...and the living is easy....

If you don't know where that's from, you might be here because you're an Ontario teacher that's been told you're teaching music in September. If you do know where it's from, awesome! I hope you stick around anyway!

It's from "Summertime" by George Gershwin). Don't confuse it with the 1991 hit by DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (AKA Will Smith). The legendary Ella Fitzgerald needs to be listened to. This is actually a great song if you do a lesson on covers in different genres. It's been covered by many, many artists including a mainstream artist your students might know, Lana Del Rey.

I often read or talk with music teachers that do a cover song project. It's a popular project for teachers without music experience. However, it tends to get treated more like an English assignment than a music assignment. That's understandable, if the teacher doesn't know the difference between monophony and polyphony, or allegro and accelerando. If the students are going to get anything musically meaningful from an assignment like this, they need to have the background knowledge, or learn it as part of the assignment. 

It doesn't have to be intense and scary. It can be covered in 1 to 2 lessons, depending on how much musical knowledge the students have. In Ontario, there are 6 elements of music listed in the curriculum: 

We use these elements to understand, describe, compare, compose, perform music. Think of these like the parts of speech used in English class (noun, verb, adjective, adverb etc). 

Each of these elements break down further:

These are the parts of a song students should use when they analyze music, or compare songs, or even create their own. You might be thinking "How do you teach all of these in 1 or 2 lessons? Rhythm takes months alone!" It doesn't have to! Start with the definitions of each. You can use an organizer like my Elements of Music Dictionary. They don't need to know how to read rhythm notation--they just need to know that it's how the beat is broken down, like syllables in a word. 

Provide students with linguistic examples of these elements. Words such as crescendo, ritardando, monophony, etc will enrich their writing, and have them writing like musicians. Just like they use science vocabulary when writing about science-y things. It's important to be musically literate and not say things like "The songs stays at a crescendo through the first half, it's very slow" (a crescendo--see the -endo ending?--is an increase in volume or a change in dynamics; slow is a tempo term). 

You might be thinking, this is going to require me to learn some things! Yes! Isn't that exciting! Teachers should model learning for their students! Co-learn when possible! Learning about the arts is enriching. Last year I had to teach grade 7 and 8 science. I have a degree in music and geography. I haven't taken a real science course since high school, which was over 30 years ago! Luckily, my husband is an engineer, so I had someone to help with some of the material. By being a learner at the same time as my students, I was able to put myself in their shoes and hopefully be a better teacher. I had several students who said they had never been excited by science before and now they were because of my excitement in learning it all. 

Back to cover song assignments. You might decide to narrow down the number of elements. I'd recommend including Duration, Expression, Timbre and Form. These are the most easily written about with minimal musical literacy. Or, allow a choice of 3 out of 6 elements, so that those with more musical knowledge can include what they know about things such as pitch. 

You should also require that the covers be from either different timeframes or genres. Genres is a bit trickier for students as they might view rock and country as being different, when really they're not all that different. Perhaps folk and heavy metal is enough of a variation though! If you have time, create a list of songs for students to choose from. 

Regardless of your, or the students' current level of musical literacy, there is one statement to not allow when writing or talking about music:

A beat is the pulse of the music. It's steady and even though it might speed up or slow down. It can't be good or bad! It just needs to be heard or felt easily. 

Enjoy your summer!

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