Part 1

Jamming with Kram: Lesson 1 Components

Learning Area: The Arts

Strands: Music

Year Level: 7-10

Content Descriptor

• Experiment with texture and timbre in sound sources using aural skills (ACAMUM092).

• Develop musical ideas, such as mood, by improvising, combining and manipulating the elements of music (ACAMUM093).

• Manipulate combinations of the elements of music in a range of styles, using technology and notation (ACAMUM100).

• Improvise and arrange music, using aural recognition of texture, dynamics and expression to manipulate the elements of music to explore personal style in composition and performance (ACAMUM099).

• Australian music including music of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples (ACAMUR098).

Learning Focus

• Students learn about and discuss Kram’s creative process.

• Students learn techniques to support their own improvisation and composition skills.

Getting Started

Kram is the stage name of Australian musician Mark Maher, note that Kram is Mark backwards! Under the tutelage of his high school music teacher he topped the NSW Higher School Certificate in Music (even though he couldn't read music). His music teacher then travelled with him to Melbourne, where he successfully auditioned to study music at Melbourne University. He left university in his third year to form Spiderbait with bassist Janet English and guitarist Damian Whitty. He plays drums and sang and was the only one with a formal music education - Janet and Whitt were self-taught. The different places from which they approached songwriting created a productive dynamic: “The chemistry was special, everything was there even at the most embryonic level.”

Spiderbait have released five top twenty albums throughout their career. In 2004 they had a number one single in the ARIA charts for the “Black Betty”, a cover of the 1930s Lead Belly song. Kram has released a solo album called Mix Tape. He has appeared on the television shows Spicks and Specks, Good News Week and Talkin’ ‘Bout My Generation. Over the course of their 25-year career, a variance in genre has often been cited as contributing to Spiderbait’s unique sound. This diversity is in part a reflection of the wide range of music that each of the band members listened to as they were growing up. The cohesiveness of Spiderbait’s sound, however, is a result of the long-term friendship that is at the core of the band.

• Listen to the Spiderbait song: Buy Me A Pony

• Listen to the Kram song: Shuffle Song

What is Jamming?

“What it is to have an idea and how to see it through and see what happens” – Kram

In the first video we can see Kram’s creative process, he allows it to go in any direction, not being afraid to change an idea halfway through. Discuss with the students how they feel about this. Do they approach music this way? Can they see benefits/difficulties?

Discuss the following topics with your students. The dot points are suggestions to help the discussion move along.

What is Improvisation?

• Creating music spontaneously

• Coming up with musical ideas on the spot

• Improvisation can still have boundaries eg. improvising a melody over a particular chord structure, choosing different notes with a set rhythm.

What is jamming?

• A group of people playing music together and taking musical cues from each other

• Not defining what you will play before you play it

• Exploring musical ideas without playing a specific song

• Using the process of improvisation to come up with musical ideas

What is song writing?

• Putting musical and lyrical ideas into a song form

• Writing music about a particular subject

• Telling a story through music

You could say that often the start of a musical idea comes from improvising or jamming. Discuss how jamming and improvisation can help with the process of song writing.

Song Writing

What are the main elements of a song? Make a list with the students and where relevant include any instruments that might take a role in that element. The students may come up with other elements but encourage them to think about the following:

Melody – a vocal or a lead instrument such a guitar or keyboard
Rhythm – the beat or the drum part
Harmony – the chords played by a guitar, keyboard or any other instrument that can play chords
Tempo - the speed of the song Time signature – how many beats in a bar
Lyrics – the words the vocalist sings
Structure – the different sections of the song

When you consider all of these elements, song writing can seem quite overwhelming. In this video Kram’s way of combating this is to sit down and start with one element. He then builds the song from there, without being afraid of it changing along the way, or turning into a totally different song – using jamming and improvisation.

This is not only one way of approaching song writing however.

What are other approaches to song writing that students can follow? ie. Following the form and elements of a song that you like.

To help the students become comfortable with jamming together it is helpful to start off by giving them boundaries or limitations for particular tasks. This can remove any self-consciousness or judgment that might enter into it if they are asked to make something up out of nothing. It also helps the teacher to become comfortable in the same way!

How to record your ideas

An important component of Kram’s process is recording each of the separate sections – even if one part is discarded he still has it there as a potential springboard for another song.

How can you record ideas in your classroom and what technology do you have available?

Most smart phones, tablets or computers have a free audio recording app as part of their software. Become familiar with your smart phone or tablet recording app by recording different events during the day, listening back and taking note of how different recordings sound. How close do you need to be to the sound? What happens if you’re too close? What spaces do the recordings sound best in? Most audio recording apps allow you to rename your recordings. Make it a habit to rename them with the name of the student group, date, or another meaningful title.

Make sure your students can:

• Record audio
• Listen to playback of recorded audio
• Stop the recording or playback
• Pause the recording or playback
• Save and name recordings
• Share recordings by email or another means

What is multi-track recording?

For some of the activities in this lesson you will need to be able to do multi-track recording. For the purposes of this lesson, multi-track recording is the ability to record two or more parts as layers but still have the option of hearing each part separately. In this lesson we are using multi-track recording to capture ideas so the quality of the recording is not as important.

You may have access to a program on your smart phone, tablet or computer that allows you to record multiple tracks in one place. Become familiar with the basics of recording up to four tracks in that program. Garageband on iOS is a great option as is BandLab for Android, but there are many other options available and a basic search for reviews is always recommended.

