Study Hub

Study Guides

This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.

Back to Study HubBrowse Year 2 Music Guides

Year 2 - Music

Describing the timbre of instruments

Compose and create: recording our musical ideas using a graphic score

Unit Summary

In this unit, pupils consider how timbre and rhythm can be used to represent animals. Pupils listen to Wiseman's Carnival of the Endangered Animals and compare music that represents various animals. They create short pieces, recording these on graphic scores to represent a chosen animal.

Lesson Summary

You will learn to describe the timbre of instruments and understand that an instrument's materials affect its timbre.

Key Notes

  • We warm up before playing so that we can focus our mind and bodies and be ready to play.
  • Composers can choose instruments because their timbre helps to tell a story or to represent something, like an animal.
  • An instrument's materials affect the unique sounds it makes.
  • We can listen to instruments and identify them by their timbre.
  • Timbre is the unique tone an instrument can make.

Vocabulary To Learn

  • warm up: a sequence of exercises used to prepare the mind and body for playing instruments
  • composer: a person who creates music
  • timbre: a description of the sound or tone of an instrument
  • material: what an object is made from
  • percussion: an instrument played by striking, scraping or shaking

Common Mistakes To Avoid

  • Timbre alone creates a musical story.

3 Quick Questions (With Answers)

1. Explain the lesson in two key points.

We warm up before playing so that we can focus our mind and bodies and be ready to play. Composers can choose instruments because their timbre helps to tell a story or to represent something, like an animal.

2. What does this key word mean in this lesson? 'warm up'

a sequence of exercises used to prepare the mind and body for playing instruments.

3. Correct this common mistake.

Mistake: Timbre alone creates a musical story. Correction: All the musical elements need to work together to create a musical story. A glockenspiel can be many things depending on how it is played - not just a polar bear.

More Lessons In This Unit

Browse all guides in the Year 2 Music guide library.