Lesson video

Hi everyone, it's Miss.

Kilpatrick again.

We're here for lesson four in our musical devices workshops, and today's lesson is all about introducing drones.

Hello, everyone it's time for our hello song.

♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ It's good to see you today ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ Hello everyone ♪ ♪ It's good to see you today ♪ Hi everyone, so our warm-up activity today is called, don't clap this one back.

So what's going to happen is I'm going to clap some patterns and what you need to do is listen really carefully and repeat the pattern after me.

But, if I clap the pattern, don't clap this one back, don't clap it.

Okay? Let's do a test run just to see.

Here we go.

Did you clap it? Well done if you didn't, don't clap this one back.

Think in your head, that's the pattern we're looking out for, that's the one we don't clap at all.

Okay, now we've got it, here we go.

Happy listening.

Did you clap it? Well done if you didn't.

Okay, it's going to get a little bit more tricky now.

I'm going to add in some extra actions to see if you can do the same, and I might not only pull up the pattern, I might tap it on my knees, I might click it, so really use your listening ears and see if you can hear that really important pattern, don't clap this one back.

Here we go.

One, two, three, four.

Did you clap it? Well done if you didn't, that was a tricky one.

One more time, here we go.

One, two, three, four.

That was at the end.

Well done if you got all of those right.

Let's get on with our lesson today.

So, as usual in our lesson today, we're going to start by reviewing all the things we've done so far in lessons one, two, and three.

Then, we're going to be rehearsing something different, and lastly, we're going to perform what we've rehearsed.

So, here are our key words for today and the things we're going to be thinking about as we go through our lesson.

We've got something new today, we're introducing the word drone.

And for music, a drone is a continuous, sustained musical sound.

We'll talk a bit more about that in a moment.

The other thing we're going to be thinking about, the pentatonic scale remember is that scale of five musical notes.

Melody, we've talked about a lot, another way for the tune and accompaniment, that's all of the musical devices that we're looking at.

The music that plays underneath the main melody.

So what are we learning about today? We've got rhythmic, vocal and instrumental ostinato.

We know that we can use body percussion to make a rhythmical sound, a rhythmical repeating pattern.

We used melodic instruments to make a melodic, repeating pattern, and we've used our voices to make another, a different type of ostinato.

So all of those ostinati, repeating patterns, the ground bass that we did in lesson two, we've learned all of those three things.

Today, as I said, we're going to be thinking about musical drone.

And this is an example of an instrument that has a drone built in.

I'm going to play you the sound of this instrument.

Does anybody know what the instrument is called? Has anyone seen it before? Did you get it? They're bagpipes.

And they have one of the pipes in the bag is the drone.

I'm going to play an example for you now.

And it will become clearer as we talk a bit more about it which part of that music was the drone.

There's some notation of a drone, which might also give you a clue as to what a musical drone is.

And so today, we're also going to be going on to perform our own drone.

And as you can see, it is going to be a vocal drone.

So, here we go.

What is a drone? You might be thinking of one of these, but not in music.

That's not what a drone is.

A musical drone is, as we said in our keywords, a continuous sustained sound.

So one example of a vocal drone that we're thinking about today, could be a hum.

Would be a hummed drone.

Notice that I wasn't changing the pitch of my voice.

I kept the pitch of my voice the same the whole way through.

That's what the drone is, that sustained sound, a continuous one note sound.

So when we listen to the bagpipes, and you might want to go back now that you know a bit more, go back and listen to that bagpipe tune again and you'll hear that sustained sound, running underneath the melody that they play.

Another example might be a buzzing sound.

I'm not changing the pitch of my voice, I'm keeping everything on one note and that's what makes it a drone.

One other example could be an ooh Staying on that same pitch all the way through.

Can you think of any sounds of your own that you could make as a drone? Have a go now and see if you can find a sustained sound that you can make with your voice that doesn't change in pitch that would make a drone.

Well done.

So, our rehearsal today is a new song, The animal Fair.

You may have heard this song before, you may know it, we're going to have a go at singing it through.

So, just in case you don't know the song I'll teach it line by line, so we start here.

