that we can improvise around

using the notes of the scale in different rhythms

Which of these could be a helpful improvisation strategy?

What can we use alongside the root note to make a bass line more interesting?

How many notes does an extended chord have?

Samba and batucada include many different rhythms playing at the same time. This is called a {{}}.

Starter Quiz

What is improvisation?