Lesson video

Okay, so in this lesson, we're going to be doing some body percussion.

So let's warm up our bodies.

On your feet, join me, and let's just start by stomping a pulse.

One, two, three, four, here we go, feel the pulse.

I'm going to clap a rhythm and you're going to clap it back.

Here we go, one, two, three, four.

One, two, three, very good! One, two, three.

One, two, three, four.

Nice job, okay, I'm going to keep the pulse going, but this time I'm going to use different parts of my body, so I might do some lap slaps, I might do some chest slaps, I might do some clicks, I might do some claps.

Look closely, listen, follow along, here we go.

I go, you go, call, response.

Three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

One, two, very good.

One, two, three, four.

Very, very good, I feel a little bit warmed up now.

Let's jump into the next part of this lesson.

As you can see by the title of this video, we're going to be exploring the music from a composer called Anna Meredith and I want to just set you off on a little research and listening task today.

I want you to find a recording of a piece called "Hands Free" by Anna Meredith, and I want you to answer the three questions on the screen, and I'm going to go through those in a minute.

I'm not showing you the video here because it's a very long video, it's about 13 minutes long.

However, what I would like you to do is, and you're welcome to watch the full 14 minutes, and I would encourage that for sure, but then please just scan through the video because as you can see by question three, how does a composer create variety in this piece, it's wildly different as we go through.

So maybe listen to 20 seconds at the beginning and then skip to the middle, listen to another 20 seconds and definitely, definitely skip to the end and watch the last sort of 30 seconds or so to get a really good answer for question number three.

Let's just quickly roll through these questions on screen now.

The first question is, why do you think the piece is called "Hands Free"? And even without watching the video, I'm sure you can start to have a guess considering we're doing body percussion today.

Question two, how many different body percussion sounds can you hear? Now, the reason I put body percussion in brackets is because there are other sounds in this piece besides body percussion, but I want you to list the body percussions when you can hear and the others as well.

And question three, as I've just said, how does the composer create variety in this piece? So find a recording of "Hands Free" by Anna Meredith and answer the questions in the worksheets.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume once you've finished.

So let's find out a little bit more about who Anna Meredith is.

She's a Scottish composer who composes music often labelled as uncategorizable.

However, if we did use labels, perhaps we would use contemporary classical and contemporary means modern, so more modern classical music, art pop, and electronic and techno.

Can you think of any musical features that we might find in techno music or in classical music? After hearing "Hands Free" by Anna Meredith, why do you think that some people label her music as uncategorizable? Let's test our body percussion knowledge.

What is body percussion? Option one, is it singing in time with others? Option two, is it hitting your body as hard as you can? Is it option three, playing percussion instruments with your hands? Or is this option four, using the body to produce various sounds? Write down your answer on your piece of paper, pause if you need to.

If you said option four, you were absolutely right.

If you thought it was option two, I do hope that you didn't try to hit yourself as hard as you can.

Let's see who's been listening.

Who is Anna Meredith? Option one, is she an Irish composer famous for using orchestras in composition? Option two, a Scottish composer famous for exploring body percussion and voice in composition? Option three, a Welsh composer famous for using solo voice in composition, or option four, an English composer famous for exploring body and voice in composition? If you said option two, well done again.

Give yourself a tick on your piece of paper.

She is indeed a Scottish composer famous for exploring body percussion sounds and voice in composition.

Task time! On your paper, write down the following: a definition of body percussion in full sentences and five different ways you know how you can make sounds of your body to use in a body percussion composition.

Pause the video to complete your task and click resume once you have finished.

Composing a piece of music for body percussion.

Hopefully by now, the following grid will be quite familiar to you.

The box with a symbol in it represents the sound that we want to hit and the beat and the beats are labelled using numbers one through to 16.

So for example, the first line we would split it, we've got it in eight beats, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

And we have a few different symbols.

In beat number one, or on beat number one, rather, we can see that we have a symbol for a vocalisation.

So we might shout, hey! For beat two, we have a click.

But if, as you can see, the click is to the right hand side of that box.

So it's going to be on this on the second half of beats two, and I'll demonstrate this shortly.

Beat three has two claps.

So I'm going to split beat three into two equal parts.

Beat four is a stomp.

Beat five is a click.

This time, and hopefully you can see the difference, the click is on the left hand side of the box and therefore will be on the start of beat five.

Beat six is a rest, seven another clap, just a single clap this time and beat eight is another rest.

Remember when we're thinking about composing our own pieces of music, I strongly encourage us to put rests in fairly often.

Music isn't just about having sound all of the time, it's the relationship between sound and silence and creating different rhythms and interest and variety as well, as we've spoken about.

I'm going to now demonstrate for you these lines.

