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Hi, everybody.
It's time for another music lesson with me, Miss Kilpatrick.
Let's get on.
In the lesson today, you will need paper and pencil, some household percussion, and some headphones if you have them.
If you don't have headphones, find a quiet place where you can work undisturbed and make sure you've turned off any apps or conversations that are running at the moment.
You can pause the video now if you need to find any of those things.
In today's lesson, we're going to start, as we always do, with a warm-up.
And today it's a counting circle.
Then, we're going to have an introduction to the gamelan and we'll find out more about that as we go through the lesson today.
We're going to learn a gamelan polyrhythm and if you've seen any of the rhythm lessons from other units, you might already know what a polyrhythm is.
Otherwise, we'll discuss that as we go through.
And you're going to be composing your own polyrhythm today.
Our warm-up today is a counting circle.
What I'd like you to do is stand up where you are and just get the pulse into your body through your feet.
So we're just going to count to eight together and move our feet in time to that pulse.
I'll do the first eight and then you can join in once you've got the pulse.
Here we go.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One more, one, two, three, four five, six, seven, eight.
Good, right.
Keep the pulse in your body.
This time we're going to count through This time we're going to count through but we're only going to say the number one.
Let's see if we can keep that count in our head and our body with just that number one giving us the ground where our pulse begins.
Off we go.
One.
One.
One.
One.
And one.
And stop.
Good, well done.
We're going to try this a little bit faster.
So we're going to do all our full count a little bit faster and then see where we get.
So, one, two, off we go.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, last time.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, last time.
And, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.
And, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight.
This time, we're going to say the number one.
And we're going to clap on the number five.
Let's see if you can get it in time.
Here we go.
One.
One.
One.
One.
Could you add a foot stamp on the number eight? Here we go.
One.
One.
One.
One.
How did you get on that time? That's our warm-up for today.
Let's see what we're going to learn about gamelan.
On the worksheet that's provided, all of this information is written down for you.
So you can play a game called the gamelan information marketplace.
The instructions are on your worksheet but if you don't have access to the worksheet, then here's some information that you can have a look at.
So, gamelan comes from Indonesia and you can see it's made up of more than 17,000 islands.
The largest islands are Java and some of the smaller ones include Bali.
And they are two different styles of gamelan: Javan gamelan and Balinese gamelan.
270 million people live in Indonesia and most live on Java and Bali.
Arts and culture is really important in Indonesia.
Music, drama, dance and visual arts are all really important parts of Indonesian culture and they mark really important events, such as birth, marriage and death.
And gamelan features quite a lot in those occasions.
The picture in the corner shows some gamelan players.
Gamelan is a type of music that everyone takes part in.
Little children learn by coming to rehearsals.
The music is memorised, so all the instrumentalists have to learn it by heart and they pass it down from generation to generation without it ever being written down.
How amazing is it that? The pieces are made up of fixed repeating patterns and the instrumentalist has to learn all of those.
These patterns are layered over each other, creating really unusual textures.
The ostinati are repeated in cycles that end with the sound of a gong.
The music is based on special scales called the Slendro and the Pelog.
And we'll learn more about those later on.
Here are some examples of instruments of the gamelan.
Instruments in the gamelan are named for the sound that they make.
For example, the picture in the corner, the Kempul , they make the sound pul.
And that's what they're named for, Kempul.
The Kenong are also gongs, although they're not hanging, they sit on special cushions and they make a nong sound.
In the corner, you can see the Kendang and you can hear the sound dang when you play the drum.
And then we have the Ceng Ceng and that's definitely the cymbal sound.
These onomatopoeic sounds of the instruments.
And lastly, the Saron is one of the metallophones.
There are a huge number of other instruments in the gamelan but these are some of the instruments that we are going to be thinking about in our lesson today.
If you don't have access to the worksheet, then this page would be really useful to copy down onto your paper because this is what you'll need to record the information that we've just talked about.
You can pause the video now to copy down this table if you need to.
Pause the video now to complete the information marketplace game.
On your worksheet, you'll find instructions for how to play the game at home with your family or on your own.
If you don't have access to the worksheet, then you should have already copied down the table.
And here's how to play.
Give yourself a timer of 10 minutes.
Rewind the video to the first information page.
Remember as much as you can of the information on each of the pages.
Once you've done that, turn the video off, and see how much you can remember until the 10 minutes is up.
We're going to be having a look at polyrhythms next.
That means different rhythms layered on top of each other.
Just like the gamelan rhythms and ostinati are layered on top of each other to give different textures.
And here's where you're going to need your household percussion.
I'm not expecting you to have any of the instruments from a gamelan.
I don't have any in my house.
So.
here's what I've got.
For my cymbal, I've got a metal saucepan lid.
