Lesson video

Hello, and welcome to your music lesson today.

My name is Miss Al-Hanoush and I am the head of music at a secondary school in Birmingham.

Here is a sound that represents how I am feeling today.

That sounds represents how I am feeling because I am super excited to be starting this unit on "Stomp" and sing with you.

I'm also amazed at how many different things you are going to be learning.

So much that I think my head might explode with ideas.

What's the sound that represents how you're feeling today? I'm sure that there was loads of brilliant sounds there, and I'm super disappointed that actually I can't hear them.

But let's move on and have a quick warmup.

So this warmup is called, "Don't clap this one back".

You might already know this.

If you hear this rhythm, you are not allowed to clap it back to me.

If I do it vocally, you are also not allowed to sing it back to me.

So I'm going to play a four beat rhythm, and you are going to respond with the same rhythm unless it is? That's right.

"Don't clap this one back".

If you hear that, do not play it.

Here we go.

Ah, did I catch you out? Did you hear it? So that one was "Don't clap this one back".

So let's try again.

Here we go.

Second time.

Did I catch you out again? That last one was "Don't clap this one back".

Okay, last time before we move on to our lesson, here we go.

Did I catch you out? That last one, even though I put a shush in, was still "Don't clap this one back".

Okay, let's see if we can find out what your lesson's going to be about today.

So this unit is all about using the instruments that you carry around with you all of the time.

They are your body and your voice.

So if you have those instruments all of the time, it means that you can be a musician all of the time.

So to start with, we're going to watch a bit of a video from the performance of "Stomp".

And I would like you to try out the three following ideas.

So number one, can you clap in time with the person that's performing on the yellow bin? Number two, can we perform the same rhythms that the people playing the bins are playing? And number three, if you think this is too easy for you, can you improvise your own rhythms over the top of what these performers are playing? Enjoy.

So how did you get on? That was to give you a little bit of inspiration for what this unit is all about, using our body and our voice to perform and compose music.

So let's have a little look at what else we're going to be doing today.

So, we're going to start by identifying what a pulse and a rhythm are.

We're then going to be copying and performing a variety of rhythms. We're then going to do something super exciting, which is learning how to read rhythm notation.

We're then going to use that to perform and compose rhythm notation.

And we're going to use all of that information to then perform a structured rhythm composition.

So in this lesson, you will need a piece of paper, a pencil, and your body of course.

If you don't have these items to hand, I suggest that you pause the video in a moment and go and get them.

If you also need to take the moment to go and find a quiet space where you will be able to work, and turn off any apps or notifications that you get through, please do that now.

Do you ever listen to a piece of music and find yourself tapping your foot to it? Or tapping a pen on the table? If so, congratulations, because you have found the music's pulse.

So a pulse is a steady regular beat that we can hear in most music.

It's a series of individual repeated beats.

We can't always hear a pulse, but it's important to note that it is always there.

You can think of it like a ticking clock or a human heartbeat.

It keeps us alive and it drives our body.

The pulse in music is very, very similar to that.

So we're going to try and clap a steady pulse together.

I'll clap first, and then you'll clap after me.

We're going to use a counting and a pulse in the background to keep us in time, because that is super important.

So before the digital world, and before we had lots of technology, we used something that was called a metronome, and it looks a little bit like this.

I'm going to use a metronome today because if I use a pulse on the computer, it's not going to feed back in time and my pulse will actually be out of time.

So I'm going to use a metronome, which you can set using the bar to different pulses.

So you can set them to be playing different bits per minute.

So I'm going to set mine, and mine's at 104 beats per minute.

And if I click this off, you can see that this will keep the pulse for us.

So we're going to use this as our counting, and we're going to hear it four times before we start playing.

So I'm going to play first, and then you're going to join in after four beats.

So let's listen out for the metronome counting.

Your turn.

My turn again.

Your turn.

Can we keep this steady pulse? Can you join in? Keep going.

So if you able to play in time with that, you were able to keep a steady pulse.

So now we know what pulse is, we can explore rhythm.

So rhythm in music is a pattern of sounds of different lengths.

Rhythm is what gives music its energy and its movement.

