Journal 4

In this unit we looked at and learned about a lot of different things. Some of the things that we learned these passed weeks are what program music is. I understand Program Music is a type of art where the composer uses the words and sounds to help the listener image what is happening. This is mainly from the Romantic Period of the 19th century. There are many great examples of different types of Program Music. The other main topic that we learned about is Binary Form and Round Form. First, we learned about binary form. When you talk about binary form we represent them with letters AB. This means that there is a first and second section to the song. In a Round Form this means ABACADA so there can be a lot of different parts. Even thought, there are a lot of different parts there will always be one part that keeps coming back and that is the A section of the song this part of the song is known as the chorus.
We learned about Program music mainly by reading a packet that was given out in class. In this packet there was a list of songs with the name of their composer to give us some examples of the different songs from this period. We all have listen binary once in life because that is what makes up all the different pop songs that are out there. This makes it very easy to catch on to the song and be able to sing it over and over again. Playing many examples was one of the easiest ways to learn but for round form we work on one song with had a dance that went along with all the different parts. Then we took that same song and we each got different cards that went to different part of the song and when our part came along we held up our sign.
I believe that it is an important part of using music is to know the history of where it came from. One way you could use it outside of just teaching music would be to play some samples for kids while you are talking about the different centuries. I have already learned about these different forms of music in a music class that I took before but listening to different songs helped me to heard different music that I may have not heard yet.
This unit is taught to elementary level because this gives them a base for the music knowledge to grow. It may be the one form of music a children may like so by exposing them to this form of music. I could see this as being a very hard thing to teach to elementary but understanding this could be a lot easier by having one group of kids make one noise and another make one and have them play it one and then the other so that they would be able to understand the forms.
There was not that many problems that came along with the stuff that we had been learning this week. I think it would have been a little more interesting to talk more about the time period and to understand this music in a deeper level. I think for others in the class this was the first time knowing what they were hearing is in a pattern like that but once that understood that everything was very easy.