Lesson video

Hello and welcome to today's music lesson.

My name is Miss Al-Hanoush, and today we are going to be putting together all four phrases of "Amazing Grace" and performing them all with expression as well.

So what are we waiting for? Let's get warmed-up.

For today's warmup, we're going to remind ourselves of the melody to "Amazing Grace".

We are going to sing the melody, but this time, instead of singing the lyrics, we are going to sing the pitches.

As we sing, place your hands on your knees with the correct piano hand position.

So pretend you have an orange underneath your hands, so your hands are up high.

And from memory, can you remember the finger pattern to "Amazing Grace"? I will sing the notes out loud to help you.

If you have any other family members present or somebody in your household, can they sing the lyrics to help you? If you find this easy, I want you to tell me which fingers you would use to play your right-hand melody, if your left-hand was playing the accompaniment.

And tap that out on your lap.

Here we go.

One, two.

♪ C-F-A-F-A-G-F-G-C ♪ ♪ C-F-A-F-A-G-C ♪ ♪ A-C-C-A-F-A-G-F-D-C ♪ ♪ C-F-A-F-A-G-F ♪ How did you get on? Did you remember which fingers you needed on which hands? On your right-hand, hold it up for me.

Did you play with your thumb? Excellent.

What about your second finger? Brilliant.

Your third finger? Amazing.

Did we play with our fourth? No.

We played with our.

yes.

our top C with the little finger.

What about on our left hand, what happened? Hold it up for me.

Did we play with our thumb? Excellent.

That went on what note? Brilliant, a D.

And our second finger on our left-hand went on a.

C.

Fantastic.

If you did the extension, were you able to think about which fingers you would need, and in which order they would go to be able to play that melody in the right-hand, if you were playing a left-hand accompaniment? Quite tricky to work that one out.

You might have to write it down on top of the melody line on the downloadable resource to help you out.

If you want another go at that, feel free to rewind the video and have as many goes as you like until you get the fingers right.

Let's now look at how we do this on a keyboard.

In today's lesson you will need: a piece of paper, a pencil, your body, and a keyboard, or an application if you don't have a keyboard.

So 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 be playing on the keyboards today.

So for example, you can play your pentatonic scale.

And all the notes that we'll be using today.

So that is well worth downloading if you don't have a keyboard already.

Also, you will need a quiet space to work in, and you will also need to turn off any apps or notifications that might come through on electronic devices and interrupt your learning.

So if you don't have all of that equipment with you and you need to go and get something or find yourself a quiet space, please do that now.

Pause the video, and then resume when you're ready, and you've got everything you need to get on with today's learning.

On the screen you can see the staff notation for "Amazing Grace." How many different phrases can you see on screen? I've labelled one to help you out.

So here is phrase one, from our middle C to middle C.

That's right, there are four phrases to "Amazing Grace" on the screen.

So here it is phrased two.

Go from our middle C to octave up on a C, which just ends here actually.

And then phrase three, goes from our A down to our middle C.

And phrase four, starts again on our middle C and ends on our F.

So in the previous two lessons of this unit, you learned how the play phrases one to four, but you learnt them separately.

We're now going to start putting these together.

So what do you notice about phrases one, two, and four? Excellent, they all start on middle C.

There's phrase one starting, phrase two, and phrase four.

And in fact, the first six notes of each of these phrases is exactly the same.

Let's have a look, so one, two, three, four, five, six.

They're exactly the same notes as the ones here.

And they're exactly the same as the ones in phrase four, including the same rhythm too.

And that's really important, because actually that makes it much, much easier for us to be able to play on keyboards if we know that actually phrase one, phrase three, and phrase four are pretty similar, and they all start exactly the same.

This is what all four phrases should sound like when we put them together.

Can you follow along with your fingers, pointing to the notes on the screen as I play.

Excellent work, well done.

This time, I'm going to play it again for you, but I would like you to familiarise yourself with where the melody steps and where the melody leaps.

So for example here, the melody is walking down, it's descending in step.

Whereas, right at the beginning, there's a leap because it's going from the C to an F which means it misses out D and E in-between.

So concentrate on where the melody steps and where the melody leaps.

Well done, you are confidently reading melodic notation.

That's so exciting.

Now we've looked at what "Amazing Grace" sounds like with all four phrases being put together.

What do they look like? And how do we play them on the keyboard? So remember your hand position from the last lesson in the unit.

We need our right hand, our thumb to be on F.

G needs to have our second finger.

A needs to be our third finger.

We rest on the B.

And we will, for this, need to have our topsy' here with our little finger, number five.

