Lesson video

Hello and welcome to your music lesson today.

My name is Miss Al-Hanoush and I am super excited to be starting this unit on the pentatonic with you.

The pentatonic scale is one of my favourites and I'm sure it'll be one of yours by the end of this unit.

So let's get warmed up and see what the pentatonic scale is all about.

Here's today's warmup.

Copy me.

One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three.

Well done.

Here's the second stage.

Copy me.

One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

What was the difference between both of those? That's right.

The first one, we counted three.

The second one, we counted four.

In the first one, there was three beats in the bar.

In the second one, there was four beats in the bar.

Today, we're going to be working in 3/4.

It's really important that you can internalise that and feel it within your body so that you can project that into the music when you play.

In today's lesson, you will need a piece of paper, a pencil, your body, and a keyboard or an app.

I'm about to use a free virtual instrument called Virtual Piano.

If you would like to use a virtual instrument with me, please ask your parent or carer to help you find one.

Mine looks like this, and I'm able to play everything on here that we're going to play on a keyboard today, so.

It's worth downloading if you don't have a keyboard.

You'll be able to do everything that we're doing today.

So if you don't have that equipment to hand, I suggest that in a moment you pause the video, go and find all the equipment, then come back and rejoin us.

Also make sure that you're in a quiet space, you're ready to do some learning and won't be disturbed, and also turn off any apps or notifications on any electronic devices so you're not disturbed throughout the lesson.

Press pause now and then resume once you're ready.

The keyboard is split into two sets of notes, white notes and black notes.

There are seven different pitches on the white notes of the keyboard.

These are your alphabet from A to G.

Take a look at the keyboard on the screen.

Once we get to G, the alphabet starts again.

To find your notes on the keyboard without having them written on it, there's an easy system.

All you have to do is look out for where your keyboard is split into twos and then threes.

To the left of the two black keys, you'll find the note C.

To the left of the three black keys, you will find the note F.

How many C's and F's can you find on your keyboard or the one on screen? On screen, there are two C's and two F's.

On your keyboard, there may be more.

Let's play a quick game.

Which note is this? That's right, it's a G.

How did you work that out? Did you go to the left of your three black keys, which is F, and work that G is next door to it? Which note is this? That's right, it's C.

Did you go to your two black keys and go to the left of it to find it? Last one.

Which note is this? Awesome, it's an A.

How did you work that out? You find your three black keys, you find F, you go up your alphabet G, and after G your alphabet starts again on A.

Well done.

Place your thumb on F and copy me.

One, two, three.

Well done.

Place your second finger on G, keeping your thumb on F, and copy me.

One, two, three.

One, two, three.

Nice work.

Place your middle finger, your third finger, so one, two, three, and place it on A, along with your thumb on F and your second finger on G.

Copy me.

One, two, three.

Your turn.

One, two, three.

Nice work.

So here is the agenda for today's lesson.

As part of your warmup, you already felt beat one in simple triple time, and that's super important for what we're about to do in the lesson next.

We're going to be locating pitches on the keyboard, and then exploring the pitches of the pentatonic scale.

Once we've done that, we're going to improvise question and answer phrases using the pentatonic scale, and then you will be able to phrase pentatonic melodies by the end of the lesson.

On your keyboard, can you find the following notes? F, G, A, C, and D.

If you already play an instrument, can you play these notes on your instrument too? If you play tenor sax, clarinet, or trumpet, you will need to play the notes G, A, B, D, and E.

If you play alto sax, play the notes D, E, F sharp, A, and B.

If you play the French horn, play the notes C, D, E, G, and A.

And that will mean that your notes will sound the same as the notes that I'm playing on the keyboard.

Pause the video to complete your task and then resume once you're finished.

We are now going to explore the pitches of the pentatonic scale.

Hello, everybody.

Let's begin by warming up our voices.

So let's jump on to our motorcycle and we'll do this in my turn, your turn.

I will do something and you repeat.

Well done, you guys.

Good.

I hope you feel vocally warmed up.

Let's continue with that, singing this motif now.

Listening first, and then repeat.

♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ Try it.

♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ Good job.

The words are.

♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ Last time on that.

♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ Now, let's practise our scales going up and up and up.

We will sing the same motif going higher.

Join in with me.

♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And up ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And up ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And happy ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And sad ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And sadder ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And happy ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And angry ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And happy ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ ♪ And happier ♪ ♪ Mi re do sol la do ♪ Well done, everybody.

