The grain of the voice
The proposal was developed following several activities conducted during academic years 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 at the Comprehensive Institute 9 of Bologna, the lower secondary school Il Guercino, in cooperation with two Music teachers of the Institute, prof. Roberto Agostini and prof. Diana Ligue Denis. It was therefore addressed to second and/or third year lower secondary students and was an interdisciplinary Italian literature-Music laboratory activity, aimed at enabling different groups of students within the same class to work together, or even more extended interclass groups.
On the basis of the objective of the educational path, each group of students produced an original audio track (e.g. mp3) developed by putting into music or by voicing a spoken text, on the model of a brief podcast or audiobook, starting from the listening of several historical examples related to Pop and Rock music of the past years, and especially to contemporary music (in particular, the radio play genre).
The entire activity was structured according to various stages that ranged from writing the text to be interpreted to the recording of its vocal reading, from the editing and cutting of the recorded track to its voicing or putting into final music. In order to realize the spoken text, a single student’s voice can be used or those of several students.
Work tools
The teacher needs:
- an IWB or a projector with loudspeakers or at least a computer
- access to the Internet
- an online platform in order to share materials, instructions and possible tutorials prepared by the teacher (for example platforms such as Moodle or Google Classroom, or similar)
- a monodirectional microphone (such as Zoom, or similar).
The students needs:
- at least one computer for each group of students (even better if portable and self-charged)
- access to the Internet and to specific online resources: Google suite and soundtrap.com (online software that, when necessary, can be added to the Google account of each student, personalizing the set of Apps at disposal)
- headphones or earphones (the ideal is a set for each student)
- double-ended minijack-minijack (in order to connect all the headphones or earphones at disposal in each group)
The spaces needed are:
atelier, open space, augmented classrooms and/or with movable and modular furniture; in general, any space capable of hosting a laboratory activity for small groups of students (3 or 4 students per group), possibly different from a frontal learning environment.
The time needed is:
about 10 hours in class, with a part possibly dedicated to training for the use of Google Suite and Soundtrap
Educational purposes
The skills, goals and training objectives selected by the teacher for this experience are shown below.
- Listening
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- Sound perception
- Analysis
- Production
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- Reading and Writing
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- Use of unconventional analogic music notation
Lower secondary school
- Listening
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- Understands and evaluates events, materials, and musical works recognising their meanings, also in relation to his/her own musical experience and the different historical/sociological context.
- Production
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- Capacity to conceive and create music and multimedia messages, also though improvisation or collective elaboration processes, using also IT tools, in critical confrontation with models belonging to the musical heritage
- Reading and Writing
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- Using different notation systems functional to reading, analysis and reproduction of pieces of music
Moreover, in line with the educational objectives to be achieved by the end of the first cycle of education, the students participating in the project learned how to: 1. participate actively in the realization of musical experiences; 2. use different notation systems functional to the reading, analysis and production of musical pieces; 3. plan and realize, also through collective formulation processes, musical and multimedia messages, conducting a critical comparison with models belonging to the musical patrimony, using also digital systems. In particular, the project mainly aimed to develop musical competences in a digital environment of collective composition, owing to the use of sound editing software in Cloud modality and with sharing functions (soundtrap.com), using writing and midi processing instruments.
Further musical competences were developed within the scope of sound recording techniques, in particular the recording of the human voice, with regard both to singing and speaking.
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