Lesson video

Hi, everyone.

♪ Ready, off I go ♪ ♪ Welcome everybody.

♪ ♪ It's time for us to sing ♪ ♪ Welcome everybody ♪ ♪ It's time for us to sing ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, five, ♪ ♪ Six, seven, eight, nine, ten ♪ ♪ It's time for us to sing ♪ Join him with me.

♪ Ready, off I go ♪ ♪ Welcome everybody ♪ ♪ It's time for us to sing ♪ ♪ Welcome everybody ♪ ♪ It's time for us to sing ♪ ♪ One, two, three, four, five ♪ ♪ six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

♪ ♪ It's time for us to sing ♪ Good job.

I've got my friend Higgety Tiggety here and he wants to know your name.

He's going to sing a song to you and you're going to sing it back to him.

I'm going to go first to show you what I mean.

♪ Higgety Tiggety bumblebee ♪ ♪ Can you sing your name to me? ♪ ♪ My name's Miss Glover ♪ What's your name? Great, let's try.

♪ Higgety Tiggety bumblebee ♪ ♪ Can you sing your name to me? ♪ Very good, let's try one more time ♪ Higgety Tiggety bumblebee ♪ ♪ Can you sing your name to me? ♪ Well done, you.

Now we're ready to do some learning.

Today, we are going to learn to know the instruments of the orchestra, to identify instruments by listening and to understand which instruments fit into which family and why.

The orchestra.

An orchestra is a large group of musicians who usually play classical music.

Sometimes there can be over a hundred musicians in an orchestra.

Here, you can see a map of what the orchestra looks like as if you were a bird hovering above them.

You can see the grey circle at the front.

That's closest to where the audience would sit.

And that's where the conductor stands.

Next, we have the pink section, which is all the string instruments.

Then purple which is the woodwind section Blue is the brass section.

And at the back we've got the noisy percussion instruments.

We're going to learn about all these different instruments and their families now.

Firstly, the conductor.

The conductor is in charge of the orchestra and they use a stick called a baton to tell the musicians what to play and when.

They wave the stick around to show the musicians how many beats there are in a bar, how loud and quietly they should be and when to come in.

They are in charge of everybody and they even organise the rehearsals for the musicians to practise.

Next we have the string section.

On our map, that is the pink section.

They are also the biggest section of the orchestra.

Most of the players in the orchestra are string players.

They're called the string section because they are played by plucking and bowing strings.

The string section consists of the violin, viola, cello and double bass.

They are the biggest section of the orchestra and are played by bowing or plucking their strings.

The violin is the highest member of the string section and the double bass is the lowest.

We're going to listen to a piece of music by Vivaldi.

This has lots of string players in it and it even has a solo violin.

See if you can listen carefully for all the different instruments.

Next, we have the woodwind section.

the woodwind section consists of the flute, clarinet, oboe, and bassoon.

They are hollow tubes which are played by blowing into them.

Some of them use a reed to make a sound.

A reed is a piece of wood that vibrates when you blow across it.

The clarinet has a single reed and the oboe and bassoon have double reeds.

There are more members of the woodwinds section but these are the main ones.

I wonder if you can find out what other members of the woodwind section are missing.

You could do some research after our lesson to find out.

Here's a piece of music by a man called Gershwin.

It's called Rhapsody in Blue and it features a clarinet.

Have a listen.

The next section is the brass section.

Here, you can see it on the orchestra map in blue.

The brass section consists of the trumpet, trombone, French horn and tuba.

They are played by blowing through a mouthpiece and using valves or slides to change pitch.

You can often see brass instruments in marching bands too.

They are all made of metal.

Sometimes brass.

Sometimes other metals.

And they're really quite loud.

Here you can hear a piece of music by a man called Haydn.

This is a trumpet concerto.

That means there's a whole orchestra playing but the trumpet is playing on its own.

You can hear the trumpet after a few minutes.

See if you can spot it.

Lastly, we have the percussion section.

They sit right to the back of the orchestra because they make so much noise.

The percussion section is made up of lots of instruments which are all played by hitting, shaking, scraping, or tapping them.

Some of these are pitched like xylophone and someone pitched like a drum.

We also have maracas, tambourines, castanets, triangles.

So many different instruments fit into the percussion section but the important thing to remember is that they are all played by hitting, shaking, scraping or tapping them.

Here's a piece of music by Steve Reich.

It's called Music for 18 Musicians and most of those musicians are percussion players.

Although, you will hear some other instruments in there too.

See if you can spot all the instruments that are being hit, shaken, scraped or tapped.

Today, we have got to know the instruments of the orchestra, we've learnt to identify instruments by listening and we've learned to understand which instruments fit into which family and why.

Remember, if they have strings they're in the string family.

If they are played by blowing into them and they're made of wood or they have a reed, then they are in the woodwind family.

If they're made of brass or they have valves and slides, they're in the brass family and if they are hit, shaken, scraped or tapped, they're in the percussion family.

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