Lesson video

Hi everyone.

Ms. Friar here.

Welcome to the second lesson for unit seven, where we are exploring the genre of fusion music.

Today, we have another exciting jam packed lesson, full of lots of activities from listening to different styles of Afrobeat, looking more into Fela Kuti, and the amazing work that he did with Afrobeat music, as well as giving you the opportunity to compose some of your own melodies and having a look at chord progressions.

So we've got lots to do and lots of music to make.

Let's get going.

Okay, we're going to start today's lesson off with a musical activity, as always.

Last week we did tapping, this week we're going to do singing.

So we're going to do a little bit of a warmup, and then we are going to explore a particular type of singing built around jazz music.

So we're going to start off by just doing some A an A and vowel sounds to get our mouth and our vocal chords warmed up and ready to do a bit of singing.

So copying me, we're going to open our mouth really wide.

I'm going to say, aaauuu.

And you really want to stretch your face.

Cause that's going to get all your mouth muscles ready for our singing activity.

Let's try Tee Don't worry if you feel silly.

I do as well.

It's all part of getting ready to sing today.

Let's try Looowah Great.

Don't know about you, but by far, my mouth is feeling nice or more.

I'm ready to go.

We're going to try today a little bit of Jazz Scatting.

Scatting is where jazz vocalists improvise with different musical sounds and they are nonsensical.

So they're not any words to any particular lyrics.

They're just noises and expressions and sounds with your mouth while you are improvising a tune like an instrumentalist would do in a jazz band.

So the tune that we're going to learn is actually from Water Get No Enemy it's just a tiny part of it.

I'm going to talk about that lots later.

First of all we're going to learn the tune and then we're going to practise scatting around it.

So, copy after me.

Here's the first part.

I'll do that again.

Ears tuned in.

Now time for call and response.

I'll go, then you go, and we'll learn the rest.

Great, lovely voices.

Now for the second part.

Have another go.

Lovely.

Let's put both parts together.

Me then you.

Your go.

Lovely stuff.

We're going to do the second part of the phrase.

It sounds very similar to that one, but the ending changes slightly.

So here's the second phrase.

I have to give my modelling first.

So that's our changed at the end.

First part is the same.

That's the bit that changes in the second phrase.

Your go.

Quantum response.

I'll model first.

Great.

Let's put the first phrase and the second phrase all together and then we'll start trying some of those scat sounds.

All together, Me first, you copy back and then we'll start to improvise.

Oh, I hope you've enjoyed doing that.

I'm sure you sounded great.

So we're going to say that same tune, that same two-phrase tune, and now we're going to try different sounds to it.

Scatting is all about just doing what feels fun and doing for what feels right for you.

So you might want to do like booz and baaz.

You might even want to try like scats and do's or la's or ba's.

It's any kind of sound that you feel like you want to come out while you're singing, and you're singing this phrase.

So, I'll give you another example.

I would sing So you want to have a go at doing something like that.

Bu's, la's, ta's, scats, whatever you think.

I'll tell you what, I'll have a go at mine first and then I'll leave a gap and you can hear the tune and you can put your scatting in.

Here's mine.

Remember, we're improvising or we're just giving it a go.

One, two, three, four Oh, well done guys.

I know it can feel a bit silly, but I really hoped you had to go and I'm sure you sounded great.

Well done.

We've done some jazz scatting as our first activity.

I'm so pleased.

All right.

Let's look at what's going to be involved in the rest of our lesson.

Okay.

So, as always, with every lesson, we're going to need to make sure that you have everything you need to be really successful today.

So you are going to need a notebook, a piece of paper, anything that you can write on, you're going to be asked to take notes, and you're going to be asked to answer some questions today.

You'll need a pencil, I'll suggest, and a pen, maybe even another colour so that you can make corrections and mark your work.

Today, we're also going to be using our voice a bit more, and I suggest that in advance, you go and grab either an instrument that you are happy to play with.

Maybe you play one already, go and grab that, cause there's going to be a chance for you to play that today.

