We do not have to be at the level of Mozart or McCartney. We can all put pieces of music together. Here is a small selection of ideas.

Making a piece of music

A lot of pieces of music simply exist as music in their own right. Here is how to do it in 5 steps. Do the first 4 as simply as possible and spend time on step 5 editing what you and your pupils have devised.

1. Decide if your piece has a title.

2. From this decision, plan an overall structure for the sections your piece using plenty of repetition.
The most common structures are:

a. Section 1    Section 2    Section 1

b. Section 1    Section 2    Section 1    Section 3    Section 1....

c. Section 1    Section 2    Section 3    Section 4....

3. Choose a musical technique that underpins each section. These could include conversations, pentatonic scales, riffs, improvisation....

4. Use the technique you have chosen to make each section in turn. As a rough guide, sections should last no more than a minute.

5. Run your sections together and make any alterations you or your pupils think will help your music.

You can listen to a short piece made up quickly on one of our staff training courses. This piece is based on the structure described in 2a, uses pulse and pentatonic scales (which make it sound quite oriental), and has a central section made up of free improvisation. Listen here.

Music for stories and plays

The only difference here is in the first two steps. You already know your title and the pattern of sections will be dictated to you by the story. The   extra things to consider are:

• Be careful not to mix up music with sound effects.
• Don't let the music be too long and take over your story.
• Be careful that your music is not too loud if people are trying to tell the story at the same time.
• You may want to use the technique of leitmotif that is normally used for film music.
  

Music for film

Taking a short piece of film and composing for it can be enormous fun and it is great to work with classic or home made silent movies. Possible sources of footage are

• Footage on the web, for example make your own space odyssey from images from the Hubble telescope.
• A short sequence from a well known film can be great.
• Make a short picture about your school or neighbourhood.
• Make a short picture that relates to topic material that you are covering in class.

Now you are in to leitmotif territory. This is just a fancy word for each character or idea having its own musical theme. Going step by step:

1. Watch the film and plan out the ideas and/or characters you want to give their own themes. Keep this to around 6.
2. Take down the timings for the film and see how you want to fit it all together.
3. Devise your themes. They should be no more than 10 seconds long.
4. Fit the themes together and add in any background ideas.
5. Run your sections together and make any alterations you or your pupils think will help your music. 

To watch an excerpt of a film with music created on one of our Soundtracks projects, please click here.
(Please be patient - the file is quite large and may take a minute or two to load.)