school closure plans

Musical instruments

During the two weeks that you will be at home you should do some research on traditional instruments from the country you are from, or the country you have chosen for your restaurant for IPC.

You should find one instrument from the string, percussion and wind families (three in total). Please find a video online or a recording your family has and listen to the sound each one makes. Write a few sentences about each instrument. Use one paper for each instrument in the string, wind and percussion group. (click on each group to get the paper)

Parents, please take a photo of each finished paper and upload them to this folder.

Songs for the IPC restaurants

The next assignment as announced to the students is learning a song for the restaurant of their IPC unit. Different groups of students should learn different songs in different languages.

Here is the list of the restaurant groups. I’ve linked documents with the lyrics for each song. Students should start learning the first verse (I’ve made them bold). I’ve also made voice recordings of these parts where I sing slowly for them to practice. Recordings for the rest of their songs are being made in the upcoming days.

The teacher will help students with the pronunciation in the online class.

Woodwind instruments 28.04

In this group of wind instruments there are 7 basic instruments, and a couple more that are a larger version of one of the basic ones. All of them work in the same way, you need to blow in them, the air inside vibrates and makes a sound.

1. Piccolo 2.Flute 3.Clarinet 4.Saxophone 5.Oboe 6.English horn 7.Bassoon

Mouthpieces

The way that the woodwind instruments work is basically the same, you blow air, it vibrates in the tube, and by opening the holes with your fingers you control the pitch. The thing that makes difference in quality of the sound is the way that the vibrations start. There are 3 different types of mouthpieces that start the vibrations - open hole (flute and piccolo), single reed (clarinet and saxophone) and double reed (oboe, English horn and bassoon). As we know, vibrations are what makes a sound. This is the scientific part of music :)

The way that an open hole mouthpiece works is that you need to blow air on a specific angle so that part of it goes out of the bottle, and part of it starts to vibrate inside. This is like when you blow in a bottle, if you blow directly, it doesn’t make a sound, but if you find the angle for blowing it makes a nice sound. The more space there is for the air, the deeper the sound. So, if you fill the bottle with some water, it will make a higher pitch, the more water, the less space for the air, so the higher pitch.

The way that a double reed mouthpiece works is just like the straw experiment. When you cut out the corners of a plastic straw so that it has a nice pointy end and blow the two sides of the straw bounce against each other and start a vibration for the air. The rest of the sound qualities is up to how many holes you have open.

The way that the single reed mouthpiece works is that there is one piece of reed that vibrates against a fixed part of the instrument. This is like when you put a piece of paper (that will vibrate) against a thicker object (a cardboard or plastic). The piece of paper will be the thing that starts the vibration so that a sound can be produced.

Here is the video I said you can watch with some lovely classical music examples, and a nice explanation of how the woodwinds work.

Students need to complete a Worksheet for woodwind instruments in google classroom.

Brass instruments 12.05

In the orchestra there is a wind group of instruments that are called the brass group. They are made of metal and work differently from the woodwind instruments and make a different sound.

There are 4 basic instruments in this group:

1. Trumpet
2. French horn
3. Trombone
4. Tuba

Here is a photo of the whole brass family.

All of them have parts that are similar: a mouthpiece - the part where you blow the air, a long tube (some have a very long tube), and a bell at the end where the sound comes out from. For all of these instruments the player needs to blow in a special way, to make a buzzing sound with their lips.

The way that you change the pitch on these instruments is not by opening and closing holes like the woodwinds, it’s by making the pipe longer. On three of the instruments (trumpet, fr.horn and tuba) there are 3 keys that when you press them they open an extra pipe which makes the whole instrument longer. On the trombone you can make the pipe longer by moving the slide into a different position.

The pipe on the instruments is curved so the whole instrument is not too big. If you make it straight - the French horn is 5 meters, and the tuba goes up to 7 meters long. The trumpet is the smallest so it makes the highest sounds and the tuba is the longest so it makes the lowest sounds.

Here is a video how they sound one by one.

Here is a video of what they sound like as a group.

Here are the mouthpieces for the brass instruments. Each instrument has a different size of mouthpiece, The can be more like a cup or more like a funnel but basically are the same.

Water keys are an important part of the brass instruments. When the player blows in a wind instrument, the air that goes inside has moist, so the tiny water drops start to appear inside the pipe, and when they connect the turn into bigger drops that affect the sound. That is why every now and then performers need to shake the instrument a bit with the water key open, so that the water drops come out. You can watch this video to see how it works on a trumpet.

Another interesting thing about brass instruments is that a performer can use different types of mutes (objects) that you put inside the bell to change the sound. You can watch this video to hear the difference in the sound when the player uses a different mute for the same melody.

Students need to complete a Worksheet for brass instruments in google classroom.