Orchestral Disturbance

I stumbled upon this: ‘Modern Toss presents a comedy take on a Classical Music concert’ http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02ysg91

And that it does. It got me thinking that is kind of activity would be excellent to try with classes. Give them the video performance of a piece of music and let them recreate the sounds. They have to think about what might the sound of the instrument they see being played sound like? They also have to respond to an inherent musical discourse that the video shows. They might even judge through visual cues when musical ideas return and this might be something they mimic in their aural recreation. It could develop into an activity where groups film their performance and share this with another group, who then recreate the audio by only responding to what they see. They could then compare the versions. One video performance could lead to many different aural recreations that could encourage plenty of discussion and detailed analysis of the visual cues.

Above all I think it encourages imaginative thinking and anything that pokes fun at something pupils might consider to be ‘serious’ is worth trying. If only to break the ice.