Today we have had a fun Music Day where we focused on Benjamin Britten. Britten wrote all kinds of music but is especially known for his operas.

At the beginning of the day, we looked at two images and thought about how these could be portrayed through percussion instruments. We practised creating sounds using various instruments and then focused on one instrument, experimenting with the different sounds that could be made from this. We discussed the fact that some notes are played longer than others and used instruments to show this.

We then learnt about the man himself and focused on the piece of music ‘Storm Interlude’. We listened again to one section and practised recreating this individually with one instrument. We listened to another section of the composition and discussed this in depth as class. In groups we chose instruments that we thought were needed to best re-perform this section and then how we would play our instruments as a group composition. We then practised and performed in groups to the whole class.

In addition to this, Year 6 children practiced using their instruments as part of a group to bring the images to life. They used percussion instruments sensibly and showed good control and accuracy whilst performing to the rest of the class.

For the second task, Year 6 composed lyrics to the music to describe the movements of ‘Storm’ by Benjamin Britton. They worked as a group to create a song and then performed in front of Year 4 and 5. We were so proud of their performances!

In the afternoon, Year 4/5 thought about how music is composed and created and how the use of ICT can help us to do this. We talked about how some musicians use ICT tools to create their songs and soundtracks. After this discussion, we worked in groups of three and used a iPad to create our own piece of music based on Benjamin Britten’s piece we had learnt about previously. We used a website called ‘BeepBox’ to create our music. This involved lots of trial and error and careful listening to see how the piece could be improved or changed. We had to think carefully about how to make these changes using the tools in the software for effect. To finish our lesson, we took it in turns to play our piece to the rest of the class who listened and gave feedback to each group.