Music Mornings in Lockdown!

Here at Tutti Hoots HQ, we like to start our mornings by tuning into Classic Fm’s Home School Run programme. Featuring some of your very favourite tunes, this is the ideal way to get your day off to a fantastic start! Plus - we’ve pulled together some fun, creative activities to get the brain whirring and the imagination flowing!

Why not tune in and join the fun? 🥳🤩

📚 Write a story

Music is all about telling a story. Some pieces - like Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream or Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf - are based on iconic stories. Others, you need to put the work in yourself! So pull up a chair, have a listen, and dream up characters, places, colours, feelings, and adventures. This is YOUR imagination - so anything goes!

🕺 Move around

We all need a bit of persuasion to get moving on a cold, January morning - and this is it! Turn up the volume and get dancing! Stamp out the beats, tune into the rhythms, think about tempo (musicians’ fancy word for speed!), and mood. How should your body react to what the music is doing, and why? What is the story behind this dance? Who is your character? Where are they from? All this helps you to explore music in a whole new way and tap into that deeper sense of musicality in your own playing.

🌍Travel the world

Music doesn’t just come from one place, or one time. Music is as old as the Earth and stretches to every corner of it - and beyond! People all over the world have their own style of music, their own traditions and characteristics. What can we learn about other cultures from listening to this music? Listen to each piece and find its musical home. Can you spot it on a map? What is that country like? What was it like when this piece was written? Soak up the sights, smells, sounds and sensations by taking a musical trip around the world!

🎨 Draw what you hear

Just like telling a story, music can conjure up powerful images in our minds. What do you see when you listen to a piece? Can you recreate it through a drawing or painting? Some gifted people are even able to see colours when they listen to certain sounds. What colours do you think this piece represents? How does that make you feel? Is that similar to any other pieces you know?

🕵 Become a musical detective

Found a piece you particularly like? Time to dig a little deeper to discover the context of the piece. For the kids at home - why not create a little project to wow your teacher with when you return to school? Start by researching the composer. Who are they? When and where did they live? What was going on in their country when they wrote this? Does this influence their music in any way? What language did they speak? What clothes did they wear? Did they write anything similar? What instruments do they use? Who else writes for that instrument? Does this tell you anything about the characteristics of that instrument? There’s a whole world of musical information just waiting to be discovered - so what are you waiting for?!

🧠 Test your memory

Time to put your brain power to the test! Ear training is a massive part of musical development, helping to improve pitch awareness, intonation, appreciation of style, harmonic patterns, rhythmic understanding and much, much more. Whether you’re just starting out or are a musical pro, there are lots of little tricks you can try to really TUNE into the piece (see what we did there? 😜).

Try:

• Joining in! Clap or sing along or grab an instrument and see if you can keep in time, follow dynamics (is it quiet or loud?), and articulation (is smooth or spiky?).

• Clapping back simple rhythms.

• Can you sing back the tune?

• Can you identify different instrument groups?

• Can you find the notes you hear on your instrument? Can you repeat a phrase or even play along?

• Can you remember what time signature (two beats/three beats/four beats) the piece was in?

• Extra points for our musical experts if you can identify which key the piece is in or identify harmonic progressions!

As well as passing an hour or two of lockdown, these fun, feel-good activities are the perfect way to get you listening to music in a whole new way. By tapping into the characteristics and story of a piece, you can unlock your imagination, engage with the story, and bring a deeper understanding into your own playing - as well as developing technique...and HAVING FUN! 😃😃😃