Wright-Stuff Music » Arrangement

Year 7 Fairytale Composition Task

admin — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:48:37 +0000

What is it?

Students are to form groups of 3 to 5 and choose a fairytale that I provide.
It can be anything from the Three Little Pigs to, in this case, The Emperor’s New Clothes.
Then, using everything from class percussion, keyboards, guitars, Garageband or Sibelius/Finale, the students are to:

Steps:
1. Choose which main characters/ideas in the story need a theme
2. Describe the SOUND of each theme in words, using the Concepts of Music
3. Once the descriptions have been finalised they move onto experimenting with sounds and melodies
4. Students notate draft copies of their themes onto manuscript
5. Students present the Fairytale via narration and play each theme as the character/idea appears in the story.

I have attached here my Fairytale Composition Task in PDF format

Yr 7 Fairytale Assignment

What I am very excited about is the work of one of my students, who, using Finale Notepad, created some outstanding themes with the help of his group. I have ‘cleaned up’ his MIDI files and presented them below in SIBELIUS format.

Click on this link to see the students’ themes for the “Emperor’s New Clothes”

* Make sure you have the Scorch plug-in installed

TheEmperorsNewClothes

Sibelius Importing – Yo Ho Vocal Round

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 07:28:59 +0000

I am a very big fan of the Muppets and in particular ‘Muppet Treasure Island.’ Hans Zimmer did a great job in writing the score for this film and I am sure it inspired his future masterpieces in ‘Pirates of The Caribbean.’ Watch the video embedded here and note its clever use of the dorian mode and layering of musical textures on top of one-another.

I was asked to write a vocal round for my Orff Course in October this year. I instantly remembered how clever this was and thought my year 7 and 8 boys would like this song. Thanks to Ong Jiin Joo I now have a plug-in that enables me to embed Sibelius 6 scores as scorch files for all to see and download.

Click on this link to see my score with Scorch: YoHoHeaveHo

* Make sure you have SCORCH installed on your computer.

HSC & More Exceptional Student Works

admin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:52:05 +0000

Below are some exemplary work samples by my students that they have created under my instruction.

Some work is group based and while others are based solely on individual initiative.

In each case they have worked hard to achieve the final projects presented here. Please respect their intellectual property

Yr 12

Baby Girl

This is an A Capella composition by a 2007 HSC Music 1 student. We even got to show it to the vocal group Idea of North!

Baby Girl Score BBG Recording

Four For Guitars

This is a piece inspired by Nigel Westlake’s Songs from the Forrest and other Saffire (Australian Guitar Quartet) performances. This is a Music 1 HSC Composition.

Four for Guitars Score FFG Recording

News Team Assemble!

This is again a Music 1 HSC composition with a prime time ‘this just in’ twist.

News Team Assemble Score NTA Recording

Macabre Waltz

This is a HSC Music 1 composition in the style of Danny Elfman. The composer enjoys the darker timbres in his film scores.

Macabre Waltz Score MW Recording

Yr 11

The following three files are student arrangements of popular works for small ensembles. This is a component of my yr 11 program where students develop orchestration and arranging skills.

Day Tripper by the Beatles A Capella

Princess Mononoke for Flute and Guitar Quartet

Muscle Museum by Muse for Distorted Guitar Quartet

Yr 10

Attached is a Sibelius 5 file of Here Comes The Sun arranged by one of my yr 10 students for a contract assignment that was part of her studies in 20th Century Music.

Unzip and then double click on the file. You will need Sibelius 5 to play it.

Yr 9

This following mindmap was devised to help my Yr 9’s revise the work we had covered for their examination. It was created using the free and excellent software mindnode!

Baroque Music Mindmap