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Teaching artist Danny Clay provides step-by-step instruction on how sounds, chance, and rhythm can come together to make an original piece of music.

Vocabulary You Will Learn:

• Composing—Putting sounds together in order to create a piece of music, also known as a composition. People who make compositions are known as composers.
• Chance—The likelihood of an unexpected or unintended event occurring. When something is random, that usually means it happened by chance.
• Pitch—The highness or lowness of a sound.
• Rhythm—The space between sounds, usually measured in music with a beat. The beat will usually stay consistent throughout a composition, but the length of notes can change throughout.

Materials You Will Need:

• Three objects that you can make sounds with (they can be household objects such as a cup or a book)
• A paper and pencil to write with
• A piece of paper for the spinner
• A paper clip for the spinner

 How to Compose Your Own Accidental Music

1. Find three different objects you can tap with a pencil to play:
   • A high sound
   • A medium sound
   • A low sound
2. Build a spinner (for making random selections): 
   • Divide a piece of paper and into four squares
   • Number each square with 1, 2, 3, and 4
   • To use the spinner, place a paperclip in the center held in place with the point of a pencil
   • Flick the paperclip and watch it spin until it points to a number 
   • 
3. Assign a sound to each number. For example:
   • 1 = High sound
   • 2 = Medium sound
   • 3 = Low sound
   • 4 = Silence
4. Spin the spinner as many times as you want, and write down each sound that the spinner selects.

5. Now it's time to add rhythm to your composition, which means figuring out how many beats long each of your sounds will be. You can use your spinner to help decide this, too. Just like before, assign a number to each beat rhythm. Danny assigns his numbers like this:

• 1 = 1 Beat Rhythm
• 2 = 2 Beat Rhythm
• 3 = 3 Beat Rhythm
• 4 = 4 Beat Rhythm    

5. You can write the number for your beat rhythm above your sound: 
6. Before you finish, you need to name your composition. You can either use a name you've already thought of, or you can use the spinner to help put some words together in a random order.
7. Now it's time to perform your composition! If you want, you can even use a metronome like Danny does in order to help you keep track of the beat. If you don't own a metronome, that's alrght. There are many free metronome tools available online to use.

At the end of the video, Danny tells us that we can use everything he's taught us to make a new, original composition. But he also gives us a few other ideas for things we can try, such as introducing new objects and sounds, adding more choices to the spinner, or even collaborating with someone else to create more compositions together. If you want to go even further, think about:

• Can you make different types of sounds with the same object?
• How long of a composition can you create?
• What are some sounds that you hear every day? How would you describe the rhythm or pitch of the sound?
• Can you think of any songs or bands that use non-traditional instruments to create their music?

Accessibility

Don't forget that you can turn "Closed Captioning" on the YouTube video to view English captions

More about the Teaching Artist

Danny Clay is a composer and teaching artist based in San Francisco, California. Danny teaches music composition to curious folks of all ages, from kindergarteners to doctoral students. He strives to create situations where musical ideas are transformed into community sandboxes for creativity, communication, and collaboration.

Kennedy Center Education Digital Learning

Eric Friedman 
Director, Digital Learning

Kenny Neal 
Manager, Digital Education Resources

Tiffany A. Bryant 
Manager, Operations and Audience Engagement

JoDee Scissors 
Content Specialist, Digital Learning

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Gifts and grants to educational programs at the Kennedy Center are provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Bank of America; Capital One; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Ednah Root Foundation; Harman Family Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; the Kimsey Endowment; The Kiplinger Foundation; Laird Norton Family Foundation; Lois and Richard England Family Foundation; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; The Markow Totevy Foundation; Dr. Gerald and Paula McNichols Foundation; The Morningstar Foundation; Myra and Leura Younker Endowment Fund; The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives;

Prince Charitable Trusts; Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A. J. Stolwijk; Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund; The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates; The Victory Foundation; The Volgenau Foundation; Volkswagen Group of America; Jackie Washington; GRoW @ Annenberg and Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family; Wells Fargo; and generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas. Additional support is provided by the National Committee for the Performing Arts..

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