If you don’t have access to a multi-track recording program you could use a few smart phones or tablets to capture the class ideas and all press play at once! Record the first idea into one smart phone/tablet. While playing back that first idea record the second idea into a different smart phone/tablet. Repeat with the third idea and a third smart/tablet. Another alternative is to use a metronome at a set tempo for all recordings.

Getting this process right will be a matter of trial and error depending on what you have available to you. It is also important to create a system of saving and filing these recordings so that you can easily access them in future classes.

Call and Answer (Warm-up exercise in listening)

It is important to do these warm-up exercises in a circle so that everyone can have eye contact.

Call and answer exercises are an excellent way for your class to start listening to each other. It can also provide some boundaries that help your students become comfortable with improvising and jamming together. With practise they will become better.

Depending on the musical level of your class devise a call and answer activity that suits your students. For example a simple one might be the name game:

1. Get the students to keep a steady beat together with their feet or clapping
2. Each student says the syllables of their name in a particular rhythm eg. Ca-ro-line or Caro-line.
3. The class answers using the same rhythm
4. Do this around the circle a few times until everyone feels comfortable – it may take a bit of time to settle in

A more complex call and answer warm-up might involve using body percussion or percussion instruments that are available in your classroom:

1. Get the students to keep a steady beat together with their feet, clapping or using a metronome
2. Each student plays a 1, 2 or 4 bar pattern using body percussion or a percussion instrument
3. The class answers with the same rhythm

Record each of the above warm-up exercises and listen back as a class. Discuss the students’ reactions to the recordings. This will help the students to get used to hearing recordings of themselves as well as being able to start articulating what they do and don’t like about aspects of their recorded music.

The following are some extensions for the call and answer exercise. The answering group can be instructed do the following:

• Repeat exactly what the person before you called
• Repeat with a slight variation
• Repeat the rhythm but use different pitches
• Make your answer completely different from the call

After these exercises the class should be able to listen and respond to one another in a rhythmic setting. They will also have developed an idea of how to discuss what they like, what is working or not working and be able to make choices about their responses on the spot.

4 Bars

Creating a 4 bar rhythm

After completing the warm-up above, decide as a class on a one bar rhythm that can be played for 4 bars and notate it in some way. This will depend on the musical level of your class.

For example here is a very simple rhythm notated in two different ways.

1) Full music notation on a staff:

2) Notation using beat boxes:

Once you have decided on a rhythm, notated it and worked out how the class is going to play it, practise the 4 bar rhythm – occasionally changing the 4th bar. This change to the 4th bar is called a drum fill. Drum fills are used to transition between sections of a song.

When everyone is feeling comfortable record a performance of this rhythm cycling through the 4 bar pattern a number of times. Take note of the BPM (Beats per Minute) or tempo of the recorded rhythm. You can discover this with a Tap Tempo smartphone app.

We have made available for download some examples from Kram’s video that you could use instead.

Kram’s 4 bar drum loop (78bpm)
Kram’s 4 bar drum loop 2 (78 bpm)

Discuss the following with your students:
What is the different between the rhythm and the beat in a piece of music?

Creating a 4 bar chord sequence

Discuss with your students the instruments they have available to create a chord sequence together. Will the teacher play the chords or the students? Are there members of the class who can play piano, guitar or ukulele?

Write out a C major scale on the board – as letter name notes or notation depending on class level. Obviously this can also be done in any other key you would prefer.

Fill in the triads above each note as letter name notes or notation depending on class level.

Ask students to pick 4 chords from the board. Experiment with playing these chords in different orders on your available instruments.

Often you will start with the first (tonic) chord of the key ie. C major but try starting on different chords and ask the students to discuss how it changes the feel of the chord progression. Do the same with the final chord. A song will usually finish on the first (tonic) chord of the key, but it doesn’t mean every section has to.

Play along to the four bar rhythm that you have recorded to help you decide which chord sequence works best. Once you have decided on a chord sequence that you like, record it over your 4 bars of rhythm using the multi-tracking technique that you decided on earlier.

We have made available for download an example from Kram’s video that you could use instead.

Kram’s 4 bar piano chord loop (78bpm)

The notation of this loop is:

Creating a 4 bar melody

Play back your recording of the 4 bar rhythm with the 4 bar chord sequence and try the following exercises as a class or in smaller groups to come up with a simple melody. Use whatever multi-track recording technique you have decided on as a class.

• Try some of the call and response exercises from earlier, this time singing melody ideas instead of rhythmic patterns. You can do this with or without a group of students singing a drone note
• Sing over the top of the recording find one note per bar that works with the chords then gradually add a note each bar until you have a melody
• Use any melody instruments that you have available to you to do the call and response exercises

Here is the melody from Kram’s video to help you get inspired:
Kram’s 4 Bar Melody Loop (78bpm)

Here is Kram’s full loop with everything together:
Kram’s 4 bar Full Loop (78 BPM)

Share and reflect

Discuss the process with the students:

• What worked?
• What was difficult?
• How could the process be improved?

Repeat the whole process again with any of these suggested adaptations. Or do one of the following:

• Go back to the chord pattern and create a new rhythm and melody to go with it.
• Go back to the melody and create a new chord sequence to go with it.

For a downloadable pdf of the above learning resource, click here.

Part 1

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