Exploring Tone Color

Objective: Students will identify tone color by listening to different sounds.

Age Appropriate Grade: 1st-3rd
National Core Standards for Music: Perform Convey meaning through the presentational of
musical work
Step by Step Process:
1. Ask the students to stand in a circle in the classroom
2. The teacher will clap and ask the students to use adjectives to describe the sound.
The teacher will do the same thing for a snap, pat (on legs), and stomp.
The students will give out different adjectives and the teacher can choose ones to
put on the board.
3. The teacher will then describe the difference between adjectives describing dynamics and
adjectives describing tone color.
Tone color is subjective and the adjectives are not used to describe emotion.
4. The teacher can then experiment with the different body percussion sounds by having all
the students in the circle close their eyes.
5. The teacher can then choose one of the four sounds (clap, snap, pat, or stomp) and have
the students say aloud which body percussion sound she is doing.
This gives the students a chance to hear the difference in instruments relating to
texture.
Resources/Lyrics: List of adjectives

Tone Color with Eggs

Objective: Students will describe the tone color of different objects by shaking the container
(eggs) and listening to the sound the objects make.
Age Appropriate Grade: 2nd-4th
National Core Standard for Music: Respond Interpret intent and meaning in musical work
Step by Step Process:
1. The teacher will fill different plastic eggs or small containers with different objects:
marbles, cereal, beads, etc.
2. The students will shake the containers.
The students can identify the object based on its timbre.
Or the students can describe the object using timbre words.
3. Students can discuss these in groups and write down all the different timbre words or the
different ideas of the objects they think are in the containers.
Resources: plastic eggs or small containers and small objects (marbles, beads, cereal, etc.)