And our left hand, we need our thumb to go on D, and we need our second finger to go on C.

The rest of our fingers can rest on the other notes, but we don't need to play them.

Remember that our hands aren't just lying flat on the keyboard.

We want them nice and upright with pretending that we've got a ball or an orange underneath your hand.

And that is the shape that you want for your hand position.

I'm going to play along with my metronome, which is in three-four to keep me in time.

And you can watch my fingers, watch where the notes are, and if you'd like to, you could actually put your hands onto your lap and tap out the same notes that I am playing.

Here we go.

Remembering that this starts on the upbeat.

I'm going to count two, and then I'll play.

One, two.

How did you do following that? You can always rewind the video back at this point and have another go at putting your hands on your laps and seeing if you can follow.

Or if you have got the keyboard in front of you, you can try playing along, watching my fingers or the numbers.

This time as I play, I would like you to say the numbers of the fingers out-loud.

Again, you can say the numbers out-loud while still playing the fingers on your laps.

That might help.

Let's have one more go.

For your first pause-task of the lesson.

Can you perform all four phrases of "Amazing Grace" in time to a three-four pulse? A family member or somebody in your household can clap a pulse for you if you haven't got a metronome.

And you could also perform this on your own instrument or in time with another family member.

If you want an extra extension, can you add in a left-hand accompaniment? It could be a drone an ostinato or chords of your choice.

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

Now that we've performed all four phrases of "Amazing Grace", we're now going to explore why expression is important.

By adding expression to our music, we bring the music to life.

We respond with a personal response to the music, and we consider how the music makes us feel.

To add our expression we use dynamics, phrasing, and articulation.

In Unit 2, Lesson 3, we explored how dynamics can change the feeling of a piece of music and add further expression.

Can you remember the Italian words for each of the following dynamics? If you want a bit longer, you can pause the video now.

If not, here are the answers.

So pp, pianissimo, is very soft.

p, piano, is soft.

mp, mezzo piano, means moderately soft.

And then our closing crocodile mouth sign, a diminuendo means gradually softer.

What about the right-hand side? Well, these are the opposite of the left-hand side.

So ff means fortissimo, very loud.

f is forte, loud.

mf is mezzo forte, moderately loud.

And our opening crocodile mouth is crescendo, gradually louder.

Here's a quick quiz for you.

The Italian for quiet is forte.

Is that true or false? It is of course false.

The Italian for quiet is piano.

The Italian for getting gradually softer is diminuendo.

Is that true or false? Well done, it is true.

The Italian for moderately loud is mezzo forte.

Is that true or false? Well mezzo means moderately, so does forte mean loud? Of course it does.

Mezzo forte is moderately loud.

The Italian for very soft is pianissimo.

Is that true or false? That of course is true, pp is very quiet, very soft.

The Italians for moderately soft is mezzo piano.

Well, moderately means mezzo, so is soft piano? Of course it is.

And the last one then.

The Italian for getting gradually quieter is mezzo piano.

Think about what we just said.

That one is obviously false, because getting gradually quieter is.

That's right, a diminuendo, well done.

I've added some dynamic markings to "Amazing Grace" on the notation on screen.

I'm going to play you "Amazing Grace" again, with the added dynamic markings.

Can you spot where they are and what dynamic markings have I used? While adding dynamics, what happened to my performance? Exactly, by adding dynamics I helped to communicate the feeling and expression within the piece of music.

Which dynamics did you spot? Excellent.

Firstly, we have piano which means quietly, softly.

We then, as we went into phase two has a.

crescendo, amazing.

Which meant that we got gradually louder, fantastic.

As we moved into phrase three on the second line, we moved to forte, loud, and then we finished off in phrase four with a diminuendo, getting gradually quieter towards the end of the piece.

To add dynamics on a keyboard, you need to be able to press the notes, either softly or a little bit harder, depending on the dynamic that you want.

So for example, if I want to play something piano, I press the keys quite lightly.

If I want to play something forte, loud, then I press the keys quite hard.

If I want to build a crescendo, I need to go from pressing them lightly to pressing them a little bit harder as I go through each of the notes.

And if I want to make a diminuendo, I need to do the opposite.

I need to press them hard to start with, and then a little bit lighter where I want my diminuendo to end.

If your keyboard doesn't have weighted keys on it, then you might have a little button on it that says touch.

Touch will do the same.

It will replicate the same as a piano or a keyboard that has got weighted keys.

And then you will be able to add in your own dynamics.

For your second pause-task.

Can you add in the dynamic markings to your performance of "Amazing Grace"? If you want to challenge yourself, you could experiment with a variety of different dynamics.

