The History of Rock and Roll: Part 6 - My Generation Lesson for Music Classes, Grades 9 -12 Music Arranging Using Different Styles Lesson 2

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• Students will identify musical characteristics of baroque, jazz, and psychedelic music
• Students will sing with appropriate posture, rhythm, tone, and intonation
• Students will arrange traditional music into the style of baroque, jazz, and psychedelic music
  

National Standards 1, 4, 6, 9 – Singing alone and with others a varied repertoire of music; Composing and arranging music within specified guidelines; Listening to, analyzing, and describing music; Understanding music in relation to history and culture

Materials

• VHS VCR Player
• Television
• VH1 Cable in the Classroom program The History of Rock and Roll: Part 6 – My
  Generation (HRR: Part 6), beginning with Joey Ramone's commentary, cut after The Doors' performance
• Web-based lesson materials
• Piano
• Teacher approved musical excerpts such as:
  
  Appropriate arrangement of a well-known patriotic song (ex. "This Land is Your
  Land") to be played on piano for class, or a recording of the same (for other song ideas, see MENC's "Get America Singing Again", published by Hal Leonard)
  Optional: A recording by John Bayless, classical pianist and improviser…albums
  include "Bach Bayless & Beatles", "Bach Meets the Beatles", "Bach on Abbey Road"
  J.S. Bach – "Minuet in G"
  Duke Ellington – "Take the A Train"
  Student copies of lyrics for patriotic selection
  

Prior Knowledge

HRR: Part 6, Lesson 1 for information pertaining to LSD and psychedelic (acid) rock

Procedures

1. Play selected arrangement of a patriotic song OR selected Bach/Beatles piece by John Bayless as students enter the classroom.

2. After students have taken their seats, ask them if they recognize the piece they have just heard, and encourage them to describe the instrumentation, style, and musical elements (tempo, harmony, melody, etc.). If a Bayless selection has been played, ask students if they can identify the era and composer for the piece (originally Beatles, improvised/arranged by Bayless, but sounds like Bach).

3. Lead students in a discussion of the term "arrangement". Use the following as needed:

Arrangement – The reworking of a musical composition, usually for a different medium from that of the original… Arrangements exist in large numbers from all periods of musical history… Few areas of musical activity involve the aesthetic (and even the ethical) judgment of the musician as much as does the practice of the arrangement. This involvement is at its most intense in the case of those arrangements which set out to popularize an acknowledged masterpiece, either by adapting it for the stage or film (or, worse still, for the television advertisement), or by ‘jazzing up' its rhythms and instrumentation. In either case, the arrangement will often earn the musician's disapproval, and even his or her resentment. However…every arrangement creates its own historical authenticity, and Mozart's version of Handel's Messiah has been accorded the distinction of two scholarly editions and at least one complete, carefully prepared recording… It would be unrealistic to propose that arrangements should be judged only by regarding the arrangement and the original as two different versions of the same piece that a solution to the aesthetic dilemma they so often create will be found.

Excerpted from "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians"

4. Explain to students they will be arranging a patriotic piece of music in three different styles: Baroque, 60's Psychedelic, and Jazz

5. Play selected arrangement of patriotic song (again, if it was played at the beginning of class). Ask students to follow along and make note of the rhythm (triple, duple, mixed meter, etc.), harmony (major, minor, modal, atonal, etc.), style (staccato, legato, marcato, cantabile, etc.), and tempo (allegro, largo, vivace, etc.) Play the piece again, this time having the students sing along. Discuss student observations of musical elements.

6. Ask students to briefly define Baroque style, time period, and composers. Use the following as needed:

Baroque – A term used generally to designate a period or style of European music covering roughly the years between 1600 and 1750… Various traits have been suggested: dynamism, open form, degree of ornamentation, sharp contrast, co-existence of diverse styles, individualism, affective representation and numerous others. Most of these qualities do not hold for any extended period… Only one of the general characteristics mentioned survives an analysis of 17th- and 18th- century music and music thought: the attitude towards affective expression…composers in a preponderant share of their music strove for the expression of affective states, whether or not inspired by a text. It is this striving that led to the extravagances that were first deplored as ‘Baroque.'

