Lesson video

Hi, everyone.

I'm Ms. Friar and welcome to your music lesson today.

I'm going to be taking you to lesson eight of our film unit.

And today, we're going to be exploring the musical ideas or heroes and villains.

Let's get going.

Okay, we're going to start with a listening task for today.

And you've got three questions to answer.

I'm going to play a clip for you and you going to need to say what genre of film you think this music belongs to, describe how the following musical elements have been used.

So I want you to say tonality is like this, tempo is this, instrumentation is this.

And then three, what kind of character would this music suit? We've been talking about films and characters and moods.

Give a reason for your answer, please.

So I'm expecting sort of a small paragraph to complete this listening task.

Here's the clip.

Okay, pause the video now on take two, three minutes to finish answering those questions.

Okay.

Grab your different coloured pen and let's see if your answers match mine.

The answer to number one is action or thriller.

The genre, this style of music would suit is definitely an action, thriller, maybe even sci-fi but definitely a genre that has really exciting and probably quite worrying or a tense moments.

Number two, the tonality is minus, the key is a minor key.

The tempo is moderately fast so moderato or Allegro to use the right musical vocabulary.

And then instrumentation is an orchestral instruments with electric guitar.

And the character you can see the suiting is a villain or the bad guy.

And in fact, this clip is Magneto's theme or music from X-Men.

So for this lesson, you're going to need a piece of paper or an exercise book if you're using that to write your notes.

You're going to need a pencil and a pen to write with, and then a different colour pen to mark and annotate throughout the lesson.

For our music-making today, you're either going to need a keyboard, a piano or a keyboard app on an electronic device.

Or you could always use some music technology.

If you've got access to a piece of software for our final composing unit.

If there's anything that you need to go and get on that list, pause the video now and do so then come back, press play and we'll carry on.

So our plan for today is this.

The first thing we're going to do is see if we can work out using our listening skills, what kind of musical ideas we would use for a hero or a villain.

Then we're going to look at what the leitmotif is.

You might have heard of this before, or at least a motif before, but we're going to look specifically at leitmotifs in music.

Then we're going to look at how you can use certain elements effectively when composing a leitmotif.

It's all about the musical elements and how we exploited them and manipulate them with leitmotifs.

And then you're going to have a go at composing your own for a character today.

Right, let's get started.

Okay, here is our hero or villain challenge.

I'm going to play two clips for you.

And I want you to tell me which music do you think represents the hero and which music represents a villain.

And then I want you to write how do you know, how can you tell just from the music which one represents each character? And what about the music that you can hear helps you know that.

Okay, here's the first clip.

Okay, so that's the first clip, hero or villain.

And here's the second.

Make sure we get the right part.

Okay, we'll go from here.

Now I imagine you've probably heard of both of those.

First of all, let's get, which is hero and which is villain.

The first clip is of course for a hero, which means the second one is a villain.

Good.

Take one minute now just to write down why.

I'll play the clips again, but write down why.

What about the music tells us that the first one is a hero and the second one is a villain.

Here's the hero music again.

Okay, so writing down ideas for what about that piece of music sounds heroic.

And here's the villain one again.

Pause the video and take a couple of minutes just to finish writing your answers.

Okay, the reason that this first clip sounds really heroic is it's really positive, it's really proud, and it's really punchy.

There's loads of priced instruments there.

It's really, it's quite high pitched.

It's got lots of leaps.

It sounds really heroic.

For the villain clip, it's very mysterious and very dark.

It uses slightly lower pitch.

It's also quite punchy but it does have a minus sound, which I think leads to that more mysterious, dark mood.

Well done if you've got those ideas and you spotted, which is hero and which is villain.

Let's go on to the next task.

Okay, second part of our lesson, we are now going to explore specifically what's a leitmotif is.

So a leitmotif is a recurring theme or musical idea, which is associated with a particular character, idea or situation.

And here is a pretty lovely video of how somebody has programmed a music box to play Ellie's theme from Pixar's Up.

Really interesting to see how they can get a tune to magically fit along that grid.

So the prongs of the music box sound.

So that is a leitmotif.

It was quite a long one, but that theme.

Is Ellie's theme written for that character in the film.

Now we've tuned our listening skills and we fully understand exactly how to turn a melodic idea into something that represents a character.

We're going to see how we can change that musical idea using the elements.

Great, let's just do a really quick elements recap.

I know we've done a lot of work on it already, so we'll fly through this.

What is dynamics? Tell me in three, two, one.

Dynamics is how loud or quiet the music is.

Sonority? Tell me in three, two, one.

It's the instruments and how they produce the sound that they do.

So the quality of sound that they make.

Rhythm, writing it down or telling me.

Is the pattern of long or short notes and then tempo.

We definitely know this one.

Is how fast or slow the music is the speed.

So I'm going to play you a clip of a leitmotif here and you are going to answer the questions on the left-hand side.

Do you recognise whose leitmotif this is? Which film is it from? What makes this leitmotif sound heroic? And then I want you to use the elements below to write your answer.

So that final question what makes the leitmotif sound heroic? I want that to be a longer short paragraph answer using those musical elements to describe it.

