Sibelius Announces Fun New Music Software for Ages 9-11

Groovy City latest in the Groovy Music suite for primary schools

3 May 2007 – Sibelius Software today announces the launch of Groovy City, the third in the Groovy Music series of music education programs for 5-11 year-olds. The Groovy Music series now spans all primary school ages, enabling teachers to create effective and fun music lessons with ICT whether or not they are music specialists. Groovy Music dev­elops children’s musical knowledge through animated, curriculum-focused exercises and encourages creativity through music composition.

Groovy City immerses children in a futuristic city landscape adventure that inspires them to understand, learn and create music. The animated program is highly engaging and incorporates the latest proven approaches to child learning and development. It is designed for all music curriculums for 9-11 year olds, including UK Key Stage 2.

Groovy City provides stunning loops and sound effects that enable children to compose hip-hop, house and other contemporary styles of music as well as more traditional genres. It also explores tone colour, rhythm and notation in greater detail than the other Groovy Music programs, which are designed for lower age groups. Children are also able to compose music by attaching a MIDI keyboard.

Groovy City follows on from Groovy Shapes and Groovy Jungle, which are designed for 5-7 and 7-9 year olds respectively. Both specialist and non-specialist teachers can teach music easily and effectively using all three Groovy Music programs, whether or not they themselves are able to read music.

Characterized by eye-catching cartoon animations, each Groovy Music program is split into two parts, ‘Explore’ and ‘Create’.  In the Explore section children are guided aurally through a series of musical activities and games that teach them how music works. Once the students are familiar with Explore they move into Create where they are able to put into practice their new knowledge by creating original tunes. Groovy accommodates any style of music, giving it huge appeal to the broadest of tastes.

GROOVY SHAPES (5-7 age range) is the first of the three programs in which children learn about basic musical concepts.  Shapes are used to represent elements of music such as rhythms, melodies and chords.  The progressive exercises simplify class preparation for teachers, and because instructions are given aurally, no reading is required.

GROOVY JUNGLE (7-9 age range) continues to explore notes and notation and simple musical terms. Music can now be added to a composition by recording from a keyboard or other MIDI instrument. In addition, more complex musical instruments and textures can be explored and developed.

GROOVY CITY (9-11 age range) is designed in a cool, futuristic city theme which appeals to the older primary school child.  It teaches students more about notation and asks them to complete more complex listening tasks.  The program has a library of sounds, including repeatable patterns. Students are also introduced to question and answer phrases and the blues scale, so that they can begin to build up more sophisticated compositions.

Sibelius Software MD, Jeremy Silver, comments: “We’re absolutely delighted to see this highly successful product extend into the upper years of Key Stage 2. Groovy City lets children compose the kind of music they listen to, like R&B, Hip-Hop and House. We’ve spent months testing this product with children and teachers and we are delighted that the overall consensus is that teaching and learning music has never been so easy or so much fun - that’s got to be a great boost for giving young children the chance to easily create their own music.”

For information about Groovy Music click here.