Kamien: Music an Appreciation, 8th Edition
Multimedia Companion CD-ROM
A Guide for Instructors
Paper is marvelous technology. It is accessible, durable, and portable. It is, however, a silent and motionless medium. In contrast, the study of music is filled with sound and motion. The Multimedia Companion CD-ROM contains sound and motion activities to help students better understand the Kamien text and appreciate the music they are studying. This document will guide you through the many resources in the Kamien Multimedia Companion CD-ROM and provide suggestions for how you can use this valuable tool in your teaching.
Figure 1 Opening Screen of the Multimedia Companion CD-ROM
Getting Around the CD
Insert the CD-ROM into your Macintosh or Windows computer. If the software does not auto-run, double-click the “Start_Here” icon to begin. The software will display a licensing agreement the first time it is run on a given computer. Dismiss the licensing agreement to see the opening screen pictured in Figure 1. You can navigate among the pages using the links on the left side of the browser window.
Speed Tip:
If you have room on your hard drive, consider copying all the files from the CD-ROM into a single folder on your hard drive. Then use Internet Explorer 5.5 or later or Netscape 7 to open the file frames.htm found in the media folder and make a bookmark in your browser. Now you can demonstrate the CD-ROM at any time without the CD-ROM in the drive. The audio, animations, and video will load very quickly when all the files are stored on your hard drive.
Overview
Read through the INTRODUCTION to become familiar with the contents of the CD-ROM. Take a look at the HELP AND FAQ section to learn all about the system requirements and run the browser check program to make sure your Web browser is up-to-date and has the necessary plugins to use the CD-ROM. Notice that two of the menus, the ELEMENTS OF MUSIC… and CONCERT-GOER’S GUIDE…, both end with an ellipse (…). That indicates that these menus open up to show more options when you click them. When you click on any menu item, new content loads in the right frame of the Web browser. The upper right corner of the Web browser will always show the title of the current page. /Figure 2 Elements Menu
Speed Tip:
The page title in the upper right corner of the top frame is more useful than you may realize. Click it anytime you wish to scroll back up to the top of the page you are viewing.
ELEMENTS OF MUSIC
The ELEMENTS OF MUSIC section contains subsections for sound, rhythm, melody, harmony, key, texture, form, and music notation. Each subsection ends with one or more quizzes of between 5 and 14 questions in length. At the beginning of each quiz, the student enters his or her full name. The quiz questions are unusual in that they provide detailed feedback to the students regarding why an answer is correct or incorrect. These quizzes are teaching tools and not mere drills or assessments. At the end of each quiz the student will see a “Printer Friendly” button. Students should click this button to view and print their quiz results. You may wish to require that students hand these in to you to make sure they are reviewing all the content in the Elements of Music section.
Sound:
Sound page 1 discusses the roles of sound and silence in our lives. The famous work 4'33", for any instrument or instruments, by the American avant-garde musician, John Cage is mentioned as one way to direct the listener’s attention to the power of silence and reveal the often unnoticed sounds that exist all around us. Perhaps you might wish to begin one of your classes by standing at the lecture podium for a few minutes in complete silence. After a time, ask the class to discuss some of the things they heard during your “performance” and some of the thoughts that passed through their minds. Art of all kinds often uses the element of shared experience. This type of activity can foster a discussion about how sound and silence influences human emotion and behavior.
Sound page 2 introduces the basic theory of sound. Students can click the play button to view a simple animation showing the impact of sound waves on the ear and mind of a listener. Notice the volume controller on the lower left side of this activity. You will see a similar volume controller on many of the activities. Just click the + and – signs on the volume controller to change the volume.
Figure 3 Sound Waves Activity
Sound pages 3 through 5 introduce the concept of high and low in pitch. Students can click the play buttons on the animations to hear a familiar tune while the movements of a red notehead and arrow over notation show the contour of the melody. This animation can serve as a model for classroom activities on the topic of high and low pitch and melody contour.
Teaching Idea:
Play a phrase from a familiar tune like “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” and ask the class to use a piece of graphing paper to write the words and draw the melodic contour they hear. This activity actually mimics the early development of music notation where the contour of a melody was expressed as neumes over the text of a familiar chant. On Sound page 5, when the concept of intervals is introduced, you can use graphing paper and contour lines once again to help students understand relative distances among pitches.
Figure 4 Highness and Lowness Activity
Sound page 6 contains a solfege activity. Students can click the notes on the staff or keys on the on-screen keyboard to hear solfege syllables sung. For an even more interactive experience, students can play the notes by typing the number keys 1 – 8. This activity helps students relate notation to what they hear by associating the familiar (a voice singing a scale) with the unfamiliar (a keyboard and notes on a staff).
Figure 5 Solfege Activity
Sound page 7 presents the student with the first of many interactive keyboard animations. This one helps students understand intervals and scales. The C Major scale is shown in three color-coded octaves and the animation plays the complete range while highlighting each white key.
Figure 6 Keyboard Activity
The next interactive animation is found on sound page 10. Students can click on any dynamic marking to change the volume of a short excerpt of a Bach cello suite. To experience gradual changes in volume the students can click and hold the mouse on the crescendo and decrescendo symbols. There are certainly musical distinctions between dynamics and volume. Most changes in dynamics, for example, also involve changes in articulation and tone quality on most instruments. Even so, a simple example like this can help bridge the gap between the familiar volume controls students use on their CD players and the unfamiliar terms and concept of dynamics in music.
