Video Details

Exploring The World of Music

Grade Levels:	13+
Core Subject(s):	Fine Arts - Music
Website:	http://www.learner.org/resources/series105.html
Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 5th, 2012 at 9:00 AM on UEN-TV

Availability information for this program

Gain an understanding of the basic elements of music with this series, an introduction to music with a global perspective. Exploring the World of Music shows how elements such as melody, rhythm, and texture create an infinite variety of sounds and serve as expressions of culture. Through rare archival footage and contemporary performances, the series presents themes such as music and the environment, music as cultural memory, and how technology changes music. The featured artists perform music from around the world, including American jazz, gospel, and rock, and traditional music from Bosnia, the Caribbean, India, Ireland, Japan, and West Africa. This series is also valuable for teachers to review the subject matter.

Episodes:

• Sound, Music, and the Environment

  What do different cultures mean by music? This program explores the definition of music from the sine wave to poetic metaphor, and the impact of the cultural environment on musics as different as Bosnian ganga and becarac singing; Tuvan throat singing; Irish, West African, Trinidadian, and Japanese musics; and Western chamber music, jazz, and rock.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 5th, 2012 at 9:00 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Transformative Power of Music

  Music can inspire religious devotion, prepare individuals for war, motivate work, enrich play, and stimulate the passions. The musical healing ceremonies of the Kung people in Namibia and Botswana, Epirote music in traditional Greek weddings, and modern rock, gospel, and folk musics all reveal music's power to transform lives.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 5th, 2012 at 9:30 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:49
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Music and Memory

  As a dynamic link to the past, music allows us to recall and revive our different cultural heritages through the performances we participatein now. West African griots, the Walbiri people of Australia, folksin gers of Ireland and Appalachia, and modern practitioners of early music show us how our musical pasts live again today.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 5th, 2012 at 10:00 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Transmission: Learning Music

  How we learn musical traditions and how we maintain, modify, notate, teach, and perform them for a new, younger audience are exemplified here in Indian classical music, African village drumming, and modern jazzand gospel.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 5th, 2012 at 10:30 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Rhythm

  Marking time and moving through our bodies, rhythm has a special relationship to both musical form and worldwide dance traditions. How rhythm structures music is examined through the American marching band, North Indian tala, Japanese shakuhachi tradition, West African drumming, and Afro-Cuban dance music.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 12th, 2012 at 9:00 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:47
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Melody

  Melody -- the part of music we most often remember -- is examined here both scientifically and poetically, from a strict sequence of pitches to a group of notes "in love with each other." We see and hear melodies shaped, elaborated, and developed within Western classical music, the Arabic maqam tradition, Irish dance music and sean-nós singing, and Indian raga.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 12th, 2012 at 9:30 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Timbre: The Color of Music

  The tone color of music or "timbre," as we call it in the Western tradition is influenced by both technical and aesthetic factors. This program examines the creation and effects of timbre in jazz and Indian, West African, Irish, Bosnian, Indonesian gamelan, and Japanese musics.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 12th, 2012 at 10:00 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Texture

  The way different voices and instruments work together to produce the overall sound gives music its texture. This program examines texture in Japanese shakuhachi, Trinidadian steel band, Bosnian ganga, West African percussion, and modern Australian choral music.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 12th, 2012 at 10:30 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Harmony

  When two or more notes sound together, harmony occurs. This interaction of pitches, understood in vastly different ways around the world, is analyzed here in jazz, chamber music, Bosnian ganga singing, early music plainchants, and barbershop quartets.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 19th, 2012 at 9:00 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:47
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Form: The Shape of Music

  Form — the way music is organized and structured from beginning to end — guides composers, performers, and listeners in all musics. Here, the traditional Western sonata, the blueprints behind improvisational jazz, the narrative structure of traditional Japanese music, call-and-response forms in West African music and American gospel, and Irish fiddle tunes exemplify worldwide variations in musical form.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 19th, 2012 at 9:30 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Composers and Improvisers

  How are a composer and an improvisor alike? How are they different? The marriage between fixed elements and new variation is examined in American rock, Indian raga, classical and contemporary Western music, jazz, and Arabic classical music.n

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 19th, 2012 at 10:00 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

• Music and Technology

  New instrument types and new electronic media for distribution are obvious results of technology, but so were the first bone flute and the first stretched catgut. How technology affects music is examined here in a case study of the flute, and in an examination of developing recording and composing technologies where the roles of composer, musician, arranger, and conductor begin to fuse.

  Next Airing:	Mon, Mar 19th, 2012 at 10:30 AM on UEN-TV
  Length:	00:26:48
  Usage rights:	1/1/2003 to 1/1/2021

Availability: