Art Starts With Music Lyrics

Some artists find rhythm easy and others struggle with getting started and carrying a beat. Tempo and improvisation are a kind of 'smart' that bamboozles some.

Here is one way to encourage a sense of rhythm naturally using it as a springboard to other creative innovations.

Take the students out to different spaces and facilitate their appreciation of the rhythms they hear. Amplify useful variations.

Ideal places will allow musical reptiton to be highlighted

• The library
• The creek
• The fountain
• Nature
• On a train
• The shore

Wait until they are sitting very quietly and investigate what they hear.

• In the library they might hear the fans squeak.
• The creek might offer the gurgle of the stream.
• A fountain offers the sound of running water
• Nature may just burst with the sound of singing birds.

1. What ever the auditory stimuli ask the kids to softly clap along, or hum, click or tap
2. Make sure this is done as quietly as possible.
3. Break them into groups
4. Get some to clap and others to click on the off beat.
5. Get one group to say pop! See what eventuates.
6. If possible have a recorder - a tape recorder or a scribe.
7. Have the kids go clap, click pop word.
8. Rotate and see whether a sing song develops.

Here is an example

“Squeak, clip, pop, slap

All of us kids go

clap, clap, clap.

Don’t get bogged down

don’t fall into the trap

Of an old humdrum

way of thinking!

Walk, skip, run along

Where are we

when we sing our song?

Running together

we can’t go wrong

as we

create our art together.”

1. When rhythm and verse is happening allow the children to draw with whatever materials are available.
2. This might be a stick in the wet sand if you are on the shore.
3. Encourage them to put pencil to paper if you are in the library.
4. If the students feel comfortable allow them to express in the modality that comes naturally to them. They might begin to dance, mime or act out their creations.
5. Use what ever you have to record the innovation of the day.
6. Perhaps they will respond to each others' work.
7. They might start to offer suggestions for further exploration. Can the idea become a sculpture, animation or short PowerPoint presentation?
8. Let them list suggestions and then move to the reality checking stage of your creative session. What eventuates from the lesson may depend on time.

I would be interested to hear from teachers who try these kinds of improvisations in the classroom.