Music at The Institute has always, by it’s nature, been a very interactive subject. To help students understand music better and to give them a better sense of what is happening in terms of tempo, time signature, other musical concepts, and how a percussion in music can have such a huge affect on a song, our music teacher, Dr. Susan McCormick, uses body percussion to help the students gain a better understanding.
When you get more than one sense (hearing) involved in the study of music you gain a faster and more in-depth appreciation into what is happening during any piece of music. That appreciation and fast understanding can then be easier translated into what is needed to be understood in order to succeed in the study of music.
Here you can see an example of the type of body percussion Dr. Susan incorporates into here 5th year students’ music classes to help them get a more indepth understanding into what is happening throughout the fantastic “In the Hall of the Mountain King“, a piece of orchestral music composed by Edvard Grieg for the sixth scene of act 2 in Henrik Ibsen’s 1876 play Peer Gynt.