It's rhythm that really drives the music forward.

It adds variety and makes our music interesting.

So developing a good sense of rhythm is really key to great music making.

Thinking back to the video that you watched of "Stomp" earlier, the performance in that video all had a really good, strong sense of pulse.

But it was their rhythms that really drove that music forward.

So it might be an idea now to pause the video, rewind and go and have another look at that performance.

Let's have a go at clapping some rhythms over our pulse.

So I'm going to play for four beats, and then you're going to copy.

Here we go.

Here's our counting of four on my metronome.

Okay, so I have just played three different rhythms there, but I played a bar of each rhythm.

What happens if we actually start to merge these sounds together? If we play them and mix them up, what happens? Let's have another go.

I'm going to mix them up.

You're going to call and response with me.

So I'll play for four, then you copy me.

Here we go.

Okay, so you can see that they make our music a little bit more interesting once we start to mix them up.

Here is a quick quiz for you just on rhythm or pulse.

Am I going to play a rhythm or am I going to play a pulse? Here's my counting.

What was I playing, a rhythm or a pulse? Place your bets now.

It was obviously a pulse.

Here we go.

Here's our second one.

Am I playing a rhythm or a pulse? Was that a rhythm or a pulse? It was a rhythm.

Well done.

Okay.

Moving on.

I would now like you to take a moment to pause the video and complete this piece of work.

I would like you on your piece of paper to write down the definition of a pulse and the definition of rhythm.

I would also like you to challenge yourselves and see if you can tell me what the difference between pulse and rhythm is.

Pause the video now, and then rejoin us.

Here is the agenda for our lesson today.

So we have already done number one, which is to identify what pulse and rhythm are.

And we are now moving onto copying and performing a variety of rhythms. So here's a mini challenge for you.

I would like you to clap a four beat rhythm over the pulse.

And then I would like you to try clapping an eight beat rhythm over the pulse.

If you want to stretch yourself, you could begin your rhythm on the upbeat, or you could include other parts of your body or voice.

Here's an example of a four beat rhythm, and then an eight beat rhythm.

Have a go yourselves now.

Here's your counting.

One, two, three, four.

And your eight beat rhythm, here's your counting.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

Well done.

So this brings us onto a really exciting stage of this lesson.

You are about to start reading rhythms. And this is super exciting because it means that you'll be able to read all these squiggly notes and dots.

Some of you might have seen what's on this screen before and recognise it and you might go, "Yeah, those are crotchets, and those are quavers." Some of you might be sitting there going, "What on earth is this? I have no idea." But this is how composers write down their music.

And we split our music into bars.

We usually start with a time signature, right at the beginning, which we can see here says four four.

This means that we have four beats in every bar.

And we split up a music into bars to make it much easier to read.

And we split it with lines, and we call these bar lines.

So every time we have four beats, we then put in a bar line.

Now don't worry too much about what these mean, because I'm going to teach them to you in this lesson.

And then we're going to revisit this slide so that you can see that actually, yeah, smashed it, I can read rhythms. And that is super exciting.

On the screen, you can see four dots.

These are a dot for every single beat of our bar.

So we've got four beats in a bar and we would call that four four.

So four four time signature.

We usually wouldn't have lines in between the dots, but I've just put them there so it's easier for you to see where they fall.

We would usually put a line right at the end of our four beats, which we call a bar line.

Can you clap those dots in time with this pulse? Here's your counting of four beats.

One, two, three, four.

Dead easy.

Let's move on.

What about this one? So this time there's a gap.

Have a go.

Here's your counting.

One.

So there's nothing on beat two there.

If you want to say shh instead of not playing anything, you can do that.

But there's nothing there, so we don't play anything.

What about this one? Here we go.

Here's your counting.

Okay.

Again, you can play shush if you need to on that beat three, because there is nothing there.

Let's take another look at this one.

Slightly harder.

What do you think happens here? Have a go.

Here's your counting.

So that time, I had to split that second beat into two parts.

So they're now worth half of the beat each.

And there was nothing on beat three, so I didn't play anything on beat three.

Again, if you want to put a shh in, you can.

What about this one? Let's try.

Here's your counting.

