Wake Up! Locrian song + rhythmic improv

Songs used: Slow Locrian song from Experimental Songs and Chants without Words and Wake Up! chant from Music Play

My kindergarteners LOVED this activity this year and would always beg for us to keep going longer!! 

Musical concepts covered in this lesson:

• exposure to Locrian tonality, duple meter, and triple meter
• vocal exploration (they looooove the tongue trill at the end of the song
• AB/AAB form
• 2 meters and 2 tempi, duple and triple + fast and slow
• piano and forte
• flow with pulsations
• rhythmic improvisation

Lesson:

• Tell the students to lean their heads onto their hands and close their eyes, pretending to sleep. Sing the slow part of the song, gently rocking back and forth on macrobeats. At the fast part of the song, use exaggerated facial expressions and large flicking movements on macrobeats (flow with pulsations) to "wake up." Pretend to stretch from high to low as you do the tongue trill at the end.

• After the song is over, pick one student who was keeping the beat well to come into the middle. As you sing the song again, their job is to audiate their own rhythm pattern in triple meter. Give examples. They lie in the middle of the circle and pretend to sleep, then wake up, then chant their rhythm pattern on "BA." 

• That student looks for someone who is really trying their best (or listening well, or keeping the beat well, or moving with flow well, etc.) to be the next improviser. This incentive really motivates all the students to try their best, knowing they may get a turn soon!

Variations/Extensions:

• Use a cat puppet and a mouse puppet. Tell the students during the song, one of them will move up and down to the macrobeat, and the other to the microbeat. For example, move the cat during the fast section to the eighth notes (microbeat), and move the mouse during the slow section to the dotted quarter notes (macrobeat).     You can also use the two animals to show two different dynamic levels during the two parts of the song.  Which animal was singing piano, and which one was singing forte?

• Have the student in the middle improvise rhythms in a Q&A rhythm "conversation" with you. Making sure the triple meter tempo you chanted the song isn't TOO fast, you chant one pattern, and they chant something different back to you.

***What Do You Do With a Drowsy Sailor?***
 This activity can also be done with the song "Drunken Sailor," replacing the word "drunken" with "drowsy." I did Drowsy Sailor with 3rd and 4th graders, who loved it and would choose it on music choice day when they had the option between different activities!

For Drowsy Sailor, students stand in the circle, moving the macrobeat in their heels and tapping the microbeat on their shoulders. On the words, "Way, hey, and up," students do a move that they as a class created (my students like moving one arm up and accenting the word "up").

One person is lying in the middle of the circle, and starts to wake up at the words "Way, hey, and up." After the song is over, they improvise a rhythm in duple meter using syllables, such as DU-DE DU, DU-DE DU.