Figure 7 Dynamics Activity
Sound pages 12 and 13 introduce the concept of tone color. On page 13 there is a tone color mixer to allow students to experiment with different combinations of synthesized tone colors. Each of the six audio files uses the same melody with the same timing and articulations. In this way the concept of tone color is learned in isolation from the many other qualities and nuances of expression typically heard in an instrumental performance.
Figure 8 Tone Mixer Activity
Teaching Idea:
Combine the Tone Mixer Activity with classroom demonstrations of acoustic instruments or recordings of solo instrumental performances. Does the English Horn sound more like a horn or an oboe?
Sound Quiz 1: Pitch, Dynamics, and Tone Color
This quiz has 14 questions and covers vocabulary and concepts related to sound. At the end of this and every quiz, students should click the “Printer Friendly” button to view and print a summary of their quiz results to hand in to you.
Sound Quiz 2: Pitch Discrimination
This quiz has 10 questions that drill the concepts of higher, lower, unison, and octave. For each question, the student clicks a speaker button to hear two tones. They must then identify the relationship of the second pitch to the first. Is it higher, lower, unison, or octave?
Rhythm:
Rhythm page 1 discusses the role of rhythm in our lives and relates rhythm to the natural cycles and pulsations of nature.
Rhythm page 2 introduces the concept of beat and contains a fun, interactive animation to help students learn to perform a steady beat. Students can click the play button to see and hear the claves and then type the ‘s’ key to play the rhythm sticks in time with the claves.
Teaching Idea:
The steady beat activity on Rhythm page 2 is one of many activities on this CD-ROM that promote active learning through aural and kinesthetic participation. Singing, listening, and moving in rhythm are fundamental to music learning at any age.
Figure 9 Steady Beat Activity
On Rhythm pages 3 and 4 the beat and groupings of the beat are shown graphically and in motion while students listen to the first 6 measures of “My Country ‘tis of thee.” On page 4, for example, click the play button and count the beats as the tune is played. While students view this animation, point out the appearance of the arrow on the divisions of the beat. The graphics and animation help to illustrate the triple meter structure of the piece. On pages 5 and 6, similar activities illustrate duple, quadruple, and sextuple meter (compound duple).
Figure 10 Triple Meter Activity
Teaching Idea:
Distribute copies of the lyrics of a few familiar tunes in the public domain. Ask the students to create their own charts in a style similar to the ones on Rhythm pages 3 through 6. Students can present their charts to the class and use body movements to demonstrate their understanding of meter.
Rhythm page 7 demonstrates accent and syncopation using an animation with sound.
Figure 11 Syncopation Activity
On Rhythm page 8 there is a tapping activity. This activity demonstrates common Italian tempo terms by relating them to something every college student understands (coffee). Students can click the play button to hear a song and tap the beat using the shift key. As the student taps the beat, the tempo marker indicates the student’s tempo. Students can use the popup menu to select different tempos. Another way to use this activity is to click the stop button to turn off the sound then have the student tap in time with their heart beat of some other regular pulse heard in their environment. The idea here is to use this tool to help students develop a sensitivity to tempo and the vocabulary to describe it.
Figure 12 Tempo Activity
Rhythm Quiz: The rhythm quiz has 8 questions covering rhythm terms and concepts. There are also a few questions with audio examples to test how well students identify meter, accent, and syncopation.
Melody:
Melody page 1 introduces fundamental concepts of melody such as melodic line, curve, steps, and leaps. Page 2 discusses expression and phrasing in melody. On pages 3 and 4, a familiar melody is illustrated with interactive animations that allow students to play the two phrases alone or in sequence. The measures highlight as the tune plays. Melody pages 5 through 8 contain similar activities to help students learn about melodic form, phrasing, and melodic sequences.
Figure 13 Phrase Activity
Melody Quiz:
The melody quiz contains 10 questions that cover terms and concepts related to melody.
Teaching Idea:
Print the melodies found on Melody pages 4 through 7. Use a rote procedure to teach these simple melodies to the class. Distribute the printed melodies to your students along with transparency sheets and magic markers. Ask the students to draw a line on each transparency to connect the noteheads of the music notation. Take the transparencies to the projector and show them to the class. See if the class can recognize the melodies from their contours.
Harmony:
Harmony page 1 introduces the concepts of harmony and chord and includes an activity that allows students to easily compare two different harmonies applied to the same melody.
Figure 14 Harmony Activity
Harmony page 4 describes the triad. An activity allows students to create many different triads, see them in notation, and hear them both melodically and harmonically.
Figure 15 Triad Activity
Teaching Idea:
Distribute a worksheet showing the note names of the Tonic, Dominant, and Subdominant chords in C Major. Ask students to create triads using the Triad Activity on Harmony page 4 and the note groupings from your worksheet.
Harmony page 5 introduces the all-important dominant-to-tonic progression. An activity allows students to view the solfege syllables and highlights the tones of each chord as the progression plays.
Figure 16 Dominant-Tonic Activity
The activity on page 6 helps students understand how chords are made up of individual notes. The notes of a chord are played in the context of a melody and then played together as a chord. Students can view the chord as it appears in notation and on a piano keyboard.
Figure 17 Broken Chord Activity
Harmony page 7 contains an activity to demonstrate how harmony can bring even a somewhat static melody to life. Students can click the play button to hear a famous Chopin prelude. They can pause, rewind, fast forward, stop, and change volume. The animation highlights the measures and displays the measure numbers to help students study the harmony while they listen.
Figure 18 Static Melody and Harmonization Activity