Unit: Experimenting with sound

Part A: Producing sounds

Lesson outcomes

Revise the definitions of sound and noise and the four properties of sound.
Check and discuss homework research into the speed of sound and light. Light travels at 300000 km/s, sound travels at 0.340 km/s (340 metres/sec) through air but is much faster through water, wood or metal.

Producing a sound

How was the double bass string made to vibrate? Introduce the term plucking.
How did we make the percussion instruments vibrate? Hitting, shaking or scraping.

Explain that scraping and shaking are different ways of making objects hit against each other, and the word percussion comes from a Latin word meaning to hit (related to concussion).

What are the other ways to make objects vibrate?
Explain that there are five ways of making objects vibrate to make a sound. These ways will be identified as students listen to the household sounds tape.

Distribute Student handout 3: Methods of vibration. Play a tape of household sounds and ask students to complete the first two columns of the table on the handout.
Identify instruments that depend on each method of vibration, then complete the third column of the table on the handout.

Introducing structure

Ask students to use one of the first four methods of vibration to make an interesting sound using the materials or equipment on their desk, for example scraping a ruler across a pencil case zip, blowing a sheet of paper, and then make the sound into an interesting rhythm.

Conduct a performance of these sounds by pointing to students to play their sounds, sometimes solo, sometimes with other sounds. Create a pattern with their sounds, perhaps bringing back one particular sound as a ritornello or have one sound as an ostinato.
Create a number of different patterns: binary, ternary or rondo, and discuss each form. Discuss the use of repetition in creating musical structure.

Introduce the musical terms for these patterns. Ask for volunteers to conduct their own versions of these different forms.

Form groups of three or four students. Using the previous class performance as a model, have each group create a one-minute soundscape using their found sounds. Incorporate some type of repeated idea in the soundscape. Groups perform their composition for the class.

Alternatively, the task could be made more specific by giving each group a particular form to use for their piece.

Distribute Student handout 4: Musical patterns to assist students to visualise the sound patterns and consolidate the concepts of form.

Resources

Student handout 3: Methods of vibration
Student handout 4: Musical patterns
Recording of five household sounds made by hitting, scraping, plucking, blowing and electricity.
Examples can be found on CD 1, which is supplied with Doricott's Listen to the Music.

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