From sounds to signs

A multidisciplinary activity based on music listening activities and graphic production

by LORIANO BLASUTTA
    School sections
    • Upper secondary school
    Educational subjects
    • Music and…

From sounds to signs

The project originated from the need to promote the active listening of a musical event. Too often, in fact, music is perceived as a background and, in my experience as teacher, I have noticed that it is not always simple to accustom the students to active listening.

One of the most important reasons for organizing this activity concerned the desire to stimulate the active and careful listening of a music event. I believe that attention is stimulated when associating music with images. Of course, such association is not exhaustive. Therefore, I illustrated the basic structure of a piece of music to the students, even through a Power Point presentation. By combining the sensorial experience with the knowledge of the structure, the students had the possibility to listen to the piece with full knowledge of the facts, and consequently to face the assessment activity (creation of a graphic product) with confidence.

The realization of the project was successful, as the majority of the students showed interest and participation, probably even due to the novelty of conducting music lessons in a non-curricular context.

Work tools

In order to realize the project, the following instruments were necessary:
- Personal Computer
- Interactive Whiteboard
- Loud speakers

The material consisted in a presentation of Bolero realized with slides, various videos (Toccata and Fugue from Fantasia, Bolero performed by Wiener Philarmoniker), various pdf files and images, projected with the IWB (extracted from the score of Bolero, list of musical instruments and their sequence throughout the piece, illustrations of the main musical instruments used by Ravel), a simple percussion instrument useful to provide the students with a practical illustration of the rhythmic ostinato at the basis of the piece.

The students, in turn, used drawing paper, rulers, squares, compasses, and various types of crayons, felt-tipped pens, tempera colors.

Everything was carried out in a quite large classroom, so as to allow the students to realize their products in a comfortable way.

Educational purposes

The skills, goals and training objectives selected by the teacher for this experience are shown below.

Competences
    Listening
    • Sound perception
    • Interpretation
    • Analysis
    • Comprehension
    Production
    • Composition
GOALS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMPETENCES [...]
    Lower secondary school
    Listening
    • 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
    • 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
    • Integrating one’s own music experience with other knowledge and practices using appropriate codes and codification systems
Educational targets

- Comprehension of the basic structures of a musical composition.
- Make the students aware that a musical composition is actually constructed on the basis of a well-defined project and following consistent logics.
- Verify that the students have understood the logic of a musical composition and are capable of translating such constructive logics into a graphic expression.
- Understand and evaluate events, materials, pieces of music recognizing their meanings, even with regard to one’s personal musical experience and to the different historical-cultural contexts.
- Know how to analyze the formal and structural aspects inherent musical events.
- Know how to translate the formal structures and emotions stirred up by music into graphic language.
- Understand that a musical composition, although being the result of the composer’s inspiration and imagination, is nonetheless constructed according to precise rules that provide style homogeneity, formal consistency and elegance.

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