Lesson Plan: The Beach Boys

Written By Jim Frankel

To honor the late Brian Wilson, I’m sharing a lesson plan from the Introduction to Popular Music course that is included in the MusicFirst Classroom Content Library. The lesson includes a special Spotify playlist, as well as 4 tasks for your students, including a Remix project. I hope that you can use this lesson plan to help celebrate the life of one of popular music’s true icons.

Objectives

  • Students will learn about the music, style and influence of The Beach Boys.

  • Students will analyze and respond to listening to classic songs by The Beach Boys.

  • Students will analyze two songs to find similarities between them.

Materials

Teacher Procedure

PLEASE NOTE: As with any popular music selected for classroom use, you should always preview the songs covered in these lessons in their entirety to ensure that you feel they are appropriate for your students. A link to each song is provided in each lesson plan. This is always a uniquely individual decision. Some of the songs contained in these episodes contain what some might consider slightly inappropriate language and topics.

REMINDER: If you choose to use MusicFirst integrated software like Soundtrap, you will need to create the task, and launch the software and attach your own template to the lesson.

*This lesson recommends having students submit their work via link or 'collaboration' features to allow for the broadest possible set of software options.

PLEASE customize this lesson for your students!

You can change the content and activities easily by editing the text and uploading images of different examples tailored to student needs. For best results, use png or jpeg formats. Add links to other resources and embed quality tutorial videos.

This lesson may include links to resources or activities outside of MusicFirst. The functionality of these links has been tested but cannot be guaranteed.

If you need help on how to modify lessons, tasks, or assessments, review the tutorials under the upper right area of your screen or contact support@musicfirst.com

Student Handout

Who are The Beach Boys?

The Beach Boys are an American rock band formed in Hawthorne, California, in 1961. The group's original lineup consisted of brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson; their cousin Mike Love; and their friend Al Jardine. Distinguished by their vocal harmonies and early surf songs, they are one of the most influential acts of the rock era. The band drew on the music of jazz-based vocal groups, 1950s rock and roll, and black R&B to create their unique sound, and with Brian as composer, arranger, producer, and de facto leader, often incorporated classical or jazz elements and unconventional recording techniques in innovative ways.

The Beach Boys began as a garage band, managed by the Wilsons' father Murry, with Brian's musicianship dominating their creative direction. In 1963, they gained national prominence with a string of top-ten hits reflecting a southern California youth culture of surfing, cars, and romance, later dubbed the "California Sound." After 1964, they abandoned beachgoing themes for more personal lyrics and ambitious orchestrations. In 1966, the Pet Sounds album and "Good Vibrations" single raised the group's prestige as rock innovators and established the band as symbols of the nascent counterculture era. Following the dissolution of the group's Smile project in 1967, Brian gradually ceded production and songwriting duties to the rest of the band, reducing his input because of mental health and substance abuse issues. The group's commercial momentum subsequently faltered, and despite efforts to maintain an experimental sound, they were dismissed by early rock critics as the archetypal "pop music cop-outs."

The Beach Boys are one of the most critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and widely influential bands of all time. The group had over eighty songs chart worldwide, thirty-six of them US Top 40 hits (the most by an American rock band), four reaching number-one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The Beach Boys have sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide, making them one of the world's best-selling bands of all time and are listed at No. 12 on Rolling Stone magazine's 2004 list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time." In 2017, a study of AllMusic's catalog indicated the Beach Boys as the 6th most frequently cited artist influence in its database. The core quintet of the three Wilsons, Love and Jardine were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beach_Boys

As you listen, think about the musical characteristics.

Listening - describe each song and include

1. Song Title

2. The overall beat (weak, medium, strong OR gentile, facile, maestoso) of the song is:

3. The song's overall tempo (slow, medium, fast/adagio, andante, allegro) is:

4. The song's overall dynamics are (soft, medium, loud/piano, mezzo piano, mezzo forte, forte):

5. Discuss the instrumentation of the song. Name or describe some instruments you hear:

6. Describe at least two characteristics that make the song unique. Ex: Is there an instrumental solo? Is there more than one singer? What is the form of the song?

Part B: Response

A written response to the following question:

Based on all of the songs you just listened to, what musical characteristics define The Beach Boys' style?

Remix: The Beach Boys

1. Search, then download/print the lyrics to a Beach Boys' song of your choice. Extension: choose 2 or more songs to create a remix mash-up.

2. Practice reading the lyrics to the Beach Boys' song in a rap style.

3. Once you are ready, record yourself rapping the lyrics onto one track.

4. Add 4+ loops from the loop library to the lyrics you recorded to create a remix of the original Beach Boys' song.

**For added fun, look for theremin sounds to add to your remix. The theremin was featured on the song "Good Vibrarions".

You can play a virtual theremin here: Google Doodle/Clara Rockmore

You can learn more about the theremin here: https://blog.oup.com/2016/10/ten-facts-about-the-theremin/

Compare Songs: Beach Boys vs. Meghan Trainor

Listen to Dear Future Husband by Meghan Trainor (2015) and Wouldn't It Be Nice by The Beach Boys (1966).

Write a short discussion about why someone might think that these two songs sound alike. Be sure to include pitch, melody, harmony, style, tempo, and any relevant other musical components while citing details to back-up your opinions.

Compare Songs: Beach Boys vs. Roy Wood

Listen to Forever by Roy Wood (1973) and I Get Around by The Beach Boys (1964).

Write a short discussion about why someone might think that these two songs sound alike. Be sure to include pitch, melody, harmony, style, tempo, and any relevant other musical components while citing details to back-up your opinions.

Jim Frankel
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