I hope that you feel you have warmed up well.

Now let's learn a song together.

It's a pentatonic song and it goes like this.

♪ My paddle's keen and bright, flashing like silver ♪ ♪ Follow the wild goose flight ♪ ♪ Dip, dip, and sing ♪ Lovely.

So you'll notice I'm holding the beat in my paddle, which is at either side of my canoe.

This time, I'd like you to listen again and join in with a bounce in the knee and waving your paddle into the water with me.

So don't sing along, just hold the beat.

♪ Off we go ♪ ♪ My paddle's keen and bright, flashing like silver ♪ ♪ Follow the wild goose flight ♪ ♪ Dip, dip, and swing ♪ Lovely.

Did you catch the words? The words are this.

My paddle's keen and bright.

My paddle's keen and bright.

Flashing like silver.

Flashing like silver.

Follow the wild goose flight.

Follow the wild goose flight.

Dip, dip, and swing.

Dip, dip, and swing.

I will sing a phrase now, and I'd like you to sing it back so you're learning this song with me.

It goes like this.

♪ My paddle's keen and bright ♪ ♪ My paddle's keen and bright ♪ Well done.

My paddle's keen and bright.

The next phrase goes like this.

♪ Flashing like silver ♪ ♪ Flashing like silver ♪ ♪ Follow the wild goose flight ♪ ♪ Follow the wild goose flight ♪ ♪ Dip, dip, and swing ♪ ♪ Dip, dip, and swing ♪ Very nice.

I hope that went well for you.

And of course, rewind or pause if you want to practise or listen again.

Now let's put that all together.

So it goes like this.

Paddles at the ready, and off we go.

♪ My paddle's keen and bright, flashing like silver ♪ ♪ Follow the wild goose flight ♪ ♪ Dip, dip, and swing.

♪ And again.

♪ My paddle's keen and bright, flashing like silver ♪ ♪ Follow the wild goose flight ♪ ♪ Dip, dip, and swing ♪ Well done, everybody.

You have already learned a beautiful pentatonic melody.

Have a great day.

Bye.

So what is a scale? The word scale is similar to the Italian word for ladder, scala.

La Scala is Milan's opera house.

A scale is a set of musical notes which are usually ordered in pitch.

They can ascend, going higher in pitch, or they can descend, going lower in pitch.

Here's an example of a pentatonic scale that we will be exploring today.

So the pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave.

An octave means eight notes.

Pentatonic scales were developed by many ancient civilizations, and they're still used all over the world.

For example, traditional music, country music, blues, and metal all use the pentatonic scale.

Here's what the pentatonic scale sounds like on the keyboard.

This is the F major pentatonic scale.

Can you play that scale? Even if you play a different instrument, try to play it on the keyboard.

It's great to be able to develop your sense of musical theory, and also the keyboard allows you to play melodies and harmonies at the same time.

So even if you don't play the keyboard, I suggest that you get on one and see if you can play the pentatonic scale now.

Make sure that your hands are in the right position.

So if you look at the diagrams to the left and the right of my video, you can see that my right hand, my thumb is number one, my finger here is number two, and my middle finger is number three.

On my left hand, I'm only using number one and number two.

I'm placing them on the notes F, G, A, and I'm placing my left hand on the notes D and C.

Let's just try that one more time.

Can you play on those notes? You can pick any particular order you want.

You can make them go ascending and descending as we did, or you can play them in any order.

Play around with the notes of the pentatonic scale.

For your next pause, can you find the notes of the pentatonic scale on your keyboard? Can you play the notes using the correct hand and finger position? As an extension, this isn't the only pentatonic scale.

How many other pentatonic scales can you find? Can you play the pentatonic scale on your own instrument? Pause the video and resume once you're finished.

We will now be exploring how to improvise question and answer phrases using the pentatonic scale.

Before we begin, find the following notes on the keyboard.

Make sure that you have the correct hand position.

I would like you to play F, G, and A separately when you hear beat one.

Here we go.

One, two, three.

Two, three, two, three, two, three, two, three, Well done.

This time I would like you to copy me.

Well done.

This time, we're going to put in our left hand.

Place your thumb on number one, which is a D.

Place your second finger, number two, on C.

And copy me.

One, two, three.

Well done.

Now we have the feeling of playing with a 3/4 time signature, we're going to create some question and answer phrases.

A phrase in music is like a musical sentence.

So we're going to pose a question, a musical sentence, and then answer with another sentence like this.

