Creativity Cache - Fiddle Dee Dee

In “Fiddle Dee Dee” students work in small groups to choose three types of insect that they think they can represent musically. They then choose instruments and improvise to find ways of playing the instruments to represent various actions that the different insects might do. This could include flying, scurrying, biting, eating, etc. They use their discoveries to make a composition, which may or may not tell a story in which the insects interact, come into conflict, or work on a joint project.

Background: Students may use acoustic or digital instruments and do not need to use them in “standard” ways or with standard approaches. If they use computer instruments, for example, they might choose to write outside the playable range for an acoustic version of the instrument they choose.

Adaptations: You can adapt this project to a variety of contexts. In an instrumental class, you can encourage students to explore special features of their instruments, such as harmonics, multiphonics, playing a mouthpiece detached from the rest of the instrument, using mutes, or prepared piano. In a vocal class, you could encourage the students to use vocalization combined with body percussion to create their insects’ sounds. In a composition class for younger students, you can restrict the explorations to one instrument (such as a recorder) or one insect. In an upper level composition or string class, you could introduce the sample score excerpt from the children’s opera Kiravanu (of which I am the librettist and James Humberstone is the composer) and discuss the string techniques used in it as well as the graphical representation of music. In all cases, you could encourage students to score their improv after devising it; have students focus on amphibians, reptiles, mammals, or choose any animals they preferred; or have pairs of students create predator/prey improves; use multiple instruments to create one animal.

"Fiddle Dee Dee! FIddle Dee Dee! The fly has married the bumblebee." These are the opening words to a folksong about an insect wedding. It tells of the courtship of the bumblebee by the fly and their wedding in words. This task is also about insects, which you will represent musically.

1. Your task is to a) create ways to represent three insects with music and b) create an improv in which the insects interact. Choose two partners to get started.
2. Think about the different types of insects. There are butterflies, moths, flies, crickets, grasshoppers, ants, cicadas, aphids, fleas, beetles, wasps, mosquitoes, bees, hornets, and more. As you consider each insect, think about how you would represent it musically with the instruments and/or computer programs you have available.
3. In your group, experiment with sounds for your insect. You do not have to use the "standard" ways of making sound on the instrument or software you have chosen. Try out sounds that could represent different actions the insect might take, like flying, scurrying, stinging, chasing, eating, and even emotional states like "being angry."
4. Create a improvised composition that incorporates some type of interaction between your three insects. It can tell a story, or they could just be an insect music trio gigging.
5. Take some notes on your improv to help you recall it. This can be a standard score, a graphical score (score made with pictures), or performance instructions. Adapt the following page as needed by creating or deleting instruments, etc. For an example of a score that combines all three of these, see the Fiddle Dee Dee Sample Kiravanu score. A simpler version might look like this (in part):