1.1 Timbre activities

Timbre , often called color, is one of the basic elements of music. Please see Timbre: The Color of Music for an introduction to the subject. You will find here suggestions for a Class Discussion and Demonstration of Color , three simple Color Activities , suggestions for Adapting or Extending the Activities , and Other Suggestions for Exploring Color .

Goals and standards

• Goals - The student will learn to recognize timbre as a basic element of music, develop aural recognition of instruments, and learn appropriate terminology for discussing and evaluating this aspect of musical performances.
• Grade Level - PreK-12.
• Student Prerequisites - No prior student knowledge necessary.
• Teacher Expertise - Teacher expertise in music is not necessary to present this activity. The teacher should be familiar and comfortable with the terms and concepts regarding timbre. (See Timbre: The Color of Music .)
• Music Standards Addressed - - National Standards for Music Education standards 6 (listening to, analyzing, and describing music), and 8 (understanding relationships between music, the other arts, and disciplines outside the arts). If instruments from other cultures are included in the examples, or if a discussion of the use of timbre to help identify the era or culture of a piece of music is included, music standard 9 (understanding music in relation to history and culture) is also addressed. If students evaluate specific musical performances using references to timbre, music standard 7 (evaluating music and music performances) is also addressed.
• Other Subjects Addressed - The activity also addresses Art Education National Standard 6 (making connections between visual arts and other disciplines).
• Follow-up - Help commit this lesson to long-term memory, by continuing to ask, through the rest of the school year, questions about timbre and instrument recognition in any musical examples presented to the class.

Class discussion and demonstration of color

Objectives and assessment

• Time Requirements - Excluding the pre-test, this activity can be done in one (approximately 45-minute) class period; or you may spread the lesson, including pre- and post-tests, into four or five fifteen-minute increments over the course of several days.
• Objectives - When presented with a recording, the student will learn to recognize and name the instruments heard.
• Evaluation - If formal assessment is wanted, have a post-lesson aural test. Present the students with recordings or excerpts they have not yet heard, of the instruments you have been studying. For the test, the instrument to be identified should be either extremely prominent, or the only type of instrument being played. Either number the excerpts as you play them and have the students write down the instrument heard for each number, or call on specific students to name the instrument aloud.

Materials and preparation

• You will need an audio player in the classroom.
• You may want to give the students a pretest to determine what instruments you will focus on. If most students are unable to recognize, by sound, common orchestral instruments , you will probably want to begin with these, and perhaps with some instruments that will be familiar from popular music. If your class is already good at recognizing more familiar instruments, concentrate on introducing some lesser-known orchestral instruments, or perhaps some well-known historical or Non-Western instruments.
• You will need tapes or CDs with 3-8 examples of different instruments playing either alone, or as a very prominent solo, or in groups of like instruments (some suggestions: an unaccompanied violin or 'cello sonata, or a string quartet; classical or electric guitar; banjo; piano; harpsichord; percussion ensemble or drum solo; bagpipes; brass quintet; trumpet or oboe concerto; jazz saxophone solo; recorder ensemble).
• Prepare a tape with short excerpts (1-2 minutes) of each instrument, or be able to find your chosen excerpts quickly on the CDs. Unless you are very confident of the students' abilities to distinguish different instruments, try to pick very different sounds.
• If you like, prepare a simple worksheet they can use to match each excerpt with the name and/or picture of the instrument. If your group is small, a book with pictures of instruments that they can point to will work. Or write the names of the instruments on the board, show pictures from a book, or discuss the instruments enough that the children have a good idea what the instrument choices are. Have other excerpts as demonstrations if you think that might be needed.