And if you have an iPhone or a Smartphone to hand, it's going to be great for you to use maybe an app to play through some melodies and chords today.

So for iPhone, I suggest Garage Band.

That's always got a great keyboard tool and gives you the opportunity to record.

If you've got an Android, then you might want to go for Perfect Piano.

And if you're working on a desktop or on your laptop, Virtual Piano is very good for that as well.

So if you want to pause the video now, we're riding through that list of different apps you can use and make sure you have everything you need for today to go really well.

So pause the video now, if you need to go and get those things.

If you sorted, let's get going.

It's really important you know exactly what our plan is for today's lesson each step of the way.

So let's go through that now, and then we can get started with our first activity.

First thing is we're going to recap the last lesson.

So if you've missed it, please go back and have a look at lesson one.

We cover a lots of work around Fusion Music in general and where it's from and the origins of Afrobeat.

And we really look at how Fela Kuti brought his musical influences into creating this Afrobeat style.

So please do go back and have a look at it, but we're also going to cover it for the start of this lesson, just to recap on some of those key influences that he experienced growing up around music.

From there, we're going to look specifically at the instruments that are used in Afrobeat music, which will link really nicely to analysing the melodic riffs and chords in that song "Water No Get Enemy." Once we've done that analysis, that's going to mean that you're going to have all the tools to create your own melodic riffs and chord progressions.

And then you've got the opportunity to perform those by recording or sharing with somebody in your household.

I can't wait.

Let's just do a really quick recap of what "Water No Get Enemy" sounds like.

Okay.

Lovely stuff.

So what I need you to do now is get your piece of paper and your pencil, please.

Put this as your title.

How did Fela Kuti fuse his musical influences? And if you did watch the lesson one, then I want you to write down as much as you could remember that we went through.

So where did he live throughout his life that could have affected his musical influences, perhaps the instruments that he was interested in, have a think about the different styles of music that he was exposed to and how that could have influenced his style.

So I'll give you a bit of time.

Otherwise, you pause the video now and you write out as much as you can remember, and we're going to recap through the answers in a moment, anyway.

Okay.

Great job.

Let's go through and compare your answers to mine, different kind of pen at their ready for marking.

So we're going to go through the two styles that create or that makeup Afrobeat first, cause that's going to help us think about where those musical influences came from.

The first one was American Jazz, Funk and Soul.

The second West African Music, in particular, Highlife, Fuji, and Yoruba.

If we pull those apart, especially when we analysed Afrobeat last week, you can start to look at the trail of how he travelled to be exposed to those musical influences.

So for the American Jazz, Funk and kind of Soul part of his influences, that was because he moved to Los Angeles with his band, Koola Lobitos.

Thre he was exposed to and listened to a lot of jazz, a lot of Funk ,a lot of Soul, which had a lot of guitars and horn riffs.

And we know that Fela Kuti's preferred instruments were horn instruments, saxophone and trumpet.

We're going to talk a bit more about that today when we look at melodies.

The parts in bold; Extended chords, Main melody, Syncopation.

Do write those down, the three really key features that we're going to look at today specifically, around melody writing in Afrobeat.

On the West African side, We know that being from Nigeria, he grew up listening to West African Folk Rhythms. This is a big influence of highlife and the more traditional folk rhythms from when he was younger, growing up in Nigeria, and he took those interlocking riffs and again, horn instruments from that highlife style, and of course, syncopated rhythms the same as American Jazz, and all these influences is the reason that he created, or was known to be the creator of Afrobeat music.

If you need to pause the video and finish writing all of those things down, please do.

Tick if you've got any of them right.

Well done if you remember the history and who he travelled with, and where he travelled to.

And let's look at the next part of our lesson.

Great job everyone.

So we can tick off the first part.

We've recapped Fela Kuti's musical influences.

Now we're going to have a look at instruments specifically, that are used in Afrobeat music.

We're going to watch a short video clip here of an Afrobeat Band, and you're going to answer these three questions.

