Image credit: The water cycle. Image by Saskia Nowicki, Nancy Gladstone, Jacob Katuva, Heloise Greeff, Achut Manandhar, Geofrey Wekesa and Geofrey Mwania. Creative Commons license 4.0
Fifth-grade teacher Elizabeth Peterson, founder of The Inspired Classroom, incorporates the arts into her teaching. But she had never had her students compose music, so she joined our Second Sunday workshop this November to try out an idea. Her class was studying earth systems, and she wanted to use the water cycle as a prompt for composing music.
We started by looking at a diagram of the water cycle, similar to the one above. We discussed the many ways water moves through the cycle and landed on precipitation – hail, specifically – as an appealing subject. We created a “hail melody” and chose an instrument, the harp, that made hail-like sounds. We enhanced the hail melody with a percussion pattern. We also made a “water melody” to signify the body of water where the melted ice would eventually end up.
We layered and built up the hail melody to suggest an intensifying hail storm. The storm subsides and the ice melts into rivulets (cue the “water melody”).
After a few listens, we decided the piece could use a bit of drama: a few claps of thunder! This was accomplished by a timpani drum, cranked up to maximum volume.
Take a listen. You can hear the entire discussion and composing process by going back to the beginning of the video.
