On a Friday in school, we have a 'creative' afternoon. Some children have Ukulele lessons, guitar lessons or recorder lessons. We also have our singing practice on a Friday afternoon, a music lesson and in lower school we also have a chance to do some research of a topic.
Recently, we've asked the Yr3 children to find out about the instruments in the orchestra. They've listened to several pieces of classical music via Spotify. We've watched the updated Young Persons Guide to the Orchestra (from 2011) on YouTube, and they've visited a few websites we've selected to find out about their chosen instrument. However, nothing has really let them get into a piece of music, and hear how each instrument adds to the final sound.
That is, until I stumbled across an app for the iPad called 'Learn the Orchestra'. It's wonderful. It does everything I wanted an app about the orchestra to do.
Let me explain;
You begin with a representation of an orchestra on the screen. You can listen to the default piece of music that is it set to run, or you can load several other well known classical pieces. Once you hit the play button, the music begins. As each instrument is playing, their character on screen is animated so that you can SEE where the sounds are coming from.
But it gets better than that, because you can then click on an instrument and 'mute' it. The character is ghosted, and the music continues to play but without that instrument (see the image above right)
You can mute the whole orchestra if you choose, and then have soloist instruments. You are in full control of who plays what and when.
Wait - there's more! See the two buttons on the top left of the screen? The notes allow you to mute instruments, but when you click on the keyboard, up pops a keyboard at the base of the screen. Now if you tap an instrument, you'll hear a voice tell you it's name, and the keyboard will now sound like that instrument. You can play along with the music!
Hang on, because there's even more to mention too. The book icon top right opens a book (surprising that) with a page for each and every instrument within the orchestra. There is a description of the instrument on the left of the page (read it yourself, or have it read to you), and an image of the instrument on the right of the page (touch the instrument and here a short solo from it). There's even a page explaining who the conductor is, and what he does.
Nearly done now! The final feature of the app is the rosette icon on the top right. When you've read about (or listened to) all of the instruments, why not test yourself with the quiz? All questions and multiple choice answers can either be read, or listened to.
It's a gem of an app, that was hidden away in the appstore. There's so much stuff in there now, that titles like this get missed. Fortunately I was in a browsing mood and stumbled over it.