11/01/09 JQU Week #2: Creepy Compositions!
The bands at Josiah Quincy Upper School celebrated Halloween last Friday with “creepy compositions.” Here is the lesson plan I wrote for the day:
All levels:
Objective: Compose a scary movie soundtrack and have some general Halloween fun!
The classes will be broken up into three or four groups and each group will be assigned one of the following kinds of scary movies:
- Suspense/thriller
- Gore
- Murder mystery
- Horror
We’ll discuss some of the musical aspects of scary movie music:
- What makes a suspense soundtrack so suspenseful?
- What happens in the music right before the attacker strikes? Right when he strikes? Right after?
- What about recurring thematic material (introduce leitmotif)? Who could be represented?
- Which instruments could best represent a scream, the victim running, or a zombie approaching?
- What intervals are most unnerving?
- Do we need moments of consonance to make the dissonance even more pronounced?
After these ideas are presented and discussed the groups will be sent off to compose. I’ll circulate between the groups to listen and make suggestions when necessary. When they’re all ready they’ll perform their compositions and discuss what their ideas were and how they tried to portray them in their pieces. I’ll ask the other students what they think could have been better and why (making reference to the aspects we discussed earlier), and have them demonstrate on their instruments. A second, slightly modified version of the composition could then be performed, and we can then ask the class which they liked better.
If there’s class time left we’ll have a dance party! “Thriller,” “The Monster Mash,” etc. Should be fun!
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Although we only got to have a dance party in the final class, I think the students all enjoyed the activity. The high schoolers broke into groups and came up with individual plots to base their compositions on; this worked really well, so I presented the idea to the 8th graders and asked them to write their plots down. This helped them to have something concrete to work from and made the process go much more smoothly. The opportunity to discuss consonance and dissonance, crescendo, and leitmotif all organically presented themselves, so a lot of spontaneous learning occurred.
The 7th graders are a really fun group of kids and, as always, surprised me with their creativity. I took their teacher’s advice and let them remain as one big group for the activity. The class wrote the following “scary movie” plot and composition:
THE VILLAIN: A sinister, masked creature who (while he was still a human) was heartbroken by Britney Spears and, in his anguish, turned into an evil creature who kills with his gaze.
THE VICTIM: Britney Spears.
The plot (and our composition): It’s Halloween night and our villain is trying to find Ms. Spears to take his revenge. He is walking down quiet alleys and asking everyone he sees if they know where Britney is; she wasn’t home and must be at a party. After experimenting with different instruments the class decided that an even, slow, and quiet beat on the drums would best represent him walking down the streets. When they say, “I don’t know,” he raises his mask and they fall into the abyss. Two percussionists play slow, descending glissandi on the vibes and the band watches me carefully for the sforzando attack on a random high note. It was surprisingly chilling. When he finally finds someone who tells him where she is, he spares them and quickly makes his way to the party. The student on the drumset laid down a hip-hop beat to represent the music at the party. Once he makes it to the party he still has to find Britney amongst all the other people their in the noisy house. To build the suspense, the students followed my directions to pulse eighth notes in a crescendo pattern until I gave them the cue for the glissandi and a forte attack each time he raised his mask to a party guest. He finally finds Britney and takes his revenge. A slow, dissonant crescendo following an accellerando until the final forte attack, when he raises his mask and Brittney falls.
They are pretty creative, aren’t they?