Okay, so at this time we had to split beat three, as well as beat two.

So this time we've got half beats in beat two and beat three.

So I'm going to clap that again for you, but this time I'm going to say the beats underneath.

Here we go.

Here's our counting.

One, two and three and four.

If you want to try that one again, feel free.

What about this one? Slightly trickier.

So now there's nothing bang on beat three.

Have it go after four.

Here's your counting.

One two and and four.

Okay, did you get that one? Let's try clapping that one together in unison.

Here we go.

It's a bit trickier.

And again.

Here's your counting.

One, two and and four.

So we don't play anything on beat three.

Okay.

So we're at the next checkpoint.

So we have identified what's a pulse and a rhythm are, and we have now copied and performed a variety of rhythms. Next step is how to read rhythm notation.

So, you might be sitting there thinking "What on earth is this lady doing? Why is she showing me lots of dots? Why is she making me clap lots of dots?" Well, the reason is you're already reading rhythm notation, but you just don't realise it yet.

Look how simple this is.

Just by adding lines to that, I've actually made the musical note called a crotchet.

And a crotchet is worth one beat.

And that's why you can see one crotchet is on every single beat.

So when we clap that, it's exactly the same as what you've just clapped with your dots.

Here we go.

Here's the counting of four.

Let's try it in unison.

One, two, three, four.

Awesome.

Dead easy.

So that's a crotchet.

It's worth.

One beat, that's right.

Okay.

Here's a pause for you.

On your piece of paper, I would like you to write down one crotchet equals.

Beat.

And draw what a crotchet looks like.

Can you draw a bar of four crotchets? And as a stretch, can you compose a four bar rhythm using crotchets, and if you already play and can read music, any other notes of your choice.

Have a go.

The next note that I'm going to teach you is called a quaver.

A quaver is worth half the beat.

When we have two quavers drawn next to each other, we tend to join them up.

And we join up their stems. So you can see here, we've joined this quaver stem to this quaver stem at the top.

It makes it so much easier for us to read as musicians.

So how do you think this one will sound? Here's your counting.

Have a go.

Quaver, quaver, quaver, quaver.

Did you see that I was playing on the half beats? Let's try that again in unison.

This time, I'm going to say the ands.

Here's the counting.

One and two and three and four and.

Awesome job.

So a quaver is worth half a beat.

So I would like you to pause the video again, and on your paper, you're going to write down what one quaver equals? I can hear you saying it.

And you're going to draw me a quaver.

You're then going to draw me a bar of eight quavers.

Remember to join them up.

And can you compose an interesting four bar rhythm using crotchets and quavers? Don't forget to put your time signature on, and don't forget your bar lines after every four beats.

Once you're done, resume the video.

Okay.

We are having a quick quiz before we move on.

So how many beats is a crotchet worth? Is it half a beat, one beat, two beats or three beats? I can hear you all screaming it at me.

It is obviously one beat.

Well done.

How many beats is the quaver worth? Is it half beat, one beat, two beats or three beats.

Again, I can hear you shouting at the screen.

It's half a beat.

Fantastic.

Okay, so how do we put all of these together to read rhythm notation? So this is very, very similar to what we did before.

But this time, we've added our lines and our tails on our quavers to just make it into rhythm notation.

So have a look at what's on the screen and see if you can play it through.

I will give you your counting.

Here we go.

Okay.

Let's try that.

Let's see if we can do it in unison together.

I'll play at the same time as you, and then I'll break it down for you.

Okay.

Let's try this with our breakdown.

So we're saying one, two and three and four, or you could say one, quaver, quaver, four.

That might help.

Whichever one suits you.

Here we go.

After our counting, in unison.

One, two and three and four.

Awesome job guys.

Well done.

Okay.

What about starting to add in rests? In music, we don't necessarily always have notes playing all the time.

Sometimes we like to use silence.

It's quite a good technique actually.

So using your compositions.

So instead of playing any music, we're now going to put in a rest.

So this first one is a crotchet rest.

So if a crotchet is worth one beat, how much is the rest worth? Yes, one beat.

So this is what this should sound like here.

Here is my counting.

One, two, three, four.

