1.1 Sound and music activities

Introduction

Different musical instruments produce sounds in very different ways, but all of them take advantage of some of the fundamental properties of sound - the physics of sound - to make a variety of interesting and pleasant sounds. You will find here a Strings Activity , Wind Instrument Activity , Percussion Activity , and Resonance Activity , as well as worksheets appropriate for younger students. All of these explore some basic concepts of sound wave physics ( acoustics ) while demonstrating how various musical instruments produce sounds.

Goals and standards

• Goals - The student will develop an understanding of the physical (scientific) causes of musical sounds, and be able to use appropriate scientific and/or musical terminology to discuss the variety of possible musical sounds.
• Music Standards Addressed - National Standards for Music Education standard 8 (understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts)
• Other Subjects Addressed - In encouraging active exploration of the effects of physics on music and musical instruments, these activities also address National Science Education Standards in physical science and in science and technology .
• Grade Level - 3-8
• Student Prerequisites - If younger students are not ready to conduct their own lightly-supervised investigations, these activities should be done as full-classroom demonstrations.
• Teacher Expertise - Teacher expertise in music is not necessary to present this activity. The teacher should be familiar and comfortable with basic acoustics terms and concepts (see Acoustics for Music Theory ).
• Time Requirements - Reserve one (approximately 45-minute) class period for each activity/discussion, and one class period to finish discussions, draw conclusions, do worksheets, and reinforce terms and concepts. If you have a longer period of time and a large area to work in, you may want to set up each experiment as a "work station" and have student groups move from one station to another.

You can do any one or any combination of the activities. While doing them, introduce whichever of the terms and concepts you think will benefit your students. You can either use only the scientific terms, or only the musical terms, or both. To reinforce the concepts and terms with younger students, follow the activities with the worksheets in the Terms and Concepts section below. For older students, present the relevant information from Frequency, Wavelength, and Pitch , Amplitude and Dynamics , and Transverse and Longitudinal Waves , and include the worksheet and handout from Talking About Sound and Music .

Terms and concepts

During or after your activities, introduce the following terms and concepts to the students. Worksheets to help you do this with younger students are available here as PDF files: Terms Worksheet , Matching Worksheet , Answer sheet . (Or you may copy the figures .) With younger students, you may also want to study Sound and Ears . For older students, use the worksheet and handout in Talking About Sound and Music . For more detailed information on this subject, you may also see Talking about Sound and Music , Frequency, Wavelength, and Pitch , Amplitude and Dynamics , Transverse and Longitudinal Waves , Standing Waves and Musical Instruments , Standing Waves and Wind Instruments , or Acoustics for Music Theory . Use the discussion questions during and after the activities to help the students reach conclusions about their investigations.