1.3 Musical meter activities  (Page 2/3)

Materials and preparation

• You will need some tapes or CDs of songs the students will enjoy, with a good mix of different meters. Choose songs with strong beats and simple tunes, songs in which the meter is very obvious to you. You may want to choose one or two tricky examples to save for the end if the students are doing well.
• You will need an audio player to play the songs for the class. Have the tapes ready to play at your chosen selection, or know the CD track numbers.

Procedure

1. First, explain duple, triple, and quadruple meters (see Meter in Music ).
2. Have the children listen to a song. Encourage them at first to tap their toes on all of the beats. Then ask them to clap only on the strong beats and/or to count 1-2-1-2-, or 1-2-3-1-2-3- or 1-2-3-4-
3. Ask them to decide as a group, based on their clapping or counting, the meter of the song. Don't be surprised if they can't agree on whether a piece is duple or quadruple; these are sometimes hard to distinguish. In fact, two trained musicians may disagree as to whether a piece "feels" as if it is in 2 or 4.
4. If they do well with the above steps on several songs, explain the difference between simple and compound meters. (See Meter in Music . You may want to copy the figure in that lesson as a visual aid for them, or have them watch and/or listen to the animations.)
5. You can use the same songs they've already heard or try new ones. Once they've found the beat, have them try chanting along with the music "one-and-two-and-", or "one-and-a-two-and-a-" (for duple meters). If the music is fast, and "one-and-a" is too difficult, you can switch to easy-to-say nonsense syllables, for example "doodle" for simple and "doodle-uh" for compound. If you are using a particular music method, use the syllables favored by that method.
6. Can they decide which falls more naturally with the music? Is the meter simple or compound? Do they hear clues in the melody or the percussion or the bass line that help them decide?

Sing with meter

Objectives and assessment

• Grade Level - preK (if developmentally ready) - 12
• Student Prerequisites - Students should be able to accurately identify and clap along with the beat of a piece of music while they are singing it.
• Teacher Expertise - The teacher should be familiar and comfortable with the terms and concepts regarding meter , , should be able to accurately and easily identify meter, and should be comfortable leading the singing.
• Time Requirements - If you have plenty of songs, and will also be exploring simple and compound meters, this activity may take one (approximately 45-minute) class period. It may also be done as a short (5-15-minute) warm-up to other music activities or as a break from desk work, or you may do both Listen for Meter and "Sing with Meter" in one class period.
• Objectives - While singing, the student will clap to the beat, distinguish weak from strong beats, and clap only on strong beats. The student will identify the meter of the music by determining the number of weak beats for every strong beat.
• Extensions - Advanced students may be asked to distinguish heard beat subdivisions by vocalizing with them, and to identify whether the meter is simple or compound. For students who are learning to read music, see Recognize Meter in Time Signatures .
• Evaluation - During the activity, assess whether each student can do the following independently (without waiting to imitate the teacher or other students), along with others, in imitation of others, or not at all: while singing, clap on the beat, clap only on the strong beats; while listening to others sing, count the number of weak beats for each strong beat, vocalize with the beat subdivisions, and name the meter. If students are not at the level you would like, repeat the activity occasionally throughout the year.
• Follow-up - Help commit these lessons to long-term memory, by continuing throughout the year to ask students to identify the meter of music that they are singing.