This year the students in Ms. Yap’s class, ages 6-8, explored and learned about landmarks. We first started globally and explored the landmarks in the world that were either special to us, or rooted in our thoughts.
In doing so, we explored those landmarks on the globe and research where they were located in the world and the communities that surround them.
After this we began to compose soundscapes for our landmarks. Soundscapes were made famous by Murray Schaffer at Simon Fraser University,SFU. Schaffer created compositions about the city of Vancouver and the community in which he lived.
for examples see, https://www.sfu.ca/~truax/vanscape.html.
Expanding on the work of Schaffer, our collection of soundscapes can be seen as ‘sonic events’ or ‘sonic compositions’ that bring to life the different ways in which the children in Ms. Yap’s class perceive and understand their selected global landmarks.
Reflections on our Global Landmarks:
– My landmark is Mount Fuji. I chose it because my friend comes from Japan and the mountain is there. Its the biggest mountain in Japan. It is also a volcano.
– my landmark is the learning tower of Pisa. It is in Italy.
– My landmark was Big Ben. It is in England.
– My landmark was a volcano in Hawaii.
– My landmark was the tomb of the unknown soldier in Italy.
– My landmark was the statue of David in Italy.
– We chose the Eiffel Tower in France for our landmark.
– My landmark was the Golden Gate Bridge.
– My landmark was the statue of Liberty.
Our landmarks began with the creation of a sonic palette that drew from the ideas the children had about their landmarks. Some of the Palettes included:
– Some of the sounds I used for the tower of Pisa were people eating pasta and pizza. People taking pictures, the birds that fly by there.
– For Mount Fuji we used people chatting, birds, and trees, walking.
– For Big Ben we used the gong, ukulele, ratchet, and piano.
– For the soldier we used the gong to end world war one and for the tanks going down. We used clapping of our hands, and logs for stepping. We used the piano at the end of our soundscape.
– For the statue of David we had clicks using our mouths for the taking pictures.
– For the Golden Gate Bridge we used the gong and xylophone.
– for the Eiffel tower we used wind chimes, our voices, and recorders for birds. We also used ukulele.
– For mount Fuji we used egg shakers for the wind on the mountain, thunder tube was for the rocks tumbling down the mountain.
With our palettes we began arranging those sonic ideas into a musical form. All compositions had a beginning middle and an ending, but the way they were arranged and layered varied depending on the learners interpretation of how those sounds are evoked at their landmark and also based upon the artistic interpretation of how the child wanted to arrange the piece musically.
For examples:
We started with the gong for Big Ben then ukulele then piano and ratchet at the end. Nothing played at the same time, everything was one after the other to represent a clock.
City of Burnaby
While this was going on Ms. Yap was preparing her students to focus in on the city of Burnaby. She began exploring the city as a whole and going over landmarks that were not only important to the children in her class, but also other people in the community. Some ideas that came about were:
– I chose swimming pools as my landmarks because its a good place to learn how to swim. It is useful to swim because if you get into trouble in the ocean you can swim and save somebody else.
– I chose cliff avenue because if you don’t play sports you might be always tired. Sports make you stronger. I play soccer at Cliff Avenue.
– My landmark was the Library because you can learn there.
– Burnaby Lake was my landmark. It is special to me because I play hockey there. Theres a lot of sporting rinks beside the lake, across the street is Roman Tulus a soccer community. There is a swimming pool, doctors place, a gym, and archery.
– My landmark was parks because you get to see a lot of people playing. You can do fun things there like go on the sea saw, monkey bars, and zip line.
– My landmark was Alpha High School. I chose that place because my mom used to work there. I picked schools because your brain can develop more ideas there and you will become smarter.
– My landmark was neighbourhoods, I picked them because they are nice. I know my neighbours.
– My landmark was Brentwood Mall because people can go to the dollar store there and because I live across from the mall.
– My landmark was Venables Street sign because I like the street I live on. You need street signs to tell where you are.
– My landmark was eight rinks because it was the first place i played sports at. It is special to me because I can play sports there. You can play 4 sports there: baseball, football soccer and hockey.
– My landmark was my house because if you don’t have a home you would be homeless and you would have to make a cardboard sign and sleep on the street for months. A home keeps you safe and warm.
– My landmark is Burnaby Lake because you get to enjoy fresh air at the lake.
We even went on a walking field trip to Beachers Creek to explore the creek as an important landmark for our local ecosystem. During this exploration we also explored the sounds of the creek and listened to it as a soundscape.
City of Burnaby Soundscapes
From those ideas they extended the ideas from their global landmark soundscapes and applied the same principles on a local level to a landmark within the city of Burnaby. Within the above ideas they began composing pieces based on a new pallet of sounds for their local landmarks. Some of the pallets included:
– My landmark was the library. We used pages turning in books to create library sounds, shushing with our mouths, sand paper blocks, and peaceful ukulele playing. I played C and a minor chord on the ukulele because they sound nice.
– I used the ocean drum, and made sounds with our voices, like wee, wee! Wee was used to represent kids having fun swimming and going down the water slide. Ocean drum was used to make ocean sounds of Eileen Dailly pool. We also created a drum beat for splashes in the water and the piano was used to create the water going down the slide.
Burnaby Public Library, Eileen Dailly Pool, & Burnaby Central Railway Station Soundscape.