So the leitmotif sounds heroic because the pitch is etc.

As many as you can include in your answer.

Here is the clip for this hero's leitmotif answering the questions on the left-hand side.

You've probably got it even from just those nine seconds.

Here it is again.

Get ready to pause and answer those questions.

Think about those elements.

Okay.

Let's go through our answers then.

So that leitmotif was for Luke Skywalker from the film Star Wars.

Some of the ways that the musical elements have been considered by John Williams when writing this leitmotif are as follows.

The dynamics are loud.

Not just with the one instrument or section or family of the orchestra that was playing his leitmotif.

But the whole piece is allowed dynamic at this point of star Wars.

The brass instruments playing a really punchy and bright sonority, very heroic.

The pitch is high and even ascends in patterns, So it goes even further up, which I think that interval of has already heroic sound.

We've got triplet and quaver rhythms, which is very fanfare like, which I think suits our kind of war, sci-fi action film.

And then the tempo is quick Allegro, fast and lively.

Well done if you've got any of those answers, definitely make a note of these on your piece of paper or your booklet.

They are good key knowledge to have around leitmotif for heroes.

Now I know we listened to the Skywalker, Luke Skywalker theme but I wanted to play it for you so that you can see how the leitmotif is constructed.

And it might help you with the composition task in a little while.

So the leitmotif is broken into three melodic cells.

The first phrase starts with a triplet.

And that's what take stretch.

That's another thing, that intro.

It's very positive and I think suits a super hero leitmotif.

So.

Second phrase.

Again, starts with the triplet.

And I've got another leap back up to B flat.

This is repeated.

And then the third and final phrase which has played once also has a triplet at the start.

One, two, three.

So the whole leitmotif.

Repeated.

Here is the Luke Skywalker leitmotif.

First phrase.

Second phrase.

Repeat it.

Third phrase.

Let's pause the video and have a go at playing the Luke Skywalker motif.

Please do.

It's really not that complicated to play.

Just remember the triplets.

There's lots of Fs and B flats.

Okay, the last part of our lesson and where you're going to spend the most time composing your own leitmotif.

Let's go through our criteria on what you're actually going to spend time composing now.

I want you to compose a leitmotif for a hero, just like the Luke Skywalker motif we've analysed.

Use the pictures B flat, C, E flat, F and G.

So I've given you the notes to use to make it a bit simpler.

If you would like to use other notes, that's fine.

But I think this gives us a strong tonality and key for a hero leitmotif.

If you can, use brass sonorities so if you've got access to a trumpet, if you're a brass player or if you've got a keyboard that has a brass sound on it, brilliant, choose that.

That's the best sonority and instrument to use for a hero leitmotif.

I want your leitmotif to be at least four bars long.

So you have to make sure that you've created enough beats and bars.

Think about the rhythm and how it will sound heroic and you can use your keyboard or app or maybe even your own instrument.

For those of you looking for a bit of a challenge, can you write an accompaniment to match this leitmotif? We did quite a lot of work on the last lesson around harmony and different harmonic ideas that can create an accompaniment.

Pedals, chords, ostinato, maybe clashing chords.

Something that's going to really lay out the harmony.

Again, it wants to be a hero style.

So very major in tonality to go underneath your leitmotif.

Top tip here, take the pictures from your melody to help you work out your accompaniment part.

We've had our brief, you need to create your own superhero leitmotif.

I've given you the notes I think it'd be best to use and some idea of rhythm, But I just want to give you a quick demonstration of a way that you could do it.

So the notes that we can use are B flat, C, E flat, F and G.

Now you have to think.

So we know triplets and quavers are good.

We know that leaping, like the Luke Skywalker leitmotif is always a good idea to make it sound really heroic.

And we want it to be four bars long.

So that's just play around with those notes and those similar kinds of rhythms. Okay, so I've got eight beats already.

So that's two bars of my form bar leitmotif, great.

So I might do a similar idea at the start but then come back down so I end on B flat.

Okay so there's my four bar leitmotif.

I quite like my combination of pitches but I think I'm going to try and put a triplet in there because I haven't included one yet.

So at the start, like the Luke Skywalker.

Now let's see if we can put some sort of accompaniment to it.

Some harmonic accompaniment.

You could use chords taking the same notes that are in that melody.

You could use a really simple way of adding some harmonic devices is by using a pedal.

And actually John Williams uses that quite a lot throughout star Wars.

There's my point on B flat.

There goes my leitmotif.

Okay, so that is a brief demonstration of how you can have a go at creating your own heroic leitmotif.

Have fun.

Great, spend a good 20 minutes, at least working out how you leitmotif is going to sound, the instrument you're going to use, stretch yourself to create that accompaniment and then record yourself if possible, so that you can hear it back and share it with others.

Well then today everyone, I hope you've enjoyed creating your own superhero leitmotif.

Please make sure you record your work.

It's really important when you work as hard as you have that you share your work with your teachers or people in your household.

Please go and take the quiz so you can show me everything that you've learned.

We've done loads of musical understanding today.

And hopefully I'll see you in our next lesson.

Take care, bye.