National Music Centre Field Trip

Yesterday, we went to the National Music Centre in Studio Bell. The first thing we did was listen to one of the guides, Cam, play the Kimball Theater Organ. The organ had different instruments like drums, flutes, and more! When he played the organ, he played the Star Wars song, the 20th Century Fox intro, and demonstrated other sounds it could make.

After Cam played the organ, he gave us a sheet that said it was a scavenger hunt to see how many points we could collect. We had time to explore the galleries. We got to play instruments like a piano, acoustic, bass and electric guitars, drums, a tuning rod, a violin, a stand-up bass, and an accordion. One room had a whiteboard where you could make up a futuristic instrument. We could also listen to instruments being played and you could listen to something you created. Lots of people wanted to try the sound box where you could sing along into a microphone.

We did a program where we had to make a song. One of the songs we made was where we had to say our pets' names. At first, it was just "Snoopy....Snoopy...Snoopy..." Then, we said more names until he sounded like a crazy mess of noises. Cam was trying to teach us about patterns and that our brains like patterns. That is consonance in music, when things fit into a pattern or when sounds are the same pitch or in tune. Dissonance in music sounds "annoying" to us. It sounds like too much of a mess for our brains to predict what's going to come next.

Cam played us a song. We had to make sentences that rhymed in the same pattern as the song: ABCB. Three of the sentences needed to have 7 syllables. The last one needed to have 8. Having 8 syllables in the last sentence makes people want to listen more because it makes it interesting. The pattern has dissonance so that will make people's brains want to listen more because the 8 doesn't belong there.

An interesting side note is that from the National Music Centre window, we could see three people's public art projects: I's walking animated figures, Sophia's upside-down church, and Charlotte's bloom structure. On the ride home, we passed more: Isla's giant head (Wonderland), Abby's Famous Five, D's BUMP mural, other BUMP murals, and we saw the Mustard Seed.

Community Walk: Esker Foundation

Yesterday, we went on a Community Walk to the Esker Foundation in Inglewood.

We learned about two different artists who are on display right now at Esker. The first was Jeffrey Gibson, a New York-based Indigenous artist. The t-shirts were really pretty but you weren't allowed to touch them. They said words on them. The messages expressed feelings about his culture, like "I'm me," "She chooses their family," "She played with fire," "She makes music as magick," "They fight for clean water," "She growls like a lion." They each had a matching drum that had the same words as the t-shirt. On Saturday, October 19 at 3:00, there will be a performance art piece using these garments and the corresponding drums.

Chantal is a Metis musician. She told us to sit in a circle. She sang to us. Then, she gave us a drum and we followed the pattern. She made the drums herself out of hides: buffalo, elk, deer, moose. One of the songs was about the bear and how we can learn from the bear (like not eating fish that will make us sick). One song was about a chickadee. We can learn to slow down and listen when we're talking. The chickadees have conversations where one sings, then there's a pause, then the other responds. The last song was about finding our voice. If we make our own noise, people will know that it's us so it's about finding who you are. We got to yell at the end in our own way. She told us a story about her Kookum (Grandma in Cree).

The second artist we learned about was Nep Sidhu, a Toronto-based Indian artist. This sculputre is a gravestone because in the Golden Temple in India, a riot started and many people were hurt and killed. He is honouring them through this memorial. The artist brought a bag of soil from the temple, and a bag of soil from Toronto, where he's from, and mixed it with dirt from Calgary to represent his story. 

If you're interested in spending more time in Esker, they offer free family programs the third Sunday of each month.

Musical Patterns

Today we watched a video on how to play a djembe. We practiced bass and open hits as well as muted and slaps. We drummed along with a video with different rhythmic patterns.

Next, we broke into groups and made up our own patterns. We wrote down our patterns so that we could remember and follow them. Our patterns needed to be 8 beats long and we needed to repeat it 4 times. This links to the work we've been doing in Math on Patterning.

Then, we performed our patterns for the class! We will be drumming tomorrow at the Esker Foundation.