– My landmark was Parks we started with wind using our voices and blowing, then we created sounds of kids playing at the park using our voices. I then played the song somewhere over the rainbow on piano and a friend played the egg shakers at the same time, because I know the song well and it is mindful and makes people calmer at the park. We ended our song with bird sounds using the the owl and recorders and rocks clicking.
Parks Soundscape
– My landmark was schools. Our soundscape had a special form. We stated it with the beginning of the school day, there was recess, lunch, playing tag, and getting ready at the end of the day to go home. Our soundscape included walking sounds, a chime for the school bell, whispering, tag games through our voices, eating sounds with our mouths for lunch time, piano music like twinkle twinkle little star, knocking at door, whispering, zippers for backpacks at the end of the day to go home, chime for end of the school day, whispered good-byes.
Schools Soundscape
– My landmark was Brentwood Mall. We began our soundscape with drums and ukulele. Then we used our voice for ordering and buying things. I then played piano because sometimes people play piano at the mall at Christmas when santa is there. We then have eating noises with our voices and Buying things with our voices. Our song ends with scrapping cabasa sound for the skytrain and a friend announcing that you are arriving at “Brentwood Mall Station.”
Brentwood Mall Soundscape
– My landmark was neighbourhoods. We had the spinning wood thing, rain stick, xylophone music. One of us came up with the xylophone music and then we added to it and taught another classmate it to play for our song. We were all able to play the xylophone music because we all made part of it. We also had talking in our soundscape because people talk to each other in the neighbourhood. For bird music we used the flutes.
Neighbourhood Soundscape
One of the groups created a song instead of a soundscape. their reasoning for this was.
– I choose the song because I have heard it a lot of times and when I play hockey I play that music. It was hard to change the words to the song. It was hard to find new words for the lyrics. We looked for words about hockey. Two of us sung the song while another friend learned the piano music. We added drum music at the beginning and end that wasn’t part of the original music.
– I added drum music because it didn’t really sound good without it. my rhythm was du-u day du du
– We chose the words to the song because if you score lots of goals you could be a champion or famous hockey player like Joe Sakic.
– Learning the piano part wasn’t hard but it was very easy. If i played by myself it was kind of hard, but playing while my classmates sung made it easier.
Hockey Song
What we learned about the sounds of the instruments, or the timbre…
– I learned that the ocean drum sounds nice like the ocean.
– The ocean drum played smoothly allowed me to make it sound like the ocean, but when i moved fast and hard it didn’t sound like the ocean.
– that with the flute you can take off the big part and put your finger in the blowing part to make the bird sounds.
I learned that learning to play a piano song takes a lot of time and work. It took me a million classes to learn the song.
– I learned that the sandpaper blocks make an interesting sound, it sounds like sand rubbing.
– My granny taught me how to do piano and because of that I felt confidant enough to make up a piano song all by myself for our Brentwood mall soundscape.
– with the flutes we took the top off and made bird sounds.
What we learned about our voices…
– your voice sounds different when recording.
– That i had to hear them sing and play the piano at the same time while they were singing.
– that i can use it to make music for playing and having fun at the park.
What we learned about having to record…
– I learned that on the Ipad you can add a special effect to change the voices.
– to not be goofy or else we would have to start all over again.
– it is better to work with a group because you can get more ideas and it is fun.
What we enjoyed most…
– I enjoyed playing the piano the most because I can do a lot of things on it.
– Learning to play the song on the piano. I don’t take piano lessons so it was fun to be able to learn a song on the piano for my friends.
– I enjoyed recording the music the most because it was fun to play the instruments and hear my music.
– I enjoyed the recording part.
– I enjoyed the recording part the most because it was something new that we haven’t done before. It was pretty weird to hear myself sing because it kind of sounded different that what i thought.
– I enjoyed playing the drums because I wanted to see what drums sounded like because I haven’t played them in a long time.
– like playing the spinning wood thing because it makes nice music.
What we found challenging…
– It was hard to record the piano part without making mistakes.
– Practicing my piano song.
– Cooperating with my group because everyone has different ideas.
– Singing was challenging because it was hard to sing at the same time as my friend and the piano music. It took a long time for us to sing and play together.
– It was difficult to sing at the same time as the piano playing because we weren’t always singing and playing at the same time. It was also hard to focus and be on one idea. — we all had different ideas.
Our soundscape compositions:
After we recorded their pieces, Ms. Yap spent time recording their ideas about their landmarks and also ideas about the city needs for new landmarks that would make it more special. During this process she began to notice not only a confidence within her students, — perhaps as a result of their previous experience with recording their soundscapes with me, but also an ownership of the recording process by the children. This was illustrated through their clear and annunciated manner of reading about their landmark, the energy some children put into it, and also the ownership of redoing the recording if it wasn’t up to their standards.
After all the documentation of this project was gathered, we began to put the project together in the form of an animated video. While this was happening, the students, Ms. Yap, and myself began to develop a sonic ear, or deep listening skills, that through this experience enabled us to listen deeply to the subtle nuances that were barely audible, but important to the children about their city. We also engaged in deep listening that allowed us to take note of the expressions in vocal timbre that accompanied their illustrations, which enabled us to imagine learners excitedly share tales of the importance within landmarks. During this experience, we also came to discover the various ways in which the children were able to illustrate ‘other ways of illustrating,’ or knowing, an understanding through music making.