James Bond -007
Introduction
This is a project which involves working with several riffs/ostinati in an E minor pentatonic context. As well as helping students to “use their ears” to copy very well known music, it provides the opportunity for improvisition and developing familiar ideas to fit to a dramatic context.
Age range: 2-5 No: 6-8 No; 9-11 maybe; 12-13 maybe;14-15 very appropriate; 16-17 very useful; 18+ very useful.
Expected prior achievements of students
Students should (a) have a good sense of timing within a swing/rock context; (b) have had some practice improvising simple rhythms and melodies (riffs); (c) be able to read and apply a short series of notes in the treble or bass clefs.
Goals and aims of project
By the end of the project students will (a) have a clear understanding of riffs; (b) be able to differentiate between chromatic and diatonic phrases; (c) have developed skills in improvising in the realm of E minor pentatonic harmony; (d) have restructured familiar and improvised material to fit a student-defined dramatic context.
Project materials in text form
preparatory notes for the teacher
007-Worksheet (html format)- Deutsche Sprache
007-Worksheet (pdf. format) – Deutsche Sprache
007-Worksheet (html format) – English Language
007-Worksheet (pdf. format) – English Language
Project materials in Music (performance) form
Click here to review the JAMESB~1 MIDI-filefor performance or drag the highlighted text to your desktop to create a file to import to your sequencer.
Project materials in music (notation) form
Material 2: MIDIfile for printing
Suggestions for working with the materials (including essential preparation)
preparatory notes for the teacher.
Further Amphion materials
Link to Pink Panther – in preparation
Suggestions for following up the project including links to related music, books, sites etc.
Backtracks – a Channel 4 CD-ROM publication, sadly no longer commercially available, enables students to mix and match video clips with music- and sound-files to create a short musically accompanied film scenes. To use it with a class you will need many computers or a project rotation plan in use. Link gives further information. Possible, also, as a preliminary exercise to “James Bond-007”.
The short piano piece “Blue Note” by Alan Haughton (no. 4 of “Rhythm & Rag”, Easier Piano Pieces Vol. 75 – Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London: ISBN 1-85472-398-7) is an ideal recommendation for young pianists of intermediate standard to complement this project. The chromatic riff of “James Bond” is a dominant feature of the piece, but it also takes on new forms, which could prompt further the creative stimulus of this project. Order your copy of this favourably priced volume from Balaams Music
Author
The project has been devised by John Mason, using a MIDI-file passed on from an Internet download. If you are the author of this excellent MIDIfile, please contact the site manager so that you can be given the credit you deserve.