iPads

October Magic : Telling a Dynamic Scary Story with Explain Everything What better way to demonstrate understanding of musical dynamics than to use them to tell a scary story  using the Explain Everything iPad app. The story before the story The history of musical dynamics is so interesting. Before we started this activity, and as a review, I took  my students to this site to see the evolution of the modern orchestra. I showed  this image  and then we had a great time brainstorming how and why “volume”  or dynamics has changed. “There are more instruments,” “Bach didn’t have a Sousaphone,” “The metal is stronger,” “They have better spit valves,” “They have invented louder sounding instruments,” “The place where the orchestra plays is better for concerts,” “They get paid lots of money and get better training,” are just a few of the reasons why my students thought the dynamics could now be so much broader. We quickly transitioned to the questions: How do changes in volume make the music more interesting? How can changes in volume make our telling of stories more interesting? Let’s put it to the test! Let’s see if using dynamics really will make our story more interesting. Let’s tell a Dynamic Scary Story with Explain Everything!