You could change the dynamics in each of the phrases, and then think about how that changes the way that the piece of music feels when you do that.

Remember to think about the lyrics and the meaning behind the piece at this point.

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

You've now explored why expression is important in music.

And have explored dynamic markings and phrases.

You're now going to learn what articulation is in music, and how you can use this to express your pieces further.

What is articulation? Articulation refers to how specific notes or passages are played or sung.

Composers use written notation and symbols, placed above or below pitches on the staff to show performers how they want something to be played.

For example, stringed instruments might have a pizzicato marking on their music to show the composer wants them to pluck the strings rather than play with a bow.

Can you see that on the screen? Excellent.

It's here.

Woodwind and brass though, wouldn't have this articulation marking as they don't play with a bow.

So it's instrument-specific.

You have already seen two forms of articulation throughout this unit.

Can you remember what they were? The two forms of articulation that I've mentioned before, are staccato and legato.

Well done, if you remembered.

If you already play an instrument, can you think of any instruments-specific articulation markings your instrument uses? Listen to the two following examples of "Amazing Grace".

Which phrases, from one to four, do I play legato? And which do I pay staccato? I played phrases one and two legato, which is smoothly and connected.

And I played phrases three and four staccato, which was short and detached.

Composers tends to indicate legato notes by putting a slur or a bracket under over the notes heads that they want to be played legato.

For staccato notes, they put a dot on top or underneath the notes heads.

Take a look at the notation on the screen, which notes are being played staccato? And which ones are being played legato? That's right.

The A here, and the F here, have a dot under them, which means that the composer intends these to be played staccato.

The A to the G here, has a bracket or a slur underneath it, which means that the composer wants it to be played legato, nice and smoothly.

For your third pause-task.

Can you play "Amazing Grace" using a legato articulation, nice and smoothly.

Then play it staccato.

How does playing it with different articulations shape the feeling and the expression of the piece? Which articulation do you think suits "Amazing Grace" to convey the meaning behind the song? If you play an instrument, can you play "Amazing Grace" using instrument-specific articulation? For example, if you're a woodwind or brass player, could you tongue certain notes? If you are a string player, could play pizzicato verses bowed notes? You could also get a household member to guess which articulation you are using to perform, staccato or legato.

Pause the video to complete your task, and resume when you're finished.

Now that you've explored different types of articulation, you're now going to perform "Amazing Grace" with even more expression.

What can you now see on the screen that you didn't see before? That's right, the word flowing.

This here is an articulation marking, a performance marking for expression by the composer.

Would we play this piece of music legato or staccato, if it has the expression marking of flowing.

That's right, we would play it legato.

So here is "Amazing Grace" performed in legato with our dynamic markings.

For your fourth pause-task, perform "Amazing Grace" using as much expression as you can convey to the meaning of the song.

Remember to use expression, including dynamics and a legato articulation.

Can you perform it's your household? They could even sing the lyrics whilst you perform.

And as an extension, could you transfer this to your own instrument or add in a simple harmony line in the left-hand? Pause the video to complete your task and resume once you're finished.

Welcome back.

How did your performances go? Were you able to play all four phrases with the right hands and the right fingers, as well as putting in all of that expression with your articulation and your dynamics and all of the phrase marks as well.

I hope so, and I hope that those of you who are instrumentalists have already managed to put that onto your instrument and potentially add a harmony part as well.

So let's look at what you've learned today.

You performed all four phrases of "Amazing Grace".

You then explored why expression is important in music.

And learned what articulation meant.

You then explored different types of articulation, including legato and staccato notes.

And then added those to perform "Amazing Grace" with expression including legato and your dynamic markings.

Wow, you've done a lot.

So this brings me back to the very first question that was on the green screen at the beginning of the lesson.

How can you express the meaning of a song effectively? Thinking about what we've learned today, and what we've been doing on the keyboards, on your piece of paper, I'd like you to answer that question now.

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

How did you get on? By adding an expression to our performances, we can express the meaning of the song effectively.

For example, adding in phrasing, adding in dynamics, such as piano and a forte, to adding in crescendos and diminuendos, and also adding in different types of articulation.

We today looked at legato and staccato articulation, which can really help to convey and express the meaning behind a piece of music.

So don't forget to complete the quiz at the end of this lesson to show how much you have learned today.

And also, now that you can play all four phrases of "Amazing Grace" confidently and fluently, and have potentially added in a left-hand part or a harmony line, if you would like to share your work with Oak National, we would love to see it.

So please ask a parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

I would love to see what you've managed to do.

That's all for me today.

So go and have a well deserved rest, and I will see you soon, goodbye.