Bravo! It appears you earned an award! (See transcript here). You may prepare your awards presentation independently or collaboratively (with other people). Your final presentation should include (at minimum) a recording of your melody (you can present the Noteflight playback) and a short personal speech-ette describing which commission you accepted and what about your melody you feel represents the situation described in your accepted commission. To guide your preparation, download, print, and complete this Final Project Presentation worksheet. Well done! This Project Is Complete.
This portion of the process involves friendly, helpful, considerate peer review. If participating with a class, you will be assigned a peer review partner. If you are completing this as an independent study, enlist the help of someone whose opinions you trust. Ensure each partner has access to the melodic compositions at Noteflight.com, and download and print the Peer Review and Project Refinement worksheet found here. Spend some time enjoying each other's melodies. Listen several times, exploring how the composer used resources available at Noteflight to help create a melody suitable for the accepted (play-pretend!) commission. A thoughtful review process involving multiple hearings of the composition and reflective completion of the peer review portion of the worksheet should take close to the equivalent of one class period. Once the peer review portion of the Peer Review and Project Refinement worksheet has been completed, return it to the composer. As composer, ponder with an open mind both the compliments and suggestions shared by your peer review partner. Complete the Composer portion of the worksheet detailing what changes you might make to your composition, and why you will make them. If you choose to make no changes, share the reasons informing that choice, as well. This is your composition. Any choice, thoughtfully and articulately considered, is correct. Make the changes to your melody (or not!), and get ready to present in Task 8!
Let's create a melody! As you create your melody, consider and complete the questions on this worksheet helping you explore Generating Melody for Purpose or Context (you will need to download and print it). Your completed melody should be at least 12-16 measures long. Notate the melody at Noteflight.com. You may use whatever instruments and effects are available through Noteflight. Feel free to explore! This is the capstone project for this unit, so dig in and work with it until you are happy with how it represents your understanding and creativity. Well, sort of happy, anyway. Composers frequently are not pleased with their work until well after the fact. This, if well done, should take the equivalent of two to three class sessions. Task 7 will involve peer review of each other's melodies. Let me know here when you think yours is ready!
As you experience Task 5, you will discover and explore the use of repetition and contrast in creating melody. Listeners crave both unity and variety in the music they hear-you have probably experienced this yourself. You might enjoy a song with a catchy chorus (or hook), but if that's all there is to the song, over and over and over and over, you may tire of it quickly. On the other hand, if a song has no melodic repetition at all, it is sometimes difficult to follow. We as listeners like to be able both to predict what we will hear and be surprised by new material. What is the exact balance? No One Knows. Well, actually, research has been done exploring this topic. You can Google it. When beginning as composers, it is helpful to decide on a structure within which you will stay in creating your melody. What do I mean by structure? Well, neighbor, join my friends and I for lunch (video embedded below), and let's see what we can discover....
How did you feel about the prospect of a sandwich made only of bread? Would you have preferred the sandwich with meat and cheese? How about the Dagwood sandwich? You may even like different sandwiches at different times. It is much the same with melody. Use the WheelDecide embedded below to practice your understanding of form. You may use sandwich materials, colored crayons, pets, or anything else you have around your current habitat that can be used to represent Same and Different. You will need at least three Sames, and at least three Differents. If you don't want to get up, or you are stuck in the parking lot of your sibling's dance class, you may use a pencil and draw shapes. But find a way to experience this exercise kinetically. Oh! Do jumping jacks for A, burpees for B, crawl for C, and duck for D. If you need an idea. Spin the wheel, and create the given form! Repeat this several times, and complete this to tell me how you represented each of the given sections.
Let's check for understanding. Using an internet connected mobile device or computer, join in this Kahoot game. Listen to the entire clip (except the Storm Trooper and Mountain King, you only have to give those about a minute) and see how you do identifying the proper form. If you can't get the Kahoot game to work (and I would love it if you would do this regardless), go to the Padlet on the Community page and add a link to one of the songs you are currently enjoying. As you post your link, comment on what you think the form of the song probably is. Look on the Padlet for the example I posted.
You're ready to create a melody! Go to your account at Noteflight.com and create a 2-measure ditty to serve as the "A" section for your melody. For purposes of this activity, try to avoid melodic leaps (keep the notes relatively close together on the y-axis, up and down on the staff). Your melody will feel more self-contained if you begin and end on the same note. You don't have to like it, it doesn't need to be brilliant. You're just trying to get started. Unless you are still struggling with Noteflight itself, throwing this little ditty together should only take about 5 or 6 minutes. Go! Title it "A", and complete this form to let me know you've done it.
