Playing with the 'Minimalist' style...



The class's 'Short Ride' notations

Contributor: Nicky Watling,
Primary Music Consultant and Kate Warland

School: A school in Hampshire

Year:5

Piece: Short Ride in a Fast Machine, John Adams

Media: video of pupils performing their 'minimalist' composition

CLICK HERE to watch!

This piece was used because the current classroom topic was 'Fairgrounds'.



Introducing a 'Minimalist' style:

• We listened to the music, responded to the steady beat and identified the instruments being played.
• We found out about minimalist music and experimented with creating our own minimalist style music using Garage Band on iPads and acoustically as a class.
• We then composed and rehearsed our own piece of minimalist “short ride” music – we notated this on big paper and rehearsed it before recording our performance.  

Outcomes:

• We learnt about minimalist music and how to layer rhythmic patterns
• We found out how to change from one section in the music to the next accurately and smoothly.
• We learnt how to rehearse and improve our performance until it was “the best it could be”.

Challenges:

• Concentrating all the time and ensuring that all the different parts were performed at the same speed

    

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