Topic title: Instruments of the Orchestra
Year group: 7
When taught: February half term – May half term
What are we learning?
• How to identify which instruments belong in each family of the orchestra
• Continuing to develop our skills with notation identification, keyboard skills and singing.
• Beginning to identify the individual instruments of the orchestra by sight and sound.
• Identifying how each family of the orchestra produce sound.
• How to compose a typical fanfare and a leitmotif.
Why is this important to know?
• Pupils will need to be able to identify instruments and the types of music they are used for both for them to be able to listen to appreciate classical music, but also the film music and advertising worlds. Music is often used to manipulate emotions of the listeners and beginning to decode this language and use it in their own compositions helps pupils to be more knowledgeable about our musical world.
• Pupils will have the opportunity to try a range of instruments from across the orchestra. This will help them understand how each instrument produces sound, but also offers them the opportunity to see if they like any of these instruments and may want to take learning them further. How can you know if you want to play an instrument until you’ve seen, heard and held one?
• Pupils continue
• Being able to express yourself by playing and writing music is a fundamental skill that we have used to relate to one another throughout human history. Learning to express your emotions and share that with others begins with performance and composition.
Where does this link into our past and future learning?
• Building on skills from previous topics, we aim to make the skill of playing melodic ideas on the keyboard progressively more automated which is why this skill is included though out each of our topics. In this topic we play Pachelbel’s canon whilst we look at the string family, famous leitmotifs for the woodwind family and fanfares for the brass family. The pieces we have played until this point have been mainly conjunct and keep our hand in one position, we now need to think about leaps between notes and moving our hand to achieve these.
• Pupils will sing in this topic as they have in our previous ones building up knowledge of the orchestra, alongside holding their own part in small groups textural countermelodies.
• Keyboard skills and vocal skills are our main instruments for development throughout key stage 3 allowing pupils to develop these skills step by step to prepare them for being able to access and play music in key stage 4 and beyond, and in their own personal lives.
• Our next topic is Gamelan music we are going to be creating ensemble performances both vocally and using percussion and pitched instruments. We also use these skills to make our own effective compositions. Focusing on building effective melodies and using interesting textures we use the skills in performance and composition that we have built in our learning about the orchestra and our previous topics.
• In Year 8 will build on our skills of performance and composition with layering parts such as basslines chords and melodies. We work on these skills one at a time through year 7 with those pupils who are ready to combine skills earlier taking on some of these challenges in year 7.
• In year 8 we explicitly learn about film music where pupils will use orchestral instruments to create pieces.
• This topic continues to use MADTSHIRT and builds in specific vocabulary as described below to help describe each of the elements of music in more detail.
How will we be assessed on this topic?
• This topic is practically assessed on the composition of their fanfare.
• It is also tested with a listening and appraising test covering the key vocabulary from this topic along with identifying notes on the score and on the keyboard. In the listening section it focuses on identifying orchestral instruments by listening to them.
• Please see the attached vocabulary and assessment sheet for more information.
What makes a strong piece of work in this topic? What are teachers hoping to see?
• Being able to create an eight-bar fanfare composition following the specific rules for an effective fanfare as described on the topic and assessment sheet attached.
• Being able to aurally identify instruments from the woodwind, brass and strings families.
• Please see the attached documents for more information.
What key words are there in this topic?
What can I try if I want to stretch and challenge myself on this topic?
• Borrow pieces from the extension library – these are pieces you can use to practice your playing more and building your skills. Feel free to take these home, come and use the keyboards to practice in music tech or book a practice room to work more on your skills.
• Find some pieces you would like to learn to play. Look up the name of the piece with the word ‘chords’ afterwards. Can you try to play these chords along to a recording or to accompany yourself. Use the formulas for working out major chords (starting note +4 +3) and minor chords (starting note + 3 + 4) to work out the notes you need to play these.
• Listen to music that uses instruments from the orchestra. This can be classical music, film music or even music from video games. Can you identify the instrument playing the main melody? Can you identify any other instruments you can hear? Now google the instruments in the piece – were you right?
What wider reading can be done on this topic?
• Use dsokids.com to listen to the instruments of the orchestra individually and playing in their groups.
• Google BBC Instruments of the Orchestra or follow this link. Listen to and get to know features of each instrument:BBC Bitesize
Continuing with other music skills
• Signing up for Duolingo music. This is free and can be used on any touchscreen device. This teaches notation reading, rhythming reading and keyboard skills, along with performing in time.
• Using the games on musictechteacher.com to help with learning the notes on the keyboard and stave.
• Music Learning Community
• Musictheory.net
• Teoria.com
• Tonesavvy.com
Supporting document/links:
Instruments of the orchestra keywords and assessment document
Support sheet for KS3 books