I'll start with the first one and then it will be your turn to start composing your own piece for body percussion.

Okay, so let's break this first line into two parts.

Let's just do the first four beats, we've gone through it.

I'm going to do it slowly first.

So beat one is hey, hey! Two, and, three, four.

Let's do it together, just beats one, two, three, and four.

After four, one, two, three, four.

Hey! Very good.

And just you, this time I'll count, keep you in time.

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

Very good, let's do the second half together after four, we've got a click, rest, clap, rest.

One, two, three, four.

Very good, let's see if we can put that whole line together now.

Hey, rest, stomp, click, rest, clap, rest.

After four, one, two, three, four! Hey! Very good, let's have a look at this second line.

I'm going to give you five seconds, we're just going to do the first four beats, nine, ten, 11, and 12.

Have a look, see what we're going to need to do.

I'm going to count you in and say nine, ten, 11, 12.

Let's see if you get it right, and then we'll do it together, here we go, after four.

One, two, three, four.

Nine, ten, 11, 12.

Good, let's put that with me, now.

After four, just beats nine, ten, 11 and 12.

One, two, three, four.

Nine, ten, 11, 12.

Very good, okay.

The second half, 13, 14, 15, 16.

After four, one, two, three, four! Hey! Okay, excellent, and I'm sure you got that right.

Let's go from the beginning, one all the way through 16.

Here we go, one, two, three, four.

Hey! Hey! Very good, did you get it right? If not, feel free to pause and go back and we can do it together as many times as it takes for you to get it right.

Let's take a look at one more example.

Okay, so this is slightly different.

We can see that in beats six, seven, 14, and 15, we have rests and it's just a slightly different arrangement of the same body percussion sounds.

This time, line one and line two are quite similar.

What are the similarities? Pause if you need to.

Well, you might notice that the first bit of each line always starts with a clap.

The second beat is always a stomp.

The third beat always has two sounds within the same beat although in the first line it's claps and in the second line it's clicks.

Beat four is always a stomp, and then we have that's when the differences start in the first line, beat five, we have a click whereas on the second line in beat 13, we have a Hey, two rests, and then we have a hey to finish line one and a clap to finish line two.

Let's put this all together.

Let's go straight in this first line.

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

Two, three, four, five, six, seven, hey! Very good, one more time.

One, two, three, four! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, hey! Line two, after four, very similar remember.

One, two, three, four! Hey! Good.

And again, one, two, three, four.

Hey! Good, line one and two, let's run it all.

After four, one, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four.

Five, six, seven, hey! Nine, ten, 11, 12, hey, 13, 14, 15, 16.

On your paper, draw or download the 16 beat grid.

Fill the grid in with your chosen body percussion sounds and rhythms and then perform the grid.

Pause the video to complete your task and click Resume once you have finished.

Performing a piece of music for body percussion.

Now, how do I turn my table into an actual piece of music? Can you remember how we talked about Anna Meredith creating variety? Well, when Anna Meredith composed "Hands Free", she didn't just have the same thing repeated for 13 minutes.

She had long repeated sections, but it was very different throughout and we call this structure when we have different sections.

So let's turn our current composition grids into an actual piece of music.

Here, I have my table beats one to 16, and that's going to be my section A, the one I've just clapped with you.

And then I've made this section B and I've called it a beat box break.

Now, you don't have to beat box if you don't want to but I added this just for those that might be interested by having a go at beat boxing.

Now, why have I put a picture of some shoes and some kittens in that box? Yes, you may have heard that to beat box all you need to know how to say is boots and cats and boots and cats, and.

There we go.

Okay, so my B section is going to be a little bit of beat boxing, and I'm just going to say boots and cats.

I'm going to repeat that, I think four times before going back to my A section.

So I'm going to go all the way through beats one to 16 of A, then I'm going to have 16 beats of boots and cats and then I'm going to go back to section A again, and then suddenly my composition grid of 16 beats is now a whole piece.

It has structure, it has variety, and it would be much more interesting to listen to.

Let's see how that would look.

One, two, three, four.

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Thank you very much! That is my piece of music, A, B, and A.

Using your composition grid, perform the grid fluently.

Consider how you will structure your performance, maybe you use an ABA structure as I did.

Then perform your grid with your new structure.

Pause the video to complete this task and click resume once you've finished.

On your paper, answer the question below.

How does the composer Anna Meredith use the body as an instrument? Write down as many things as you possibly can, and remember to use full sentences.

Once you've done that, remember to do the quiz at the end of this video, too.

If you need to pause the video now to complete the task, do so and click resume once you've finished.

As always, you can share your work with Oak National.

If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and make sure to tag @OakNational and LearnWithOak.

Personally, I would love to see your compositions that you came up with today.