Exploring other musical concepts

Heigh-di’, we emphasize the slowness and the heaviness of a large elephant. This is an excellent opportunity to direct children’s attention to the slow TEMPO and the large loud heavy steps. Listen to the audio recording of the song. Tap the slow beat and sing along.

Sometimes there is an outstanding RHYTHM pattern in a song that just begs to be clapped or it’s built into the song as in Let everyone clap hands. Listen to the audio-recording and join in the clapping patterns which occur at the end of each phrase.

There is also a built-in rhythm pattern in the song ‘I’m a peanut’. Listen to the audio recording and clap the patterns at the end of the song.

Rhythm patterns can be short and simple, short and complicated, long and simple and long and complicated. Following is an example of an outstanding rhythm pattern in a song. Listen to the audio recording and clap the RHYTHM patterns. Sing along.

We have used the song ‘One, two, three, four, five’ a number of times now. If you will recall, there are two outstanding RHYTHM patterns in this song. They are:

one, two, three, four, five (and)

six, se–ven, eight, nine, ten

Let’s clap out these two rhythm patterns one more time. Listen to the audio recording. Sing and clap the patterns when they occur in the song. Let’s sing the song again but this time, during the second verse we also clap the rhythm of the words ‘on my right’.

In the song ‘Are you sleeping?’ the words ‘ding, dang, dong’ also form a striking pattern. We emphasized this when we added actions to the song earlier. ‘Ding, ding, dong’ was a feature. Listen to the audio as you sing along. Tap the ‘ding, dang, dong’ on the table.

Activity 19

Think about some of the songs you have been learning, the music you have been listening to and the instruments you have been exploring. How might you use some of these to explore the concept of PITCH with children?

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Form and phrasing

Developing concepts of phrase