Our final week of World Percussion has come to an end! We have had so much fun exploring different traditional African instruments, playing in percussion ensembles, creating our own percussion instruments, and composing some percussion music, too! The beginning of the week allowed us to be introduced to complimentary drum parts which are parts that start together, end together, and sound good together. Students got to compose and explore complimentary drum parts in small groups and then performed what they had created for the rest of the class. We had fun trying to find out who the "master drummer" in each group was by watching carefully for the non-verbal cut off and cues. Toward the end of the week, we focused on learning one last ensemble which incorporated a high drum, a medium drum, a low drum, an acousti-block, shekeres, a new instrument called a guiro, and this ensemble even featured our bodies as instruments as well! Click here to hear a recording of the ensemble. This ensemble was appropriately entitled "High Life" which is an African term which means to combine many traditional African instruments with modern day instruments. Throughout this unit, we have focused on several world percussion vocabulary terms. Some of these terms have been names of instruments and some have been musical terms that are often used to communicate during a rehearsal. At the beginning of the unit, each student was given a word of the day sheet to keep all of these terms and definitions. We added one word almost every day that we met throughout the unit! In fact, we have a total of 11 words! We wrapped up the week by reviewing for our Word of the Day test which will take place today (Friday). Click here to see our word of the day list! Be sure to check parent portal for your child's grades - they will be up by Monday afternoon at the latest! Check out our finished product of our last challenging 6 part percussion ensemble with syncopated (that's a word of the day ask your student for a definition!) rhythms! |
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Author:6th Grade Exploring Music Class of OMS! Archives
April 2015
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