♪ I went to the animal fair ♪ ♪ The birds and the beasts were there ♪ ♪ The big baboon by the light of the moon ♪ ♪ Was combing his auburn hair ♪ ♪ The monkey fell out out of his bunk ♪ ♪ And slid down the elephant's trunk wheee ♪ ♪ The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees ♪ ♪ And what became of the monkey monkey monkey monkey ♪ Your turn.

Should we try singing it all together? Here we go.

♪ I went to the animal fair ♪ ♪ The birds and the beasts were there ♪ ♪ The big baboon by the light of the moon ♪ ♪ Was combing his auburn hair ♪ ♪ The monkey fell out out of his bunk ♪ ♪ And slid down the elephant's trunk ♪ ♪ The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees ♪ ♪ And what became of the monkey, monkey, ♪ ♪ Monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ So, you might be thinking, but Miss.

Kilpatrick, there's no drone in that song.

Well, if you've sang this song before, you may already know at the end of the verse, one part can carry on singing the word monkey on the same pitch, while another section of the choir or the people singing, go on and sing the verse for a second time.

So the verse is accompanied by the vocal drone on the word monkey and that same pitch.

♪ Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey, ♪ ♪ Monkey, monkey monkey ♪ All the way through.

So that's what we're now going to practise.

We're going to sing the very last line from the elephant sneezed, and when we get to the monkey, we're going to carry on with that drone for a few bars to see if can carry on singing the same pitch to that same word.

So, the elephants sneezed, off, we go ♪ The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees ♪ ♪ And what became of the monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ ♪ Monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ ♪ Monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ ♪ Monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ ♪ Monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ Hard to keep it going on your own, isn't it? Going to take a really deep breath.

So keep that monkey going.

What we're going to do next, is we're going to sing through the verse all together, one more time.

When we get to the end, I would like you to perform the vocal drone as an accompaniment to me while I carry on singing the verse again.

So you'll carry on with the word monkey, I'll sing the verse again.

♪ Off we go I went to the animal fair ♪ ♪ The birds and the beasts were there ♪ ♪ The big baboon by the light of the moon ♪ ♪ Was combing his auburn hair ♪ ♪ The monkey fell out out of his bunk ♪ ♪ And slid down the elephant's trunk wheee ♪ ♪ The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees ♪ ♪ And what became of the monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ ♪ I went to the animal fair ♪ ♪ The birds and the beasts were there ♪ ♪ The big baboon by the light of the moon ♪ ♪ Was combing his auburn hair ♪ ♪ The monkey fell out out of his bunk ♪ ♪ And slid down the elephant's trunk wheee ♪ ♪ The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees ♪ ♪ And what became of the monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey ♪ How did you get on? Were you still singing the same pitch for the word monkey all the way through? Well done if you were.

Why don't you have a go at doing it with somebody in your house? See if they can sing the song while you take the drone part, and maybe you can swap over.

Now you've practised the animal fair song, your task is to find a simple song that you know and can you find one word or phrase from that song that you can use to accompany as a vocal drone over the top? Find somebody in your house and see if you can perform it with them.

Pause the video now and have a go.

Welcome back.

So, today we've learned about another musical device, which means over our four lessons, we've got two different musical devices we can now use to accompany music that we make.

One of them is the continuous, sustained musical sound.

The other one is a repeating pattern of notes or sounds.

Can you remember what they are called? What was the continuous, sustained musical sound? That's what we were doing today.

Can you remember what it was called? A drone.

Well done if you got that right.

What was the repeating pattern of notes? It was an ostinato.

Well done if you've got that one.

So we've now learned about two different musical devices, a drone and an ostinato.

That's going to become really important over the next couple of lessons.

It's time to sing our goodbye song.

♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ It was good to see today ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye everyone ♪ ♪ It was good to see today ♪ So, that's it.

All that's left for me to say, is that really big well done for all the learning you've done today on ostinatos and drones.

If you can, ask a parent or carer to share your work with your teacher so they can see some of the fantastic music you've done this week.

You could also ask a parent or carer to share your work with us on Twitter at Oak National, using the hashtag learn with oak.

That way, I can see your wonderful work too.

That's all for today, bye everyone.