Jarrett+&+Alex

The importance of this lesson is to have a follow up lesson from the previous “Back to the Highland games!” and focus primarily on the music in the Highlands. By listening to Celtic and Scottish folk music the students and form their own analysis to specific instruments, rhythms used, tempo, melodic phrases, harmony, dynamics, and emotions. After describing our short analysis of songs like Highland Cathedral, Flow of Scotland, and Fionnghuala we will break into pairs and come up with our own Highland folk song and perform it for the class to hear. This lesson can incorporate new terms to a student such as the gaelic language and complex harmonies. While immersing the student(s) in rich complex harmonies, dotted rhythms, percussive instrumentation, and bagpipes!
 * =**Lesson Overview:**=


 * =**Medieval Music by Joan Arnold**=

From the music to the Crusades, to the performances in castles, courts, palaces, and villages, to music in churches and guilds; Medieval Music by Joan Arnold covers the importance through the broad connection, in the expansion of “Back to the Highland games!” of music influence and development in the medieval time period. The strongest connection this book can offer is in the chapter music of the village greens. By displaying the song “Song of The Ass,” made in the 12th century in a play, when the Virgin Mary rode a donkey, the connection draws at the drone accompaniment on the bagpipes. But the great objective Joan Arnold displays is on the last page with a map of the Crusades. Since the Kingdom of England under the leadership of Richard the Lionheart initiated the Crusades, traveled to Jerusalem in an attempt to reclaim the holy land. The connection that can be drawn from this was the influence the English made in the Kingdom of Scotland. During the Crusade the influence of war reflected musical instruments, which helped lead the bagpipes to a militaristic instrument. Overall Joan Arnold does an amazing job at reflecting the importance of the medieval time period with maps, pictures, and traditional sheet music.


 * =**Folk Instruments by Lee Gilmore**=



While this read is a little old with its second printing at 1962, this book offers a concisely extensive overview of the origins, history, development, and organology of several folk instruments. The instruments in question are the fiddle, banjo, guitar, ukulele, mandolin, zither, jeudgtromp, bagpipe, harmonica, and the accordion. While the wealth of information here is quite diverse and useful, the instrument of main concern to our lesson is the bagpipe. The bagpipe's origins were to be as a suitable replacement for other pipe instruments to accommodate for outdoor settings and festivities where it was difficult to hear. This defends the boisterous (and often perceived as offensive-sounding by students) nature of this instrument quite well, unabashedly mentioning that it is an instrument for very festive, or even militaristic occasions--not for symphony orchestra.

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 * =**Web 2.0 Tools Review: JamStudio **=

This program would make a great addition to the lesson because of the hands on activity the lesson offers. Where the students would take the ideas from the analysis in their pairs and compose a simple song using some of those ideas with any modern day instrument Jamstudio.com has to offer. Students can create their own lyrics and melodic lines by using a modern guitar, drums, bass, and piano with preset rhythms. What makes this site even better is as soon as you enter it, the tutorial activates for you so anything that would have to be learned is already there! The only down side to this is to activate more instruments and effects you must pay the subscription. So the lesson would have to strictly provide on the material and instruments that are given to us. Jamstudio provides the change of tempo, meter, chords, and instrumentation, and once you have the order that you want the file can be saved and you can work with it more yourself. This can effectively be seen through the examples Jamstudio provides as people from all over the world use Jamstudio to make their own songs. And from this we can grasp an activity for learning.


 * =**Web 2.0 Tools Review: Solvr**=


 * Solvr**

When I stumbled on this useful site, I became very excited. It's a simple interface that lets you identify problems, pose solutions, and write comments to yourself. While this tool does not actually solve your problems for you, this would be a fantastic tool in any scenario to visually arrange your thoughts in an antecedent and consequent form, allowing for reflection and a better quality of process. "Problems" should not be taken with negative connotations in this situation, but rather as the goal of the process. An example of how this tool could be used in the above analysis and composition can be seen in this example: @http://www.a.freshbrain.com/solvr/d/n7v95zmies This is not complete in any sense, but it gives you an example of how you can record your ideas and consolidate your process into something you can revise, actively think upon, and reflect on at a later time. All links are uniquely generated cryptic URLs, so unless you share the link (like I have done here), no one will be able to see your work--except you. I would recommend the use of this tool not only for this lesson, but for any lesson or project. It can be even used as a tool to sort out the choices you need to make in day-to-day life!

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 * =**Hotlist: **=

This link is to an mp3 of the Highland Cathedral. Performed at a completely different tempo than the previous recording, it can display a much different view of emotions while producing some similar emotions. It also shows majestic landscapes, plants, buildings, and statues that help create and/or embellish emotions.

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This link is a popular tune from Scotland (evidenced by the title of the piece) played by bagpipe solo, called "Scotland the Brave." It is a top contender for the national anthem of Scotland and represents them in the Commonwealth Games.

@http://www.musiclisteningrevision.co.uk/intermediate1/intermediate1index.htm @http://www.musiclisteningrevision.co.uk/intermediate1/learnconcepts.htm

A nice resource for building knowledge and comprehension of various musical concepts with high-quality music examples that exemplify those concepts.

@http://www.contemplator.com/folk.html

Folk music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and America. Also includes tunes, lyrics, information, historical background, and tune-related links.

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Created by Hannah Mathey for a 2nd and 3rd grade level students will be able to analyze music and design their own music to the analysis. The analysis will be formed by reading stories to the students like //Peter and the Wolf//, //The Tortoise and the Hare,// and //The Three Little Pigs//. From this the students will identify the action being told in the story and use instrumentation to compose melodic and rhythmic actions following the story.

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Instead of students making up their own lyrics to the composition of folk songs, this site provides poems created from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and America. Since we want to focus on Scotland themes the site also breaks certain folk text into places of origin and right at the very top there is Scotland! Using these texts provided students can create their own folk song using the analysis from the songs we listened to with instrumentation.