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- Gamelan-style melodic elaboration
Materials and preparation
- If you want the students to understand the cultural background for this activity, introduce the students to
gamelan music in general, and melodic elaboration in particular, before the activity. You may do this by preparing and presenting a lecture on the subject, or by having the students look up the information in
Balinese Gamelan and
Listening to Balinese Gamelan (or other sources). To ensure that the students have grasped the most relevant points, have them complete the
Gamelan Melody Worksheet as a homework assignment, or in class during your presentation.
- If possible, prepare some way to share some
gamelan recordings with the class, or recordings of some performance in which the basic melody is elaborated by adding extra notes (without changing the overall time frame). (Some Western jazz and classical performances would be appropriate.)
- Choose at least one tune that is amenable to elaboration. The type and style of the melody (jazz, blues,
gamelan , folk, classical) will depend on your goals for the class. A simple tune with many long notes works well. Prepare written copies of the basic tune for the students.
- If chord progression information will be useful to the students, write it above the staff on their copies of the tune. If you wish to provide a chordal accompaniment for the tune and the improvisations, have a written accompaniment ready for you or a group of students to play.
- Students will need their instruments. You will need an instrument for demonstration purposes.
- If written composition is included, each student will also need staff paper, pencil and eraser.
Procedure
- Prepare the students for the activity, either by introducing them to gamelan-style melodic elaboration (see
Materials and Preparation ), or by explaining the main principal of this kind of elaboration: adding extra notes to the melody without changing the basic length or outline of the melody.
- Play any useful recordings you have found for them.
- Demonstrate the method of elaboration you are going to ask them to do. Play a short, very simple melody with at least some long notes in it. Play it again, adding some extra notes (in the place of the ends of the long notes) while not changing the rhythmic position of any of the basic melody notes. Answer any questions about the assignment, giving more demonstrations if necessary.
- If the students understand
keys and scales , review the key and scale of your melody and suggest that most added notes should come from the key, particularly at strong downbeats. If you want the results to sound more Balinese, try using a melody with a pentatonic scale, and have the students choose improv notes from the same scale. (See
Listening to Balinese Gamelan .) Note that, for inexperienced improvisers, this may also be significantly easier than improvising within Western functional harmony.
- If the students know the basics of
harmony , review the notes in each chord of the piece, and suggest that these are good notes to add, particularly at strong downbeats.
- For students with less knowledge of music theory, allow them to explore various possibilities, testing which added notes seem to sound best.
- Remind the students that breaking up the longer note into shorter notes of the same pitch (i.e. just elaborating the rhythm) or returning to the melody note after moving away from it is good improvisational technique (in both jazz and
gamelan music).
- If the students are very unfamiliar with improvisation, you may want to have them prepare for the improvisation session by learning the melody and composing several written elaborations on it. If you do this, make it a homework assignment after the explanation and before the improv session. Remind them that the main criterion for this type of elaboration is that the melody notes still begin at the same place in the measure, although many will be cut short to accommodate the added notes. Begin the improv session by having them play their composed elaborations. Then have them turn in the compositions before they begin improvising.
- Students should have instruments at hand and be able to see a copy of the basic tune.
- Have the students play the basic tune together several times.
- Unless the students are already accustomed to improvising, make it clear that listening students may offer encouragement and positive critiques (saying what they like about a performance) only. Depending on the students' maturity level, most of your feedback should also be encouraging rather than critical. Save most negative feedback for instances when the student is not following the rules of the assignment. (Forgetting to include the melody notes, for example.)
- Once the basic tune is familiar, have the students take turns improvising by adding notes to the basic melody. If necessary, remind the students that the basic outline and length of the melody should not change.
- You may also follow the improvisation session with an assignment to write out several composed elaborations on the melody. Allow the students sufficient time, in or outside of class, with access to their instruments, to do the assignment.
Questions & Answers
I'm interested in biological psychology and cognitive psychology
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How can I develope my cognitive domain
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Communication is effective because it allows individuals to share ideas, thoughts, and information with others.
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miss
Every time someone flushes a toilet in the apartment building, the person begins to jumb back automatically after hearing the flush, before the water temperature changes. Identify the types of learning, if it is classical conditioning identify the NS, UCS, CS and CR. If it is operant conditioning, identify the type of consequence positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement or punishment
please i need answer
Wekolamo
because it helps many people around the world to understand how to interact with other people and understand them well, for example at work (job).
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ARC
A child is a member of community not society elucidate ?
Isn't practices worldwide, be it psychology, be it science. isn't much just a false belief of control over something the mind cannot truly comprehend?
compare and contrast skinner's perspective on personality development on freud
Skinner skipped the whole unconscious phenomenon and rather emphasized on classical conditioning
war
explain how nature and nurture affect the development and later the productivity of an individual.
nature is an hereditary factor while nurture is an environmental factor which constitute an individual personality. so if an individual's parent has a deviant behavior and was also brought up in an deviant environment, observation of the behavior and the inborn trait we make the individual deviant.
Samuel
I am taking this course because I am hoping that I could somehow learn more about my chosen field of interest and due to the fact that being a PsyD really ignites my passion as an individual the more I hope to learn about developing and literally explore the complexity of my critical thinking skills
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Jonathan
generally amnesi how long yrs memory loss
interpersonal relationships
What would be the best educational aid(s) for gifted kids/savants?
treat them normal, if they want help then give them.
that will make everyone happy
Saurabh
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Source:
OpenStax, Musical travels for children. OpenStax CNX. Jan 06, 2010 Download for free at http://cnx.org/content/col10221/1.11
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