Stomp City

Overview

This lesson introduces students to easily accessible and informal styles of music composition and performance. Stomp is a percussion group that uses the body and ordinary objects to create a physical theatre performance. Their appeal lies in their primitive yet highly effective musical performances that do not require students to be able to read or write music in order for them to appreciate, understand or emulate the style. The fact that the Stomp crew is seriously cool also helps with learner engagement.

Description

Begin by playing a short recording of a stomp performance. We use https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu15Ou-jKM0 but, at first, we play the audio only as this helps students focus their attention on the music. Following this, discuss with students what effect the music had on them, the imagery it evoked etc. Ask them to detail the musical elements they heard in the composition and ask them HOW they think the sounds were created.

Now play the piece again, this time, allow them to watch the video too. As it plays, point out the innovative and effective techniques and ‘instruments’ e.g. sliding on dustbin lids, using dance moves (and stomping!) to time the beats.

Introduce students to https://mural.ly by letting them click on SEE HOW IT WORKS. Discuss with them how they think they could use the tool to collate and express everything they have learnt about Stomp. It’s a good idea to have them work in groups and to then share their ideas with the class. Ideas could include adding a YouTube video of a Stomp performance and presenting “10 Things we’ve Learnt About Stomp” on sticky notes. To finish, ask them to write about how Stomp makes effective use of the musical elements in their performances.

Time needed 2 hours.

Resources

  • Mural.ly is a great environment in which to collaborate visually and present information in an easy and effective way. Mural.ly provides a large workspace where students can design and create using traditional documents like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint or use media like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Twitter. In addition to a flexible workspace, they have the ability to invite collaborators to their project. A collaborative workspace allows others to add content, chat, comment, and edit the same work.

Hints and tips

  • You may know of other groups like Stomp that you’d prefer to use – go for it! We use Stomp because there is so much material relating to them on the web.

  • You should be assessing students’ grasp of what Stomp performances are all about as you teach the lesson. Keep notes – they can be used to tailor the following lesson(s) to suit your students’ level of understanding.

–> Music Maestros

This post is also available in: Dutch

3 Responses to “Stomp City”

  1. Athanasakou Maria-Eleni October 4, 2014 at 13:16 #

    Hi, I am a music teacher from Greece. I participated in the PDW in Corfu, where I just learned about this project and I was impressed. It is a very helpfull tool for teachers, as it provides some concrete steps to be taken, as well as a specific sequence and ICT tools. I also liked the metro metaphor you used and the possibilities for intersections with another line! I would just like to add, that you could maybe propose more options for ict tools (similar in essence), in cases where one is not free. For example, in the activity stomp city in the music maestros project, the tool murally is mentionned. However, when I checked it out, I found that it is not free, or it is but only if one uses it frequently and uploads material with it. Seeing as in just the past year, I have registered in many different apps/websites and use some of them periodically, according to ever changing circumastances regarding the classroom/school hour, while some of them I simply try out for future reference, apps such as murally are not very useful to me. From the description of this app, I think a similar one is RealtimeBoard, which I have used before and it is free. So, if you could have the teachers who visit this site, propose a free app/website they know, that is similar to the one proposed in each activity, it would be most helpful.

    • Fernando
      Fernando October 5, 2014 at 16:29 #

      Thank you for your words about our work. Hope the activities will be useful to you and your students. Thanks so much. Plesae spread the word…
      Fernando

  2. nic daniels
    nic daniels October 18, 2014 at 11:11 #

    Check this out for more inspiration!

    https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152746161369350&set=vb.10098929349&type=2&theater

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