Secondary Music at Home 23

Enjoy these structured musical activities that we have prepared especially for you to continue your learning at home.

• Jump to your stage of learning:
  Years 7-9 | Years 10-11 | Years 12-13
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Years 7-9:
1. Deep

This week we have a different sort of project based on a piece of modern music by a Japanese composer and inspired by the ‘Blue Planet’ TV programme.

What to do

• Listen | First, listen to the first 3 or 4 minutes of ‘Deep’ by  Shiori Usiu using the player above. Can you recognise how they are making some more unusual sounds than we are used to?
• Watch and Think | Next, watch this clip of Blue Planet with the sound off... think about the instruments that you usually have available to you in your music classroom. What ‘sounds of the deep’ could you create with these to accompany the ‘Blue Planet’ video.

• Composition project | Head over to the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group website and read more about Shiori Usiu and the piece she wrote. You can also download the project pack below

• Be creative | After playing a few of the example sounds on the BCMG website, have a go at recording some watery sounds yourself using a phone or a tablet. If you are up for a music technology challenge you could use Audacity or Garage Band to manipulate your sounds.

Teaching notes

• Project | This can be extended into a composition project when you are all back together in the classroom. Manipulating sounds electronically can be great fun and you don’t need lots of expensive equipment.

Years 7-9:
2. Take That – Makaton Style #2

The final part of Take That's Shine with Makaton signs. Watch part 1 if you missed it, or need a reminder!

What to do

• Watch and follow along | Follow Helen as she teaches you the signs for the verse. Make sure you rewind if you need to and give them another go before moving on.
• I need to slow down!? | Feel free to stop and rewind to repeat a section you need more practice on. The video starts and normal tempo then slows down to learn, but you if you want to slow it down yourself too, you can do this by clicking the gear icon and altering the playback speed.

Keep learning

Continue your musical learning with us with more Music at Home, or find out how you could start learning to play a musical instrument.

Years 10-13:
Contemporary Latin Music

Learning about different styles of music can be a really useful source of inspiration for when you are working on your own arrangements of songs or compositions.

In this presentation below you will hear different styles of Latin inspired dance music. We have also made this available as a PDF if you can't open the .pptx file.

What to do

• Watch and listen | Work your way through the presentation and click on all the underlined links to open musical examples. You could try using the clave 3-2 son rhythm in one of your pieces for example.
• Virtual drumming | The links on the left side of slide 9 take you to a virtual drumming site where you can hear several different latin dance rhythms. 
• Research and present | Then do your own research into a couple of dance styles from this presentation and present a short 5-minute talk to someone at home about it. No more than 45-seconds should be audio though!