Students will learn:• Percussion produces sound by being hit, shaken, or scraped.• Percussion can be pitched and non-pitched.• Percussion is a BIG musical family: timpani, congas, drums, shakers,
xylophone, marimba, and many more.• Percussionists sit in the back of the orchestra towards the left side.• Percussion adds sound effects, conveys feelings, and intensifies
emotion in music.• Percussion is used in many musical genres – from Latin music to
marching bands.
LESSON OBJECTIVES
Percussion instruments produce sound by being hit, shaken, or scraped. Percussion adds rhythm and texture to music. Quaver spends the day hitting, shaking, and scraping percussion instruments to hear what a delightful variety of sounds they make. To explore the diverse uses of percussion, Quaver visits an orchestra, takes to the field with a marching band, adds sound effects to a short film, and meets a profes-sional percussionist who collects way-out instruments, including some that prove a little scary.
An exploration of instruments hit, shaken, and scraped
* concepts included in the Teacher Guide, but not in the DVD
1 Playing around with per-cussion
Percussion instruments are not limited to a drum kit. In fact, they can be anything that is hit, shaken, and scraped.
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2 Discovering percussion in-struments in the orchestra and the marching band
Examples of the wide variety of percussion instruments are demonstrated by an orchestra and a marching band.
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3 Adding sound effects to Young Quaver’s cooking video
Percussion can be used for sounds effects as well as providing rhythm and texture in music.
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4 A professional percussion-ist shows off
There are hundreds of unusual percussion instruments. Percussion players use many different hand techniques to play their instruments.
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5 Song: Hit, Shaken, and Scraped
This song reinforces the three main ways percussion in-struments are played.
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MUSIC STANDARDS IN LESSON
2: Playing instruments*3: Improvising melodies4: Composing and arranging music6: Listening to, analyzing, and describing music8: Understanding the relationship between music and the other arts
Complete details at QuaverMusic.com
Music StandardWhat they teach
1-2 • QuaverMusic.com
Give each student a sheet of paper, and announce that it can be made into an instrument.
Have them follow your example as you hold a sheet up between two fingers on each hand and shake it gently. This will create a small sound of wind. Then have them set the paper aside and clap a simple rhythm of your choice.
Ask them to pick up the paper and keeping the same rhythm, make small rips as you conduct them.
Ask them to scrunch and re-scrunch their paper into a ball in rhythm so they create a Scrunchy Rhythm Orchestra.
Note: Mention to students that percussion instruments can be made of anything, even paper. Percussion instruments add texture, (layers of sound), timbre (tone color), and rhythm to music. They also can produce wide variety of sound effects.
2LESSON INTRO Introducing the episode
Unit 2 Instruments & Ensembles
Key Scenes
* concepts included in the Teacher Guide, but not in the DVD
Body PercussionPurpose: How anything (even our bodies) can become a percussion instrument
Encourage students to find sounds by tapping various parts of their bodies. Standing in a circle, set up a rhythmic pattern using these sounds. For exam-ple, the order could be slap knees, clap hands, snap fingers twice, or some-thing similar. Repeat this pattern until the rhythm is smoothly produced by all.
Body Percussion ImprovisationPurpose: Improvising and working as a percussion team
Ask students to stand in a circle. Teach everyone a basic clap, clap, snap, snap pattern as the default rhythm. Make up new rhythms for them to copy after every clap, clap, snap, snap. Example: pop cheek, clap, jump in, jump out, then back to clap, clap, snap, snap. After they are confident with the new pattern or rhythm, allow each student to improvise a 4-beat rhythm that the group repeats.
Room PercussionPurpose: Listening and working as a team
Allow students to find sources of sound around the room, either objects or instruments. Each student needs at least three items that they can play in succession. Have students bring their sound objects to the circle and demonstrate why they chose them.Note: Encourage quiet sounds to prevent cacophony.
Now, give them time to find an ostinato (repeated pattern) that they particularly like. Choose one student to play his or her ostinato rhythm. When it has been repeated enough times to be fixed in everyone’s mind, point to the next person who then adds his or her own rhythm on top of the first. Continue adding students until all are playing their rhythms.
• Name three percussion instruments played in the orchestra. timpani, bass drum, snare drum, gong, marimba• What are the three action words that describe the way we play percussion? hit, shake, and scrape• What can be made into a percussion instrument? anything• Why might percussion instruments be useful in movies? to provide sound effects
Discussion Points
4MaterialsNeeded- Colored pencils
3PLAY EPISODE
The Percussion Family
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CLASS ACTIVITIES
VIDEO REPLAY Sound EffectsPurpose: The use of percussion as sound effectsWatch the segment of the episode where percussion is added to Young Quaver’s cooking video. Come up with a small series of events in your room to which students can add sound effects. For example, it could be coming in, shutting the door, tripping over the trash can, sitting down, and sighing. See how percussion can add life to this everyday, normal scene. Invite students to brainstorm other scenes.