That would be my question.

Here's my answer.

This time, I'm going to pose a melodic question.

Can you answer it using the same notes in your right hand? If you want to be challenged, you can put in your left hand too.

Here we go.

They're going to be two-bar phrases.

One, two, three.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

Here's your next question.

One, two, three.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

One, two, three, one, two, three.

Well done if you managed to stay in time with the metronome and were able to answer my questions.

It's always good to end your answer phrases on our tonic note, which in this case is F, because we're in F major pentatonic.

So when you are composing your own question and answer phrases, try to end your answers on F.

Take a look at this example.

Here's my question.

Here's my answer.

Do you notice that I am ending on my F, my tonic note.

This is a great activity that you can do if you've got other members of your household.

Can they play a question and you play an answer? For your next pause task, can you practise improvising using the pentatonic notes? Can you compose your own two or four-bar question and answer phrases? You could play a left hand and then it's answered by the right hand.

Can you write your composition down using the musical notation that we learned earlier in the lesson? You might actually know how to notate this using notes on the stave.

You could see if somebody in your household is able to play your composition back to you from your written notation.

And if you already play an instrument, could you use the pentatonic scale to compose a piece on your instrument? Pause the video to complete your task and then resume once you're finished.

We are now going to be phrasing pentatonic melodies.

Now that you have composed your pentatonic questions and answers, you need to structure them into a composition.

For example, you could play question one and then answer one and question one again with a different answer, answer two.

Here's an example.

See if you can spot the repeat of my question one and where my answers differ.

Did you notice that again, my answers ended on F, our tonic note, to make it sound finished and complete.

I just played two-bar phrases to you.

If you want to make this a little bit more complicated, you could try playing four-bar phrases.

I'm going to play you an example of a not very good question and answer phrase.

I would like you to tell me why it's not very good.

Why was that not very good? Well, I leaped all over the place.

I can't actually make it very memorable.

I can't actually remember what I played, so my questions and my answers weren't very clear.

So make sure that you have very clear questions and very clear answers.

Make sure that your questions are two bars in length or four bars in length if you want a challenge and make sure your answers are the same.

I also didn't end my answers on an F, our tonic note, which didn't make it sound very finished.

Here's an example of a good question and answer.

Tell me why this is an example of a good question and answer.

I actually did two questions and answers there for you.

Why was that one good and the other one wasn't? Well, that one, I also ended on my tonic and it was very clear where my question started and where my answer finished.

They were both two-bar phrases.

Thinking about how we can add contrast, tell me how I'm playing these questions and answers slightly different.

I'll play the first one in one style and the second in another.

Here's a second one.

What made both of those different? The way that I articulated my question and answers was different each time.

The first time I played it staccato, which is short and detached.

The second time I played it legato, which is smoothly.

See if you can add these two contrasting styles into your composition.

For your next pause task, make sure that your question and answers are balanced phrases.

Make sure that you've used mainly steps and one or two leaps.

For an extension task, practise varying the contrast in your question and answer phrases.

Remember to vary the answer slightly to keep the listener engaged.

Use legato and staccato articulation.

How else could you use contrast in your improvised or composed questions and answers? Pause the video to complete your task and then resume once you're finished.

To recap our agenda from the lesson, we felt triple time right at the beginning.

We then located the pitches on the keyboard.

We then explored the pitches of the pentatonic scale and improvised question and answer phrases using the pentatonic scale.

We have just phrased some pentatonic melodies.

Well, we're nearly at the end of our lesson.

This is your final pause task.

On your piece of paper, answer the following questions.

And pay particular attention to number four, which was the question that came up on the green screen right at the beginning of the lesson.

Pause the video to complete your task and once you're finished, resume and we'll go through the answers.

How did you get on? So number one, how many notes are in a pentatonic scale? The answer is five.

Which fingers did you use on each hand today? Well, on my right hand or our right hand, we used number one, number two, and number three.

And on our left hand, we used number one and number two.

Which time signature did we use? That's right, we used 3/4, so three beats in a bar.

And how could you phrase pentatonic melodies, our key question for the lesson.

Well, you can make sure that their bar lengths are exactly the same, so two-bar or four-bar phrases.

And also remember to end your answer on the tonic note too.

Wow, you guys have worked your fingers to their bones today.

Well done.

Please don't forget to complete the quiz to show how much you've learned today before you go and have a well-deserved rest.

That's all from me today.

Have a great day and I'll see you soon.

Goodbye.