Name the instruments you can see in the band.

Which instruments are playing the melodies? Tunes there to give you a clue.

Which instruments are playing riffs at the start of this piece? So hopefully you remember from last week that riff is a repeated musical pattern.

And I want you to see if you can identify which two are playing riffs right at the very start of the piece.

I hope you enjoyed that.

It's great to see such young musicians really embracing Afrobeat style.

Pause the video now and take the time you need to answer those three questions.

Okay, welcome back.

Let's go through those answers together Number one you can see and hopefully hear Congas in the percussion, there's a Bass Guitar Organ, but not church, we're talking about a Jazz Organ, very popular in the 60s.

There's Electric Guitar, Drums, Saxophone and Trumpet.

If you've got any of those in your list, well done.

Number two, Trumpet and Saxophone were the two leads.

So they're the instruments in the band that were playing the main melodies.

And that's to be expected because we know that there are really prominent parts for horn sections in Afrobeat music.

We just looked at that list around Fela Kuti and the influences of Afrobeat music.

Number three, Organ and Guitar.

At the very start, the jazz organ, the electronic organ part you can hear plus the guitar that comes in just after with the chords, they are playing the same part over and over again.

So they are playing riffs, which again we know is a really common part of Afrobeat music.

Great.

Okay.

Let's delve into a bit more detail around the instruments in Afrobeat music.

It's going to help us understand how to pull apart some of the melodic and harmonic parts that we're going to analyse shortly.

On the screen there are lists of common instruments that you would hear in Afrobeat music.

We've just seen them in the video.

Congas, Saxophone, Shekere, Claves, Organ and Trumpet.

So what I'd like you to do now is have a think about whether those instruments came from the American influence or the West African influence.

So just take 20 seconds on that so now, you can write a list if you want.

Which of those instruments do you think are from the American influence of jazz, funk and soul or come from the West African traditions.

Okay.

10 nine eight Finish writing down your thoughts.

five four three two Great.

Pens down.

Let's go through.

Congas are West African.

They're actually Afro Cuban.

They travelled to South America as well, but they would have traditionally come from African rhythms. Saxophone is American.

Yes.

Although, it can be heard in highlife, which is African music, it is seen as a Western instrument.

The Shekere is a percussion instrument from West Africa.

Trumpet is American.

Again, part of a brass section Western influences.

The jazz organ American, definitely associated with jazz music in the 1960s.

And finally claves is West African.

Well done if you've got those right, make a little note of those.

It's really important when we look at fusion music, we know where these instruments originated because that will play a big part in the parts they play, melody lines, chord parts within the music.

Well done.

Okay.

Let's talk a bit more about melodies specifically.

And I suggest we write these down while we're talking about them.

We will be coming across them again in the curriculum.

It's really important to know.

This is specific to Afrobeat, and there's lots of key language and key vocabulary to learn here.

There are two types of melodies in Afrobeat music.

One is Improvised Solos, and the second is Jazz Head Melodies.

Now you can see Fela Kuti there, fashioned with a saxophone because he preferred the trumpet and saxophone, which is why it explains so many of his pieces of Afrobeat music, had saxophones and trumpets playing the main melody lines and sometimes improvise solos as well.

Just so we're really clear in our mind, Improvise Solos are individual instruments create music on the spot during a performance.

They have a structure to follow.

They've got the rest of the band behind them, and they've got an idea of what the rest of the band are playing, but they are making it up on the spot.

They are improvising.

Jazz Head Melodies, very common in jazz music, but of course, Afrobeat was influenced by American jazz.

So you can hear it in Afrobeat music as well.

Jazz Head Melodies are the main melody which repeats, like I said, often in the horn section.

In fact, our starting activity, when we were doing some jazz scatting, that is the head melody for 'Water No Get Enemy.

' That is the head melody for that piece that comes round in between the improvised solos.

If you need a bit more time to write that down for your own notes, please pause.

Otherwise let's get creative.

It's time to start making some of our own melodic ideas.

