Styles

My year 11 and 12 styles class are composing.

My year 12 boy is meant to be composing some serious Classical music. He is having a good time with the technology; it won't let him save his work. He also thinks that if he smiles sweetly enough and plays it fast enough I won't know that he is wasting my time! I am his growling captor - "have you done anything today?" is my usual cry to him......

He has a few Classical thoughts in the music - dynamic use, form, instrumentation etc but he is much more of your Baroque inspired chickens. He likes scalic runs in his music. He also likes to free compose. When I then tried to introduce some Twentieth Century composing ideas to him he freaked out completely. Who knew that the boy actually despises dissonance! He also can't cope with very jagged melodies with pounding accompaniment.

I am trying get him to move his description of music from "it's nice" to something that is quite objective and uses language well. He didn't do this subject last year! AARGH! This subject is like Literature is to English. It is assumed that you have a foundation in language before you begin! When he writes me something it is so subjective with no objective foundation it makes it almost impossible for me to write any coherent responses for him!
enough about him.

The year 11's on the other hand are composing music for a group of Television commercials. They have each picked an age group and a style that they want to compose in. From this they are then making their composition appropriate to their selection and the chain store they are 'working' for. As a group, they came up with the chain store. It was based on the stage bands tour last year. When they told me about it, I laughed and laughed. We are using Garage band to complete it! You should hear the talking/singing that they are recording!

I love this part of my job - working with the kids on their creative development. They get to play with so many options and I get to bounce some ideas with them!

Yesterday I told this class that I was going to hand them over to my next student teacher. I will be in the classroom working closely with my Year 12 student while she teaches my Year 11s. One classroom and two different courses....

I really hope she is better than my last one!