Myths about teaching can hold you back
- Year 9
Recreating Blinding Lights by ear
I can recreate a drum part and hook by ear.
Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and
- Year 9
Recreating Blinding Lights by ear
I can recreate a drum part and hook by ear.
Copyrighted materials: to view and download resources from this lesson, you’ll need to be in the UK and
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Lesson details
Key learning points
- Drum beats can be recreated by ear by using similar techniques to working out a melodic line.
- Breaking it into small chunks and trying to pick out individual instruments or lines helps.
- Blinding Lights has a typical pop drum groove, with a snare backbeat, repeated hi-hats and kick emphasising 1 and 3.
- The hook uses a synth lead and has syncopated rhythms.
Keywords
Hook - a short, memorable musical idea that recurs in a pop song; it is designed to ‘catch’ the ear of the listener
Synth lead - a type of synthesiser that is well suited to playing melodic lines
Syncopated - a rhythm that emphasises notes in between the main beats
Common misconception
All drum grooves have exactly the same rhythms in the kick, snare and hi-hat.
Many typical drum grooves do have the same features or features very close to this, however encourage pupils to identify where there are subtle differences and how the kick, snare and hi-hat patterns can be varied within these features.
To help you plan your year 9 music lesson on: Recreating Blinding Lights by ear, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your year 9 music lesson on: Recreating Blinding Lights by ear, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom.
Explore more key stage 3 music lessons from the Working out pop hooks and riffs by ear unit, dive into the full secondary music curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.
Equipment
DAW, MIDI keyboards
Licence
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