KAME week 10 ukulele post

This week was rather interesting on the ukulele front. There are two key points to discuss, first is the Key approaches class activity we did and second is the unexpected exam practice I managed to get thanks to this week’s Children, Music, Educational Settings class.

The Kame class activity this week was on “Under the boardwalk”. The chord progression was rather simple, using I IV and V in G with a sneaky dominant 7th on the tonic, and a looping interrupted cadence as the chorus, vi to V (Em to D) Those harmony classes paying off eh? More importantly, James directed us to focus on aspects of the performance including harmonic rhythm and accents of the chords, listening to the walking/arpeggio bass line (in which we decided not to use my ukulele version which is either two or three octaves up and sounds rather hilarious), and listening for the backbeat (accents on 2 and 4).

The children, music, ed settings class activity was part of our recent intense 2 hour classes with Jim Coyle who has been walking us through ideas and approaches for teaching music to various stages of primary school students. This week, the third in person class we’ve had, we looked at teaching year 6. One of the instrument choices was ukulele, so I took the opportunity to get some more practice in. I can remember being part of a group of fellow students and doing a cover of “that’s what makes you beautiful” by one direction (apologies if that is not the actual song title, I don’t want my Spotify thinking I am into one direction…). Interestingly, I was able to look at the chord changes of the guitarist (Montanna!) in our group and follow along with the ukulele. It was a simple I IV V progression in C with a nifty little pattern of on and off beat accents, to which I was using short chord stabs (or staccato block chords) to add a texture that both followed the chord progression and the rhythmic ostinato. The activity facilitated by Jim was to choose a pop song with only three chords and to create an arrangement that year 6 would be able to achieve.

Stay tuned for a secondary post on contemporary pedagogies (weeks 10-12) once weeks 11 and 12 are done, and a post reflecting on the first six weeks worth of issues and concepts we discussed.