Project
URL http://www.teachnet.ie/amhiggins
In the finished project there
will be tasks, worksheets, listening assignments and links to other sites.
Students will also have a composing assignment in the area of Musique
Concrète (creating music from non-musical sounds such as a train
sound...).

top
Subject
area/level
Post Primary: Transition year
Music (with cross-curricular linkages) and pre-Leaving Cert Music
Overview
Timbre refers to the tone colour
of a sound. It allows a listener to distinguish between two sounds when
pitch, loudness and duration of the notes are the same. At a time when
electroacoustic and pop music are appearing more frequently in the classroom,
the challenge of teaching timbre as an element of analysis - in conjunction
with melody, rhythm and structure - is facing all Music teachers and is
one which is not currently resourced. In the conventional music classroom
timbral diversity is explained by using literary associations and by making
adjectival comparisons with other instruments. This approach may be adequate
and useful for dealing with music up to the early part of the 20th century.
For an understanding of contemporary composition, however, the area of
timbre has to be placed on a par with notation and history. This project
enables students to explore and manipulate the elements that cause timbral
diversity and allows aural access to the concept of timbre.

top
Curriculum
Addressed
The three strands outlined in
the Leaving Cert Music Syllabus - Listening, Composing and Performing
- are built around the analysis of sound, the combining of sounds and
the production of sound. Having worked through this tutorial a Transition
year Music student will understand why orchestral instruments sound different
from each other, will have experience of sounds that may not have been
experienced before, will have a proper vocabulary to deal with analysis,
will better appreciate the processing of sounds in pop music and will
now consider the use of computer-generated and electronically distorted
sounds as viable ingredients in a musical work. The Leaving Cert Physics
course has a section on Sound and the Biology course includes a study
of the Ear. There are links to sites which deal specifically with these
related topics.
Estimated
class time to complete the project
Probably 8 to 10 forty-minute
classes.

top
Tools
Internet access, headphones,
a reliable MIDI, Wav and mp3 player (downloadable at http://www.winamp.com),
the Scorch plug-in which allows the examples notated on stave to be read
(downloadable at http://www.sibelius.com),
an Audio Editor (Cool Edit trial download at http://www.syntrillium.com
or Goldwave trial download at http://www.goldwave.com),
a printer to run off a set of questions and to print out any of the included
visual examples, a minidisc recorder, minidisc and microphone to record
real world sounds for use in a piece of Musique Concrète. All the
MIDI and Audio examples are short enough to fit on floppy disks should
a student require to work on them offline on another machine. A CD player
is needed for the listening assignments and to play the full versions
of some of the works mentioned. A CD-writer will be needed to record the
Musique Concrète compositions.
The Students
The target audience is post-Junior
Cert students in second-level schools who have had some musical training.
A deliberately non-mathematical approach has been adopted to make the
topic accessible to people who haven't studied Science. Students who would
like aural examples of concepts dealt with in their Physics class will
also benefit from this tutorial. A basic knowledge of computers is all
that's needed.

top
Aims &
Objectives
Present-day musicians are constantly
trying to invent new timbres electronically. It is not possible to discuss
contemporary music without referring to production techniques such as
delay effects - pop musicians deal with synthesis and sound envelopes
in all their studio work. This website aims to broaden the scope of musical
analysis so that teachers and students are no longer confined to the comfort-zone
of pre-20th century works. Students will learn that timbre is influenced
by harmonics, waveforms, the material from which an instrument is made
and the size and shape of the instrument as well as the method by which
it produces its sound. Students will now have an authentically achieved,
first-hand experience of timbre. They will put their knowledge to use
by completing listening and composing assignments and the more courageous
may use their new skills in their own performances.
Care to comment?
Home
|