Show a chase scene from a movie with no sound. Have students create sound effects with found sounds, and/or traditional percussion.
Metro / Style VenuesStudents can take the Metro to the Latin venue where they can read all about the amazing assortment of percussion instruments used in Latin music.
QBackBeatUsing QBackBeat, students can create their own drum set grooves by dragging and dropping individual drum sounds onto the time line. Students can also ex-port drum set beats into their producer window to join with QGrooves and QComposer.
Percussion GridsPurpose: Basic concepts of composing and reading a full scoreGroup students into fours. With the worksheet provided, have them create a “score” by add-ing colored dots to each line of their grid to show when their instruments are to play. Keeping a steady beat, have students follow their own line on the percussion grid as they play their piece together. Once this is mastered, ask each group to perform its percussion piece for the others. Expand the grid to eight boxes across after students are successful with four boxes.Note: Before putting the percussion grid parts together, ensure students are comfortable with their individual parts.
PRINTWORKSHEET
PRINTWORKSHEET
PRINTWORKSHEET
Worksheet # 1
5WEB ACTIVITIES
1-4 • QuaverMusic.com
IWB 2
IWB 1
Play activities on your INTERACTIVE White Board
IWB
Unit 2 Instruments & Ensembles
My Instrument FilePurpose: To identify various percussion instruments At the end of the lesson, distribute copies of this worksheet and ask students to fill in the blanks to test their knowledge of the percussion family. When completed, this worksheet should be included with the worksheets of the other instrument families.
Make a ShakerPurpose: Making a simple percussion instrumentUsing the worksheet provided, students can make a shaker at home that they can decorate and bring back to the next session. Working together, they can create a percussion band.
7ASSESSMENT
Listening to PercussionUsing the tracks provided, listen for different types of percussion instruments. Ask students to identify the specific instrument used whether they are hit, shaken, or scraped.
Track 1 Conga Pop - congasTrack 2 Drummers Delight - drumsTrack 3 Big Gong - gongTrack 4 Xylophone - xylophoneTrack 5 Holst’s The Planets Suite No.5 (Saturn) - cymbals, timpani, and bass drum
6HOMEWORK
PRINTWORKSHEET
PRINTWORKSHEET
PRINTWORKSHEET
Worksheet # 2
Worksheet # 3
Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5
Using percussion is a great opportunity to reinforce dynamics. Use musical terminology: piano, pianissimo, forte, and fortissimo instead of quiet, really quiet, loud, and really loud.
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Additional session activities
The Percussion Family
MaterialsNeeded- 1” PVC pipe- Saw- String- Nails- A mallet or hammer- Length of wooden dowel- Two rubber washers - 4 lengths of wood, 2 short and 2 long
HistoryPercussion instruments are the oldest instruments known to man. (See Section 5 Web Activities) Percussion has been used throughout history to communicate, to warn of attack, or organize movement of soldiers, and to sound impending doom or signal celebrations.
Challenge students to come up with rhythm signals for these directions: step left, step right, and stop. For ex-ample, step left might be clap, clap, snap. See if these directions work by getting students to communicate using percussion signals.
Discuss why percussion instruments were used. What other options were available?
Social StudiesIdentify the country of origin for various kinds of percussion instruments. Discuss with students why these in-struments came from those areas (availability of materials). Example: djembe, from Ghana made with wood from fig trees and goat skins.
Find the countries on a map and place a picture of the instrument.
Language ArtsIn 1961 Erich Moritz von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs devised a system of organizing instruments into groups depending on how they were played. They came up with four groups.
Idiophones - Instruments where the body of the instrument vibrates, such as a xylo-phone or cymbal.Membranophones - Instruments that have a skin or membrane, such as the drum.Chordophones - Instruments that have strings.Aerophones - Instruments that require air to make a sound.
Use the worksheet Percussion Grids to place the instruments from the instrument bank in the correct columns. Note: there may be some non-percussion instruments included.
9DIGGING DEEPER
Build Your Own Xylophone Purpose: Making a tuned percussion instrumentFor a great hands-on learning experience, involve your students in building this simplified version of a xylophone. Although rudimen-tary, it accurately depicts the same principles and sound dynamics of the actual instrument.