Okay.

Your first pause point or creative music task is you're going to compose a melodic head, so that's a jazz melody, for an Afrobeat style piece.

You are going to use the following notes, E F D and G.

A few top tips here.

Keep it simple.

If it's anything too complicated, if the notes don't flow nicely with one another, it's going to be really hard for an instrument to play it or for somebody to sing it.

Two, it needs to be memorable.

Remember, there's lots of riffs in Afrobeat music.

It needs to be something we can repeat and it needs to be something that's easily singable, and unplayable.

Three, it's got to be built around syncopated rhythms so it feels jazzy.

In lesson one, you created some of your own syncopated rhythms. So hopefully now, you just need to put those into notes for these melodies.

So one way that you could do it is just singing it.

I'll play the notes for you now.

You can pause and rewind as many times as you like, and then just have a go at singing it.

E F D G E F D G So if you can hear those notes in your head and you're quite confident a singer and that's how you want to have a go at creating it, then you can just start improvising and having a think around those notes at something memorable and simple and a bit syncopated.

Of course, if you've got a keyboard to hand or if your going to be practising this at school, at some point, please do so on your keyboard.

Something like that.

As long as it's memorable, and you can repeat it.

If you don't have any of the instruments and you're feeling a bit worried about singing, no problem.

If you've got a smartphone, you can still do it on there as well.

So I'll go on to Garage Bank cause I've got an iPhone.

I'll just pick the keyboard option and just like my keyboard here, I find the same notes and I have a go.

Syncopated rhythm, easy to remember.

I can't wait to see what you come up with.

Go and have a go.

So far in our agenda, we have looked at the musical influences of Fela Kuti had for Afrobeat music.

We've really looked into detail, all the instruments you expect to hear in Afrobeat music and where they came from.

We've had to go at creating our first melodic jazz head, but now we're actually going to analyse the melodic riffs and chords so that we can go on to create our own for our performance.

So on the screen here, we've got the Melodic Call, which is the top part.

So melody, is a tune, so it's one note at a time.

Actually Fela Kuti keeps it really simple.

Again, simple, memorable.

And that's it.

That just repeats throughout for the section, certainly in the intro that we heard.

Then we've got this chord response.

And I want to draw attention to the chords because we've done some melody work.

Now I want us to do some harmony work.

Now, generally speaking, most Afrobeat has what we would call a Simple Harmony.

Now what I mean by that is the composer they would pick, one minor key.

Remember all music is based around a key.

We decided if we wanted to be major or minor, we decide which major-minor key we want our piece of music to be in.

And that helps us work out what notes and chords we're going to use to create our piece.

So we know that we're going to need to use fairly simple chords, again, cause it needs to be repeated.

The other reason that chords repeat throughout is because of those Improvised Solos.

There needs to be a set repetitive structure of the harmony so that those solo instruments know exactly which notes to pick when they're improvising over the top.

If the chords and key was changing constantly, it'll be really hard for those performers to know which notes to use with the rest of the band.

Let's have a look at some of the chords.

So these three, I want us to pay particular attention to.

We know chords, three notes played at the same time.

But these three are four notes played at the same time.

And that's because they are extended chords.

They are seventh chords.

That means they are playing as well as the normal three notes of the chord.

And I'll play you an example now, is also playing this seventh note on top of that.

So if I take this Em7 chord here, as an example, you play E G B First note of the scale, third note of the scale, fifth note of the scale And D is the seventh note of the scale.

And that comes from the jazz influence.

Seventh chords are used lots in soul and jazz music, because it gives a richer fill to the harmony to put the rest of the melodies over the top of it.

Now we've had a look at how the Chordal Response works in 'Water No Get Enemy.

' So there's a melodic call.

And then the chords play underneath it.

Let's have a look at how they work together.

When we were looking at the list of influences that Fela Kuti had to create Afrobeat one was Interlocking Riffs.

And that's exactly what happens with this melodic call and there's chordal response.

Before the chord response has finished, the melodic call comes back in again.