Okay, you can say shush if you want to.

So we could do this.

One, two, shh, four.

Okay? It's the same.

So let's have a go at doing this.

Obviously, if we to play this in a piece of music, we wouldn't say shh.

But for the purpose of this, and knowing where that rest is, you can do that if it helps.

So here we go in unison.

Let's try and play this together.

Awesome job.

Well done.

So that's a crotchet rest.

But what about a quaver rest? So quaver rests looks like a little number seven, and you can see it on the beginning of beat three.

Okay, it's over here.

And there's one drawn at the top for you as well.

So this time, we're not going to play right on the start of beat three, but we're going to play halfway through.

So have a little think about this.

Can you try it yourself? Here is your metronome and your counting.

How did you get on? Let's see how it actually should sound.

Here's my counting.

One, two and four.

Okay.

So I'm playing now on the and beat rather than on the three.

Again, if you want to put that shh in, you've got to be quick, but you can do.

Let's try that in unison.

Here we go.

One, two, three and four.

Okay.

So that's what that one should sound like if we add in quaver rests.

So, I told you I would bring this back again.

So this is our reading rhythm slide that we saw earlier on.

Do you think you'll be able to actually read that now? So it's made up of our crotchets and our quavers.

It's split into three bars.

We've got two crotchet.

Then we've got quavers.

Then we've got a crotchet.

I'm trying to hear you say these out loud.

What are they? These are all crotchets, well done.

These are? Two quavers.

Fantastic.

And.

Three crotchets, awesome.

Have a little think and see whether you can play this on your own.

So one, two, three and four, one, two, three, four, one and two, three, four.

Okay.

Let's try it with a metronome in unison.

Let's see how we get on.

Here's our counting.

One, two, three and four, one, two, three, four, one and two, three four.

Did you get it? If not, you can rewind and you can try that again.

This is your third pause of the lesson.

On your piece of paper, I'd like you to write down firstly, what one crotchet rest equals, and what one quaver rest equals.

I would also like you to draw me what a crotchet rest looks like, and draw what the quaver rest looks like.

Can you do that without going back through the video? And number five is quite tricky.

We've got a lot of things to play with when we are listening and writing.

And it's kind of time to start composing our own rhythm piece.

So on your piece of paper, I would like you to draw a little bit of a grid, like the one that I have drawn over here.

You can use a ruler to make it really neat for you.

Or if you're struggling, you can use the printable download.

So each cell for us here is now going to be a bar, and it's going to be a bar of four beats.

So it's really important that we put our time signature of four four, at the beginning, because it tells us that there are going to be four crotchet beats in every bar.

So, so far we've been playing one beat per cell.

Now you have to put four beats in each cell.

So I would make this quite big on your piece of paper so you've got room to draw it in.

So we've got lots of things to play with when we're writing our rhythms. We have crotchets and crotchet rests, and quavers in quaver rests.

And you need to make sure that every bar has four beats in it.

There's no right or wrong combination of notes right now, but they must be the correct number of beats.

So once you've drawn in your beats, and I suggest you do it in pencil.

That's why I said pencil earlier.

I suggest you do it in pencil so you can rub any mistakes out and make sure that each of your bars adds up to four beats.

I would double check it at least twice to make sure that it's correct.

And then when you're happy with it, see if you can clap your rhythm out loud.

If you want a bit of a stretch, see if you can clap it actually going backwards.

Then once you're finished, resume the video and we will have a quick quiz.

Okay, so a quick quiz for you before we move on.

How many beats is a crotchet worth? Is it half, is it one, is it two or is it three? I can hear you all screaming.

It's one beat.

Well done.

How many is a quaver worth? Is it half, one, two or three? Fantastic.

It is half a beat.

What about a crotchet rest, if we know a crotchet it is worth one, what's the rest going to be? Awesome.

It's one beat.

And what about a quaver rest? If we know a quaver is half a beat, how much is the rest going to be? Superb! It's half a beat.

Fantastic work guys.

Okay.

So our agenda so far, we've identified pulse and rhythm.

We've copied and performed rhythms. And we've learned how to read rhythm notation.

We are now going on to performing and composing rhythm notation.

How exciting.