Excerpted from "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians"

It is important to note that the affective music of the Baroque era is generally considered so in reference to the preceding era of Renaissance music, where it was considered much more improper to alter a musical performance or interpretation on the basis of emotion. While to modern ears, Baroque music may seem formal, it was in stark contrast to its predecessor. Baroque composers include Bach, Handel, and Gabrieli.

Adapted from "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians"

7. Play a musical excerpt from the Baroque era, such as Bach's "Minuet in G." Students should note the musical elements, as described previously, of rhythm, harmony, style, and tempo. Discuss student observations.

8. Ask students what changes they could make to "This Land is Your Land" (or other selection) to create a baroque arrangement. Possibilities might include changing the meter to triple (such as in the minuet style), the tempo, the style of playing to resemble a harpsichord – staccato, contrasting dynamics without gradual crescendos or decrescendos, etc. Teacher and students perform baroque arrangement of song, with teacher at piano.

9. Ask students to define 60's psychedelic style, time period, or composers. Use the following as needed:

Psychedelic Rock [Acid Rock] – A style of rock that grew out of the hippies' removal to San Francisco in 1965… It featured extended blues-based improvisations, surrealist lyrics with performances often loud and accompanied by lavish light-shows.

Excerpted from "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians"

Originally, acid rock was music that tried to reproduce the distorted hearing of a person under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

…It was slower and more languid than hard rock, incorporating much of the Oriental music… Numbers tended to run on longer as though time as we normally know it had lost its meaning. Notes and phrasings lurched and warped in a way that had not, until then, been considered acceptable in rock. Lyrics conjured up images previously confined to the verses of poets like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Blake.

Excerpted from "Lillian Roxon's Rock Encyclopedia", copyright 1969

10. Show HRR: Part 2, beginning with Joey Ramone's commentary on psychedelic music, cut after The Doors' performance. Ask students to pay attention to the rhythm, harmony, style, and tempo of The Doors' music. Discuss student observations of musical elements.

11. Ask students what changes they could make to "This Land is Your Land" to create a psychedelic arrangement. Possibilities include changing the meter to free form, adding rubato and extreme and sudden dynamic contrasts, adding a style of playing that reflects a walking base line and a fast, arpeggiated soprano, etc. Teacher and students perform psychedelic arrangement of song, with teacher at piano.

12. Ask students to define jazz style, time period, and artists. Use the following as needed:

Jazz – The term conveys different though related meanings: 1) a musical tradition rooted in performing conventions that were introduced and developed early in the 20th century by African Americans; 2) a set of attitudes and assumptions brought to music-making, chief among them the notion of performance as a fluid creative process involving improvisation; and 3) a style characterized by syncopation, melodic and harmonic elements derived from the blues, cyclical formal structures and a supple rhythmic approach to phrasing known as swing… 'Jazz' took on musical connotations in the USA during the years of World War I; before then it was a colloquialism possibly southern and black American in origin, perhaps derived from African roots.

Jazz musicians include such luminaries as Ella Fitzgerald, JJ Johnson, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Chet Baker.

Excerpted from "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians"

13. Play a jazz excerpt, such as Duke Ellington's "Take the A Train." Students should note the rhythm, harmony, style, and tempo. Discuss student observations of musical elements.

14. Ask students what changes they could make to "This Land is Your Land" to create a jazz arrangement. Possibilities include changing the meter to cut time, adding an improvisation section, adding swing style of playing with a walking bass line, extreme and sudden dynamic contrasts, etc. Teacher and students perform jazz arrangement of song, with teacher at piano.

15. Guide students in an analysis of the three "arrangements" they created. Are they all appropriate to the original song? What other styles could be incorporated when writing an arrangement? Are some styles more appropriate to a particular piece than others?