New London Orchestra

The New London Orchestra presents NLO Shorts: a new series of concise videos providing an invaluable free resource for music educators. Our first series, produced during the lockdown period, introduces students to the instruments of the orchestra. Each video is presented by an NLO player and our conductor, Ronald Corp OBE, and at only 3.5 minutes long is perfect for use in the classroom.

Material covered includes how the instrument is played, its typical range and function, conventional ensembles in which it plays, standard auxiliary instruments, and more. Each video includes a wide range of musical excerpts from a diverse group of over 80 composers. These extracts cover everything from solo music to full orchestral passages, and have been specifically chosen to help students identify the different instruments, as well as significantly broadening the range of pedagogical repertoire.

These videos have been designed specifically for KS3, although they would be appropriate for students of all ages. Each video is accompanied by a worksheet for use in the classroom or as homework. As well as helping students to differentiate between instruments, the worksheets develop their understanding of the elements of music by using the embedded extracts as a vehicle for improving aural skills, while extension tasks give enthusiastic students more scope to explore the repertoire. Standard and Advanced versions of the worksheets are provided with the same questions but the standard versions also include some scaffolding to help the students. The worksheets can be downloaded at the bottom of this page.

"I used this useful website in my Science workshop to introduce the idea of pitch to investigate how sound is produced. The pupils were all engaged choosing their favourite instruments to study. The musicians introduced each instrument clearly with appropriate language that the primary pupils could understand. As a teacher, it is always reassuring to have good quality resources to have to hand. I will most certainly be using this child friendly website again. Thank you." Haf Hayes, Science Lead, Ysgol Pencae, Cardiff