And that's what makes the melodies and all the parts and the instruments and the harmony and the improvise solos and the jazz heads, there's much about Afrobeat music that makes it just really joyous and really interesting to listen to.

Now we've got all that information in our head.

Let's see if we can apply it to our own compositions.

Okay.

Your second pause point or creative moment is going to be to create an Afrobeat melodic call and chord response.

And you've got a few composing options here.

Let's read through them together, and then when you pause you can decide how you want to do this today.

a.

You could create a melodic call to the given chord progression.

So in a moment, I'm going to play a chord progression for you, which you can pause and rewind and pause and rewind as many times as you like, and you could just come up with the melodic chord to go over the top.

You could do that singing, on a keyboard, maybe on the app, or if you've got your own instrument that you'd like to play, please use that.

Option B is that you play the keyboard if you're a strong piano or keyboard player, and you could create your own three chord progression and a three note melodic call.

I've just given that as a suggestion.

So it's not too complicated for you to play them interlocking.

And I'll show you an example in a minute, but if you want to play more than three notes for your melodic call, that's fine.

I've just taken that from Fela Kuti.

He plays just three notes.

Welcome.

Now I'm going to model the ways that you could create your melodic call and your chordal response.

First thing I'm going to do is play a chord progression for you, so that if you want to create the melodic call over the top, then you can do that.

So here's chord progression.

I am going to use seventh chords, so it will have that jazzy-souly fill.

Here we go.

And from there, you just need to pause and repeat it and then hear over the top on that simple melodic call.

Remember, make it overlap so we have interlocking riffs.

The other option, and the other way I'll demonstrate it for you is that you come up with your own chord progression and then using the notes in your chords, you can think about the melodic call that goes over the top.

I'm going to sing my melodic call, cause it's easier to do that for my first composition.

So here are my chords again.

So I'm going to take some of the notes from that first chord, make a simple three note riff.

So that's one way you could create a chord progression with a melodic call, interlocking riffs, Afrobeat style.

Off you go.

I hope you enjoy the task.

Great job on your melodic call and chordal responses.

I'm sure they sound amazing.

And again, make sure you share this brilliant work that you're doing today.

It takes a lot of courage to create some of your own music and share it.

So feel brave today and go and show everyone all the work you've done.

We're coming to the final part of our lesson, which is piecing it all together into a recorded performance.

We've looked at Fela Kuti's musical influences.

We've looked at the instruments in Afrobeat music.

We have analysed quite detailed analysis, so well done guys, of melodic riffs and chords.

Now it's time to perform your Afro beat piece inspired by 'Water No Get Enemy.

' For you performance options, option one, you can play with me.

So I will again play my chord progression, and then you can sing your melodic call over the top.

Perhaps you could even time your Afrobeat rhythm to match the beat with your performance.

A really lovely idea would be get other people in your household involved.

So maybe you could show them your melodic call while you play the chord progression.

And then you've got your drum beat that somebody is doing with body percussion or they've recorded it on their phone.

But with other people of course.

And the final option of your recording or for your performance is that you could play all three riffs, built up of what you've learned in the last two lessons as a solo performer.

And that's what I'm going to demonstrate now for you, and then give you time to go for practise, perform it and send in those recordings.

I'm going to take my drum beat from last week.

I'm going to play my melodic call.

I'm going to sing it and then I'm going to play my chord or response underneath.

Let's see how it goes.

Two, three, four.

It doesn't have to be very much.

That was just my small demonstration.

You could go on for longer if you want, especially if you've got more people playing with you and all the different riffs we've looked at, but just a short composition, a small performance would be great to share with your household and to share with your teachers to piece together everything that we've learned today.

And if you'd like to, you can ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Well done.

We've done so much with Afrobeat and fusion.

You've worked really hard and I'm sure you'll produce some brilliant compositions.

And don't forget to go ahead and take the quiz and show us everything that you've learned in today's lesson.

Great job.

And we'll see you at the next lesson.

Bye.