For my shaker, I've got a jar of rice.
For my woodblock, I've got a wooden spoon and a porridge stirrer.
For my güiro, I'm using a cheese grater and for my tambour or my Kendang, I'm using a tub.
I think this one used to have peppers in it.
If you need to pause the video now to collect any of those things, and you can pick one or try and learn with all of them, then you can do that.
If you don't have access to any of these things, that's absolutely fine.
You can always do them by clapping, by tapping your knees.
It's just about learning the rhythm.
And here are those rhythms, So you can see the woodblock, the güiro, the shaker, the cymbal and the tambour all there.
The five instruments that we're going to be using.
We're going to start by getting the pulse, the heartbeat of the music, into our bodies as we did with our warm-up.
Ready, steady, off we go.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four, last time.
One, two, three, four.
When you have a look down the grid score, point to the instrument you think is playing the pulse, that heartbeat of the music.
Can you see which one it is? It's the shaker.
So if you have a shaker, let's practise it now.
If you don't have a shaker, don't worry.
You can always continue with the heartbeat that we were doing before or you can tap your knee, whatever you like.
Here we go.
Ready, steady, off we go.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, last time.
One, two, three, four.
Next, I'm going to look at the woodblock.
So for the woodblock, we have a tap on beat one, beat two, miss beat three is a rest, and beat four.
So it's going to sound like this.
Ready, steady, off we go.
One, two, rest, four.
One, two, rest, four.
One, two, rest, four.
One, two, rest, four.
And so to remind yourself for when you have to play the rest, you can always say the word rest or pull your sticks apart.
you can always say the word rest or pull your sticks apart.
Or if you're clapping, your hands apart.
One, two, rest, four.
Let's give that woodblock a go again.
Ready, steady, off we go.
One, two, four.
One, two, four.
Now we're going to try the güiro rhythm and you'll notice the güiro is on beats one and three.
So when we're doing two and four, we can just pull the beater away from our güiro or pull our hands apart, however you're going to be performing this.
Ready, steady, off we go.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
One, rest, three, rest.
One, rest, three, rest.
One, rest, three, rest.
Last time and stop.
Let's move on to the cymbal.
We've already done the shaker and tell me what you notice about the two rhythms: güiro and cymbal.
Have a look carefully at their beats.
You should notice the güiro is on beats one and three, the stronger beats, and the cymbal is on beats two and four.
A real interlocking pattern where the cymbal fills the gaps that the güiro leaves on those softer beats.
So, here is our cymbal.
Let's give it a go.
So this is beats two and four.
Ready, steady, off we go.
One, two, three, four.
One, two, three, four.
Rest, two, rest, four.
Rest, two, rest, four.
One, two, three, four.
Last time.
Three and four.
Good, well done.
Now we come to the last rhythm, the tambour.
And for this one, it's a syncopated rhythm.
That means the rhythm is not on the strong beats of the pulse.
So if we have a look, the first beat for the tambour is on beat one.
The second beat is in the beat two box but it's under the and.
So it's going to be one, two, and.
Let's just practise that little part.
Ready, steady, off we go.
One, two, and.
Do it again.
One, two, and.
It's helpful to count out loud.
One, two, and.
Here we go.
One, two, and.
And again.
One, two, and.
One, two, and.
Lets add the last bit.
One, two, and, three, four.
The final beat is on beat four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
Last time.
One, two, and, three, four.
Well done if you sped up with me that time.
So, we can grab our tambour, and give it a go.
If you want to carry on clapping, that's absolutely fine.
One, two, off we go.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
One, two, and, three, four.
Last time.
And.
If you need to go back and learn any of those rhythms again, pause the video, rewind, go back through to be really confident with all of those rhythms. Because now, what we're going to do, is play them all together.
So, pick the rhythm that you would like to play and follow one of those in the next part of the video.
You could always go back, play it as many times as you need to, so that you can play all five rhythms, one after the other.
Let's go.
One, two, three, four.
Ready to stop.
Well done.
That's really good.
And again, if you need to go back and watch the video a few times to play all the rhythms, fantastic.
Your challenge is to add a rhythm to that set of five polyrhythms. You can choose to do a vocal rhythm, you can choose to do a body percussion rhythm, you can choose another piece of homemade percussion.
See if you could add a new rhythmic pattern to that already quite complex texture, just like you would in the gamelan.
We've come to the end of today's lesson, so all that's left for me to say is a huge well done if you learned all those rhythms and were able to play along with me today.
If you're able to, ask a parent or carer, to share your work @OakNational, #LearnwithOak on Twitter and then I can see some of the fantastic rhythmic work you're doing.
I'm really looking forward to seeing you in another lesson.
Bye, everybody.
