Experience 7: Music and Sound Effects
In this experience, students practice making sound effects in a dramatic reading from children’s literature. Students explore how music is used to help create a setting and mood in a theatrical production. Students listen to recorded examples of medieval music and consider how music and/or sound effects can enhance their own festival performances given at the end of the unit.

Music and sound effects can add tremendous emotion to a dramatic production. The sound crew must meet with the director to discuss what music and sound effects are needed in the play. The crew has three choices. (1) They can make their own recording of sounds (and music) to be played back at the right time during the play. (2) They can use commercially produced music and sound-effects recordings or (3) they can produce music and sounds “live” during the actual performance. Foley artists make sound effects that complement the visual components to a theatrical production. They often use their imaginations to find creative ways to simulate sounds and exaggerate those sounds for dramatic effect. (For example, snapping celery to mimic a bone breaking, crumpling videotape to sound like someone walking through dried leaves or adding loud thuds and slaps to a fight scene.) Other more complicated sounds such as a train whistle or rainstorm are easily found on sound-effects recordings. 

The Mental Joust: What purpose do music and sound effects serve in a play? What were the sounds and music like during medieval times? How are sound effects created for a play? How can music and sound effects enhance our class’ dramatic reading and festival performances?

Time: 45 minutes each of two days 

Materials: tape recorders (optional), commercial sound-effects recordings (optional), recordings of medieval music, a CD or tape player, the children’s book The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleishman, photocopies of chapter 19, various items for making sound effects.

Worthy Words: ballad, flute, Foley artist, lute, minstrel, plainchant/plainsong, secular, sound effects, troubadour

Procedure:

1. As you step out of your doorway at home, what sounds do you hear? Now you are a medieval boy or girl stepping outside your medieval hut. What sounds do you hear? Any animal sounds? Any oxcarts rolling by? What sounds come from a smith, cobbler or stonemason’s shop? What sounds do people make on the street? What might a town crier sound like?
2. Now picture yourself in a grand medieval cathedral. On the stone walls there are beautiful paintings and sun is streaming through stained-glass windows. This place seems like paradise compared to the dusty streets outside. What sounds might you hear now? Choirs chanting sacred music? Priests reading from illuminated Bibles and prayer books? Shuffling feet and the rustling of long robes? Sound effects and music help create a setting and set the mood for a play. Selecting the right sounds for a story can bring a play to life.
3. Introduce The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischman. This is a story of a medieval orphan boy, Jemmy, who takes the punishment for Prince Brat whenever the prince misbehaves. Some noble households in the middle ages really did have whipping boys that endured the punishments that were due noble children! Both boys are unhappy and run away. In this chapter, the children try to escape the clutches of two murderous villains in the sewers underneath the town. Read Chapter 19 to the class. As you read, ask students to jot down the sounds they hear in the story.
4. What sounds do you remember? Make a list on the board (running on wooden docks and stone steps, the tide, sloshing in water, walking through mud, rats squeaking and running, dripping water, a breeze, huffing and puffing, the banging of a bird cage on tunnel walls).
5. What characters do you remember? Make a list on the board (narrator, Jemmy/The Whipping Boy, Prince Brat, Hold-Your-Nose Billy, Cutwater and Ratcatcher). 
6. Tell students that tomorrow they will read the story again. This time they will add sound effects and students will read the parts. “What are some of the ways we can reproduce or simulate these sounds for our dramatic reading?” Let students brainstorm many creative answers. (Dripping water in a metal bucket, pushing thumbtacks through the fingertips of an old glove can be used for scratching noises, a milk jug partly filled with water for sloshing noises, or a plunger for stepping in mud.) Sound effects could also be recorded ahead of time and played back during the performance.
7. Music also helps create a mood. Play some musical selections from the Middle Ages. Medieval music falls into two categories: (1) religious music such as plainchants (songs sung in unison using only a few notes) and (2) secular music such as songs that minstrels and ordinary people sang and danced to. “How would you describe the mood of a holy plainchant as compared to a jolly secular tune? What kind of music do you think would enhance the mood of our scene in the dark sewer?” Ask students to read a selection from the chapter and tryout different types of background music. (If you choose some contemporary music as your background music, be careful to identify it as such, so as not to confuse time periods.)
8. Homework: Pass out copies of chapter 19 from The Whipping Boy. Ask for student volunteers to prepare a character’s part and the remaining students to be responsible for making sound effects. Allow some class time for students to work in small groups to plan how sounds could be reproduced and to practice reading their lines. Remind students that sound technicians must be careful to not only use the right sounds, but also the correct volume. They do not want to overpower the dialogue of the characters. Also, characters need to consider voice projection and changing the tone of their voices to match their roles.
9. The following day, students perform a dramatic reading (Chapter 19, from The Whipping Boy) complete with background music and sound effects.
10. Ask students to make notes in their Book of Days regarding any appropriate sound effects or music that might enhance their final festival presentation. 

Past and Present:
Troubadours were travelers who entertained through songs. If the troubadour was especially talented, he might be invited to dine with a noble family, and thereby “sing for his supper.” Drinking songs, songs of love and songs with rowdy choruses were popular. More serious chants were used in the Church. When do you listen to music? What type of music do you prefer to listen to? 

Exhibit Connection: 
Try being a sound technician. Practice with a variety of sound effects and music for a play at The Children’s Museum.

References & Resources: 

Evans, Cheryl and Lucy Smith. Acting and Theatre. London: Usborne Publishing, 1992.

Haycock, Kate. Plays: Media Story. Ada, Oklahoma: Garrett Educational Corporation, 1990.

Howarth, Sarah. What Do We Know about the Middle Ages?. New York: Peter Bedrick Books, 1995

Jordan, William Chester. The Middle Ages: A Watts Guide for Children. New York: Grolier Publishing, 1999.

Langley, Andrew. Medieval Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Macdonald, Fiona. How Would You Survive in the Middle Ages? New York: Franklin Watts, 1995.

Malam, John. Theater: From First Rehearsal to Opening Night. Chicago: Peter Bedrick Books, 2000.

May, Robin. Exploring the Arts: Looking at Theatre. New York: Marshall Cavendish, 1989.

Pryer, Nick. Putting on a Play. New York: Thomson Learning, 1994.