Unit 4

How Do We Express Ourselves?

Lesson 2

Activity

Perfect Harmony: Use Your Imagination

How can you listen to sounds?


In this lesson, you will

  • listen to music
  • read and listen to poetry
  • write your own "musical" haiku poem

Music is a mathematical language that affects emotion. Music uses rhythm, melody (tune), and harmony to send a message to listeners. Music can affect the body, or it can influence the mind.

A very strong beat or rhythm can increase the listener’s heart rate and blood pressure. The body tries to follow the rhythms of the drum for example.

A melody (tune) with an organization or pattern, affects the mind. The mind receives a message by following melodic sound patterns.

Similar to poetry, a melody shows patterns and communicates by repetition, variation (changing the pattern), and by type of sound such as onomatopoeia.


Reader's Notebook

Sounds can be beautiful or explosive

A soft sound uses gentle consonants  f, l, m, n, r, s, w and lots of vowels (a, e, i, o u). A poem with a relaxing message would use soft sounds. Still, silent, moon, roll, shine are soft sounding words.

An explosive sound uses lots of harsh consonants such as b, c, d, k, p, q, t, v, x to get across an active message.  Words such as bomb, guns, bastions, buck are explosive.

In this way, music and poetry work together to use sounds to send a message to the listener who receives the message.
Identify whether the following words are soft or explosive sounds.

  • mash break loll dump crack smile batch beat murmur silent simmer


Explosive
break dump crack batch beat

Soft
mash loll smile murmur silent simmer
How would you categorize the following sounds: as soft or explosive?

  • Short, choppy sounds 
  • Long gliding sounds
  • Beeping sounds
  • Car horn sounds
  • Tapping or pounding sounds
  • Low sounds
  • High sounds
  • Short, choppy sounds are explosive sounds.
  • Long gliding sounds are smooth and soft sounds.
  • Beeping or horns are harsh sounds.
  • Tapping or pounding are harsh sounds.
  • Low sounds – make the listener think of a large object and can be soft such as a whale or explosive such as thunder or a noisy rumbling machine
  • High sounds – make the listener think of a small object and can be pleasant such as a soft songbird bird or icicles or annoying such as a whining mosquito

Activity

Sounds that name the sound they make are called onomatopoeia. Buzz, bang, rustle, or slap are onomatopoeia words.


One of the onomatopoeia words has been bolded for you in the poem below. Can you identify the second?

OURCHESTRA from Shel Silverstein's Book, Where the Sidewalk Ends

So you haven’t got a drum, just beat your belly.
So I haven’t got a horn—I’ll play my nose.
So we haven’t any cymbals—
We’ll just slap our hands together,
And though there may be orchestras
That sound a little better
With their fancy shiny instruments
That cost an awful lot—
Hey, we’re making music twice as good
By playing what we’ve got!

Did you identify the word slap?

Beethoven's Bird
The famous Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony uses onomatopoeia because it mimics the three note tune of the Ortolan bunting song bird. It repeats the bird song all the way through the piece. The first part of this clip helps you compare the bird and the notes Beethoven used. You only need to listen to the first five seconds of the clip.




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