Okay, so on the screen you can see a rhythm grid.

Each line, each row, okay, so row A, row B, row C and row D, are all worth a bar.

Each box has got one beat in it.

Usually we wouldn't put these lines in, but I've put the lines in to make it really clear and obvious to you where each beat of the bar begins.

Okay? So we've got beat one, beat two, beat three and beat four, okay? So this rhythm grid is made up of our crotchets, our quavers, and their equivalent rests.

Can you have a go at clapping through row A? So bar A for me.

Here we go.

I'm going to give you a count in of four.

One, two, three, four.

Super easy.

It's made up of crotchet, one beat notes.

What about row two? So our bar two, which is row B.

Here's your counting.

Okay, so it is made up of our crotches and our quavers.

So we've got crotchet, then two quavers, crotchet, two quavers.

Let's try row B again.

Here we go.

One, two and three, four and.

Awesome.

What about row C? Have a look at that one.

Okay, so it's made up of our quavers and we've got a crotchet rest.

Let's have a go.

Here's your counting.

Again, if you want to say shush, you can.

I'll do that one for you now.

Here's our counting.

Okay.

And the last one, row D.

It's a little bit trickier, this row.

Why is it trickier than the other rows? It doesn't start on the beat.

This is what we call a syncopated rhythm.

So you can see that we've got this quaver rest here on beat three.

So it means that actually we don't start to play on beat three.

We start after on the three and.

So this is a little bit harder to play.

Have a think.

How would you play this? Here's your counting.

How did you go? Let's try it.

It should sound like this.

Okay.

I'll read out the beats for you this time.

Here we go.

One, two, three and four.

Okay, so we're playing on the and rather than on the three.

So can we perform that rhythm grid the whole way through, from rows A to D? Let's have a go.

So one, two, three, four.

One, two, three four.

One, two and three, four and, one and rest, one, rest, one, two and four.

Brilliant if you got that.

It's quite hard to say the beats at the same time.

Well done.

Have another go here.

Have a go on your own.

I'll count the beats for you.

Here's your counting.

So one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

How did you do? It's quite exciting being able to read music isn't it? Well done if you've got that right.

So how else could we perform this rhythm grid? Well, we could perform it in different ways.

We could do bar A first, and then bar B.

We could then skip C all together and go to bar D.

We could perform it backwards if we wanted to.

We could perform it vertically if we wanted to.

We could even say, you know what? I'm going to play A, I'm going to be play B, I'm going to skip C, and in C, I'm going to improvise, So I'm going to make something up on the spot on my own.

And then, I'm going to play D to finish it off.

I'll give you an example of that now.

So here we go.

Here's my counting.

Okay, so i didn't actually play what was written for bar C at all.

I improvised, I made something up.

How else could we perform it? We could use different body parts.

We don't just have to clap everything.

We can use our voice as well.

So I'll give you an example of that now.

Here's my counting.

Okay, so that time, every time there was quavers, I hit my chest.

And every time there was a rest, shh, I put a shush in.

I kept my crotchets the same as claps.

What can you do to perform this? If you've got another member of your household, they could perform another line at the same time as you.

You could rewind the video and perform different lines over the top of what I performed then, and we would create what we call a polyrhythm, which is two or more rhythms being played at the same time.

You can be so creative with this.

It's up to you.

So, here is a quick quiz for you.

So I'm going to play a rhythm over the pulse, and you are going to tell me which rhythm you can hear.

Here we go.

Here's the pulse with the counting.

Super easy, the first one.

Obviously, it is rhythm.

Well done, it's rhythm A.

Okay.

What about this one? Okay, have a look.

Quick, quick, quick.

Is it rhythm A, B, C, D? Awesome.

It's rhythm C.

Well done.

Okay.

What about this one? Okay, it was that funny syncopated rhythm, which is a little bit harder for us to play.

It was rhythm D.

And the last one then.

Okay, which one was it? I think we've given this one away.

It was rhythm B.

Well done guys.

Okay, so.

We are moving on to structuring your performance and how would you actually put this together? So for this, I'm going to give you an extra bit of help on another slide.

