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Beat is the steady pulse in music. Sometimes you can hear it, but most of the time you feel it. It is what gets your foot tapping when you hear music play. There is some music out there that does not have a beat, but most of the time you can find beat in music. This page includes beat activities as well as other activities such as a timbre (the unique sound of an instrument) activity.
Conduct The Music
Conduct The Music
Pick a song and try to conduct it. Start with your hand above your head and come straight down for beat one. You can experiment with one hand, or the other, or both. Try to find the time signature (how the music is grouped, i.e. four beats, three beats, two beats), and try to conduct that way using the methods below. Have fun with it, and if you need some inspiration you can watch Jonathan here.
Conducting in 4/4 (most common): down, across, out, up.
Conducting in 3/4 (common for waltz like dances): down, out, up.
Conducting in 2/4 (common for marches): down (slight j shape), up.
* extension 1 * try conducting to the style of the music (i.e. smooth, rigid, percussive, etc.)
* extension 2 * try conducting the dynamics of the music (i.e. small for soft, big for loud)
* extension 3 * try using your left hand to cue other instruments that come in at a later time (i.e. cymbal crash)
Instrument Impostors
Instrument Impostors
Jeopardy
Jeopardy
As with the game show on television, there will be five categories (all music related) to choose from with five questions in each category. The five questions in each category are worth a set amount of points (either 100, 200, 300, 400, or 500) and the goal of the game is to get the most points as possible. Points are rewarded for correct answers and points are taken away for incorrect. This game can be played individually or in groups.
In a class setting, I would divide the students into even teams and have them sit in columns. The person in the front row makes a noise on their instrument when they are ready to answer the question. If they do not know it, students on their team can pass the information up the column to the student to answer (kind of like the telephone game). Once a student has had a question, they go to the back of their column and a new student gets to "chime" in.
Beat Monster (Group activity)
Beat Monster (Group activity)
This game is played in a circle with the detective in the middle of the circle.
One student is selected as a detective and closes their eyes or leaves the room. Another student is selected to be the monster who leads the class with patting a beat. Once selected, the monster starts showing the beat somewhere on their body and the class follows. The detective then comes back to try to solve who is the beat monster.
The monster is encouraged to switch to different ways of showing the beat and the class will follow (i.e. patting their legs, touching their shoulders, etc.) The detective tries to find the monster by looking for the student that is changing the beats. The detective gets three tries to find the monster. If the detective finds the monster, then the monster gets to choose the next detective. If the detective does not find the monster, then they get to choose the next detective.
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