The objective of this experience was to spur the students’ composition creativity through a laboratory that exploited the potentialities of the pentatonic scale, among which in particular the possibility, given its nature of a scale lacking well-defined tonal centers, to facilitate the extemporary creation of melodies with one or more parts. The activity began by viewing a video of musician Bobby McFerrin who, with great ability, improvises a double melody built on the pentatonic scale exploiting his movements on stage and using the audience as an actual musical instrument. Subsequently, the students produced, following McFerrin’s example, a rhythmic/ melodic ostinato and a pentatonic melody to be performed in group in front of the class.
In order to carry out the activity, simple Orff instruments were used, both rhythmic and melodic (indefinite pitch percussion instruments, metallophones, descant recorders, etc.) along with body percussion. A sufficiently large space was necessary to allow the various groups of students (each group composed of about 4-5 students) to share their experiences and work with serenity. No type of written production was required, because students normally learn the sequence of notes or rhythms to perform by ear, in a mnemonic way.
The skills, goals and training objectives selected by the teacher for this experience are shown below.
The students learned how to:
- perform in an expressive way vocal and instrumental pieces of different genres and styles, both collectively and individually;
- improvise, reformulate, compose vocal and instrumental pieces, using open structures as well as simple rhythmic-melodic schemes.
Presentazione della buona pratica | Download |
Commenti inseriti