Okay, so it's now time for the main part of your lesson, which is to structure your performance of the rhythm grid that we have previously played through, or one that you've composed yourselves.

And I would like you to use the structure that is on this slide.

So.

I have put an introduction there.

So choose a row or a rhythm that you will use as your introduction.

The main section of your performance is called the main groove.

So which rows will you use? Will you use rows B and C? Would you use rows D, A? What order will you play them in? And how many times would you play each row? You don't just have to play at once.

You can choose how many times you want to play them.

And then to finish it off, you're going to compose yourself an outro.

So which row would you use for your outro? Some composers use the same beginning of their piece as the same ending of their piece.

So if you wanted to, you could use the same row for your intro and row for your outro.

You do not have to use just claps.

You can play this rhythm, the rhythm grid, as you like, okay? Like I said earlier, if you have more than one person in your household, you could actually get them to structure this with you and say, I'm going to play bar A, whilst you play bar D.

And get them to put in some polyrhythms to make it a little bit more exciting.

If you play an instrument already, you could also compose a melodic composition to this.

So you don't just have to stick with the rhythm notation.

So you can add some pictures to your rhythms as well.

And I'll show you an example of that now.

So I am actually a violinist and I'm going to add some pitches to this on my violin.

If you've got a keyboard at home or your own instrument, or even an app on your phone that you want to use to be able to do this, you can add pitches too, instead of it all staying on the same notes or just one basic rhythm.

So at the moment, if I was to play this and put a pitch to it, it would sound like this.

Which is a little bit boring actually.

I can make it so much more interesting by adding some pitches to it.

So this is what I'm going to do.

It's not necessarily right.

It's not necessarily wrong.

It's just what I'm composing.

And you can do the same.

You don't have to stick with these rhythm notation either.

Remember that you can put in any that you know.

So here's my version of this, adding in some pitches.

Which is a little bit more exciting, a little bit more nicer to perform and nicer to the ear, to be able to perform some pitches on my instrument.

So you can have a go at doing that too.

So just to recap what you are doing now, is on your paper or on the downloadable resource, you're going to write down the structure of your rhythm performance.

You're then going to perform your structured rhythm composition.

And to go further, can you extend your performance by composing another rhythm grid for a second groove section? Remember that there's the downloadables that you can use if you want to.

If you don't want to draw them out, you can use the rhythm grid that we've used today, or you can write out and compose your own rhythm grid.

Remember that it doesn't have to be a beat per cell.

You could use those cells as being bars as well.

And remember, you don't have to use the four four time signature.

Also remember that you can use different parts of your body and vocal sounds as well to compose.

Can you then perform it to somebody? And see what they think about it.

If you need to pause the video to go back and now change or reconsider some ideas, and re-perform it with some extra, exciting rhythms in there, go for it.

Pause the video now, and then resume.

How did you get on with your composition and structuring of it? Were you able to perform it to somebody in your household? I hope so.

Or save it for your music teacher for when you're back in school.

So the final thoughts for today, before we look back at our agenda and check that we have done everything on our agenda for today's lesson, is just to take a piece of paper and just reflect on what we've done today.

Right at the start of this lesson, there was a question on the green screen.

And the question said, why are pulse and rhythm so important? So I'd like you think about everything that we've done today, and just answer that question on your piece of paper now.

And then resume and I'll go through the answers.

Okay, so pulse is really important because it's like the heartbeat of our music.

It's regular, and it keeps us going in time.

Rhythm is really important because it drives our music forward with energy and it makes it really exciting.

So both of these combined really make a good piece of music.

So just looking at our agenda for today's lesson and making sure that we've ticked everything off.

So, to identify what's a pulse and rhythm are, to copy and perform a variety of rhythms, to learn how to read rhythm notation, and perform and compose rhythm notation, and then we finally performed a structured rhythm composition.

So I hope that you've enjoyed today's lesson.

And I hope that it's given you lots of ideas that you can then take away for composition in the future.

And my final thoughts for you today are, please don't forget to finish the quiz.

There is a quiz after this that just checks that you've managed to remember everything that I've taught you in today's lesson.

Please go and do that now, and then give your body a well deserved rest.

Well done and bye for now.