Excellent! Now let's make the melody longer. Download and print this Form In Music worksheet to use as a guide in designing the structure you would like for your melody to follow. Using Noteflight.com, follow the structure you designed and create your melody. Create at least 8 measures. For now, use the form you have chosen as the Title (AABA for instance). If you like, you may change the title to something less mundane later. Remember, with this exercise you are simply demonstrating your understanding of basic forms in music. You can show your inner Stravinsky later. Let me know here when you finish your composition.
This task will end with your having polished your skills by notating some familiar melodies at Noteflight.com. You will discover the relationship between where on the staff notes are placed and the pitch at which they sound, as well as becoming increasingly adept at digital notation. Let's go! Using either a mobile device or a computer, join and play the Kahoot game linked below. Notice as you play that as the notes are written higher on the staff, the you hear higher pitches. As the pitches are notated toward the bottom of the staff, the pitches sound lower. Higher sounds higher, lower sounds lower. Notes written in close proximity (up and down, y-axis if that helps) will sound closer in pitch, notes written with a wider gap (more lines and spaces between them) will sound as if they are leaping from pitch to pitch. Here is the game! Once you have rocked the Kahoot game and discovered the relationship between the location of the notes on the staff and the way the sound (pitch), notate at least two of the following melodies at Noteflight.com. You don't have to guess at the melodies, notate them exactly as they are written on the page. Your goal here is to become more familiar with the mechanics of notation at Notation.com without the distraction of creating your own melody. Creating your own melody will be more fun, but this will be a helpful step to accomplish. Click here to download and print" Frere Jacques", here to download and print "Jingle Bells", and here to download and print "Mary Had a Little Lamb", or just follow along as they are attached below. Complete the form linked below the melodies to let me know once you have completed them. Let me know here that you have completed Task 4. Well done! Move on to Task 5.
You're doing wonderfully! You have your account created and ready to go-now let's notate some music! If it's been awhile (or, ever) since you dealt with music notation, it might be worth your while to enjoy this cute five minute video from TedEd. Not required, but possibly helpful.
This task has several steps, and each can be quickly accomplished! I would suggest you accomplish each step as you watch the video. I'd like you to track your project by completing the short form following each step of the task. Six short steps. By the end you will have notated "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". Dive in, and have fun! Step 1: Creating and Saving a Score
How was it? Let me know here.
Step 3: Removing a staff (you need it for this because the default is a grand staff, we are only creating a melody so need only one staff).
Keep on going! I'll have you check back in toward the end.
Step 4: Notating the Staff
Hopefully that was kind of fun! You may have discovered you can have the melody played at different speeds and by different instruments. Lots of room for ideas!
Step 5: Adding measures in Noteflight
Way to go! Let me know here if this is getting confusing or you are overwhelmed.
Step 6: Notating all of "Twinkle"
Way to go! You did it! Complete this form (it will ask for your user name and password, which BTW should be saints) so I can log in and see your brilliance. Nicely done!!! You are now an arranger!!! Move on to Task 4.
The next step is to activate your Noteflight account. You will need to know how to access email at the address you used to set up your account. Have that handy, as well as what you would like to use as your user name, and follow the steps explained in the following video explanation. As you view the video, listen for these helpful hints:
(transcript of the video may be found here.)
Bravo! You have now created and authenticated your own account at Noteflight.com. Complete this form to let me know your user name and the email associated with your account.
To complete Task 2A, you will (wait for it...) be creating an account at Noteflight.com. As you view the (just over a minute long) video, try to catch the following useful information:
(transcript of the video may be found here).
If the embedded video isn't playing, try this link.
Well done! Proceed to Task 2B! You will be creating and notating a melody as if commissioned by a popular songwriter, a teacher seeking study resources, or an art gallery coordinator. You will notate and publish the melody using Noteflight.com. Use the linked Experiencing Music exploration guide to generate potential project ideas. You may share your exploration by completing the linked Experiencing Music form or by creating an audio or visual presentation (here's a sample) demonstrating your exploration of the Experiencing Music questions. Once you have completed and submitted Experiencing Music, use this form to indicate which (um, make-believe) commission offer you will be accepting.
Dear Brilliant Composer,
The firm of We Love Music and Friends wishes to commission a composition for (the famous artist LaDelle/Dr.TeachesGreat, instructor at EducationRocks/the CoolPeople art gallery), whose interests our firm represents. The piece may be written for any voice or instrumentation, with a melody suitable for the anticipated style of the event. The standard compensation fee will be offered, and as is usual, you as composer will retain ownership of the piece. To ensure adherence to the required project specifications, please proceed through the tasks as listed above. Thank you for your time. We eagerly anticipate hearing your creation. Sincerely, Friend Number One We Love Music and Friends |