Title: LET'S GO ON A JOURNEY (5): Finding ways of writing your sounds down
Activity: This is an exploration into notation which involves using appropriate ways of musically describing some of the sounds, rhythms and songs used in the above activities.
Resources:
Pen and paper
Computer graphics program
Computer notation program
What to do: Having written a story or song there
are a number of ways of 're-cording' the composition.
The pupils will already have words and descriptions of the stories and songs. There are a
number of additional ways of 'recording' the music. If they have used Compose then the
song can be written in terms of the pictures from Compose, but this will not indicate very
much about the musical content of the phrases.
If there are pupils in the class who are familiar with notation then they might like to
attempt to notate the phrases using traditional music notation. A computer program like
Notate may help to enable them to try out the notes to gel the right ones. It is easier to
listen to the way the notes sound and to make changes on a computer program like this than
on paper.
Other notational forms can be explored. Let the pupils invent ones of their own.
In addition, some way of notating the accompaniment needs to be found. This could be:
| A picture of a muddy puddle for the squelching sound | |
| a large wavy line for slow movement | |
| a small jagged line for fast movement | |
A computer graphics program or a collection of clip art might be useful to help with the
notation task.