March 21 is Harmony Day in Australia, a special day to celebrate our ethnic diversity, a day to remind ourselves that ‘everybody belongs’ and ‘everybody is welcome’. In our school we celebrate Harmony Day by sharing stories, games, music and oranges with the children from all our nearby schools. This set of resources is a
Music
The Saddest Song Ever
Spotify has algorithms for anaylsing and aggregating song content. This BBC article uses the data to find the ‘saddest song’ ever. There’s lots of potential ideas here for integrating maths and music. BBC website: Can data reveal the saddest song ever?
Australian Song Lyrics Analysis
Two questions. Who is Australia’s most erudite lyricist? And how can you embed the General Capabilities in secondary music lessons? Aussie Song Lyric Readability In answer to the first (but no spoliers here, let me tell you) you’ll need to read all the way to the bottom of How complex are Aussie song lyrics? Analysis shows
Tags: Analysis, Australia, Australian Curriculum, General Capabilities, Lyrics, musicMusic Scale Posters featured on TES
My set of free Music Scale Charts was featured on TES, just in time for back-to-school. Each pages features a different key signature, with additional sharps and flats being highlighted and named. Looks great when displayed as the circle of fifths! You can download it at TES or below.
Radik Tyulush
A big shout out to Radik Tyulush, a truly gifted Tuvanese musician who gave me permission to use his photograph in my A-Z Musical Instruments Poster Pack. (I is for Igil!) He learned throat singing and playing the Igil from his grandfather and since graduating from the Kyzyl School of Arts performed in the folk groups “Tyva”, “Yat-
Tags: Radik TyulushA-Z Musical Instruments Poster Pack
I’ve been looking for a set of A-Z musical instrument posters for our music room. But most sets seem to skimp on the difficult instruments (quick- name an instrument beginning with I, N, Q or Y!) and many are just line drawings. So I’ve created my own with all letters represented including I for Igil,
Tags: musical instruments, PostersFree Music Resources
Matthew Hindson, Composer. Deputy Dean at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Curator, Australian Music Program has a number of useful free music resources on his blog. Free Manuscript Paper: Five different styles including a compact 18 stave version. Free Music Fonts: There are 14 different fonts including a recorder fingering font, a guitar strings font,
NASA Audio Files
NASA have greats election of audio files at NASA: Connect > Audi and Ringtones. My Year 7/8 students selected then edited these in Audacity to create loops for a soundscape to accompany the Apollo 11 Moon landing. NASA Videos are available at Apollo 11 HD Videos.
Tags: resources, Soundscape, SpaceRainbow Tone Rows
My Year 6 music class experimented with serialism and tone-rows but using a diatonic scale (A B C D E F G) rather than a chromatic one (ie with all the semitones). I used the phrase ‘Rainbow Tone Row’ to link in with out use of BoomWhackers. Although this does somewhat negate serialsims goal of
Tags: curriculum, music theory, serialism, vocabulary‘Compass Rose’ in Stage Whispers Magazine
‘Compass Rose’ received a promo in the March / April edition of Stage Whispers.
Tags: Compass Rose