Riptide lesson 1 Verse 1

Summary: 

In this lesson, students will learn to sing and play Verse 1 of the song “Riptide” by Vance Joy. The lesson consists of a short warm-up which will equip students with the necessary skills needed in the verse, a song practice session where students will learn to play and sing different instrumental and vocal parts in groups, a band practice with the whole class and a homework assignment.

⏰ Time: 50 min

🎓 Grades: 5-12

🎯 Objective(s): As a result of this lesson, students will be able to...

• Play three simple chords
• Play a bass part consisting of three notes
• Clap or play a rhythm consisting of quarter, dotted eighth and sixteenth notes
• Sing a melody with a range of one octave (from A3 to A4)
• Play together in a band
• Collaborate in groups and learn independently

💡 Required Prior Knowledge and Skills:

• Basic chords
• Basic rhythm
• Basic notation

💻 Materials:

Solfeg.io web app best used with Chrome browser

Ukulele and guitar tuner on Solfeg.io mobile app

Projector or computer and access to WIFI

Computers or tablets 

Ukuleles, guitars and/or pianos

Percussion instruments

Song suggestions:

Inspire:

🕐 5 min - Riptide!

• Open the song “Riptide”.
• Listen to a section of the song, for example, Chorus 1. 
• Discuss with students what you heard.

• Do you know the song?
• What is the genre/mood/tempo of this song?
• What adjectives would you use to describe this song?
• What instruments did you hear?
• How would you describe the vocal part? What voice type did you hear?

Tuning:

🕐 5 min - Tune the guitars and ukuleles

• Distribute the guitars and ukuleles to students.
• Ask them to open the Solfeg.io tuner. You can find it in the home section on the Solfeg.io mobile app. 
• Tap on a letter to hear how the string should sound, find the corresponding peg on your guitar or ukulele and turn it to tune the string.
• When the encircled letter turns green and reaches the middle of the screen, the string is in tune.
• Repeat the actions with the other strings one by one until all of them are in tune.

Tuning video: 

ukuleles tunera vimeo id: 578361695

Ģitāras tunera vimeo id: 606412658

Vajag thumbnailus? 

Warm-up:

🕐 10 min - Get ready!

• Divide students in groups. There should be 4 percussion groups, at least one group playing the chords (ukulele, guitar and/or piano), one group playing the bass and one singing (optionally, some of the students playing instruments could also sing).
• Distribute the instruments to the students. If you have no percussion instruments, students can do body percussion, tap the rhythm on tables or other everyday objects.
• Show a short warm-up exercise for each group. Alternatively, all groups could do the singing and percussion exercises together (as well as the instrumental part, if there's enough instruments).

1. Vocal: sing the scale from A3 to E4 and back. You can use the note names or any syllables, for example, sing only vowels from the first phrase of the verse “I was scared of den…” , which would sound as “ah-ah-eh-oh-eh”. Sing each note one beat long, like this:
2. Percussion: clap or play this rhythm
3. Guitar, ukulele, piano: play these two chords in this rhythm:
4. Bass: play these notes like this:

• Mute all the tracks except the 4 rhythm tracks under “Controls” - “Volume” . 
• Click on the beginning of Chorus 1 on the timeline, press “Play” and invite the groups to take turns to do their exercise. Groups change every four bars.
• You can also invite one student to conduct - show which group should play next.
• Do a couple of rounds until the class has warmed-up and is ready to play the song!

Practice:

🕐 20 min - Verse 1

• In this activity, students will work in groups to learn their assigned instrumental / vocal part of Verse 1.
• Each group should have one device - either a computer or a tablet.
• Each group should select the corresponding visuals under “Tools” - “Visuals”.

• To play the rhythm tracks, “Notation” should be selected.

• Show them how to loop Verse 1 on their devices (the “Loop” button on the right side of the “Play” button) and where to slow the song down (the “﹣” button on the left side of the “Play” button. 
• Explain the steps for learning Verse 1 to each group. First, give every group just the first task from the below mentioned lists. Only when students are ready to move on, explain the next step.

• Vocal:

• First, listen to Verse 1 and read the lyrics.
• Repeat Verse 1 and speak the lyrics out loud.
• Sing the melody with syllables of choice, for example, “lah-lah”, “dah-dah” or just vowels - “ah”, “oh” or other.
• Sing the melody with lyrics.
• If comfortable with the slower tempo, you can try singing the verse at a faster speed and try to reach the original speed!
• Try singing Verse 1 with the vocal track muted - you can mute it under “Controls” - “Volume”.

• Ukulele, guitar, piano:

• Listen to Verse 1 and establish what chords are there (Am, G & C).
• Learn or recap all three chords, following the chord diagrams.
• If there are at least 3 people in the instrumental group, they can take turns to play chords - each person chooses one of the chords and plays it when the corresponding symbol appears at the red line on the screen.
• Try to combine all three chords one after another. To practice at an even slower speed, mute all tracks except the four rhythm tracks under “Controls” - “Volume” and play a new chord every 8 beats without looking at the chord symbols on the screen. When you're comfortable with this speed, you can gradually reduce the amount of beats between chords.
• If comfortable with the slower tempo, you can try playing the verse at a faster speed and try to reach the original speed!
• Try playing Verse 1 with the ukulele track muted - you can mute it under “Controls” - “Volume”.

• Rhythm:

• Mute all the tracks except the rhythm tracks under “Controls” - “Volume”. Listen to the rhythm section.
• Split into 4 groups and choose one rhythm track each. Choose rhythm instruments that suit best to each track.
• Play Verse 1 again and try to play or clap along.
• Take turns learning the rhythm - you can mute the other three tracks when learning your track.
• If comfortable with the slower tempo, you can try playing the verse at a faster speed and try to reach the original speed!

• Bass:

• Listen to Verse 1 and find the three notes of the bass line on your bass guitar.
• Play along to Verse 1.
• If comfortable with the slower tempo, you can try playing the verse at a faster speed and try to reach the original speed!

• Walk around the classroom and check how students are doing in different instrumental stations. Guide them by suggesting the next step from the above-mentioned step-by-step learning process when you see that students are ready.

Play together:

🕐  5 min - Put it all together

• Invite students to play Verse 1 together.
• Find a suitable tempo for all, slow the song down if needed.
• Have “Notation” selected under “Tools” - “Visuals”. If the piano, guitar or ukulele players are not comfortable with playing just from chord symbols without the diagrams, repeat Verse 1 with the necessary visuals selected.

Reflection:

🕐  5 min - Discussion

• What was the most challenging in their instrumental/vocal part?
• How was the experience of playing together (both in smaller instrument groups and the class as a whole)?

Beyond the lesson:

• Assign homework:

• Ask students to practice their part of Verse 1 at home.
• Encourage them to learn their part by heart.

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