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Live Exploration: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Take a special trip to the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra with GPB Education! This interactive virtual exploration offers students a behind-the-scenes experience as they learn about the science of sound and the preparation it takes to put on a live musical performance. During the program, students will also hear from various ASO musicians and watch pieces performed by the Atlanta Symphony.

Live Exploration: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

Live Exploration: Atlanta Symphony Orchestra

GPB Education presents a live virtual field trip with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

Support Materials

Grades K-5

Sound | Science Trek

Investigate how sound occurs and how sound is heard with this video segment from IdahoPTV's Science Trek. Learn how sound is measured.

Experiments: Changing Pitch | Sesame Street

Abby and Elmo are investigators! See what happens when they experiment with changing pitch. This resource teaches STEM skills.

Music Interactives | The Power of Music

TExplore interactive tools designed to develop students’ ability to detect musical errors and strengthen music-reading skills. Music Mentor takes on the role of a mentor, students listen to a peer perform musical phrases shown on screen, and must offer feedback to help improve the performance. Noteflight is an online notation software that enables users to compose and arrange scores. Soundation is an online music creation studio that enables users to create, edit, mix, and share music using functionality similar to GarageBand.

ZOOM | Experimenting with a Glass Xylophone

The cast of Zoom investigates how the pitch of sound changes when they strike a variety of glasses filled with different amounts and types of liquids in this video segment adapted from ZOOM. When you hit an empty glass with a spoon, both the glass and the air inside it vibrate. You hear these vibrations as sound through the air.

Grades 6-8

Music Arts Toolkit

Videos in the Music Arts Toolkit collection explore the history and elements of music. Through live performances and interviews, the collection represents a wide variety of cultures, periods, and styles of music.

Musical Concepts - Conductor

Jane Linde Capistran, associate conductor of the Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra, explains the duties of the orchestra’s conductor, including choosing musical selections and leading the orchestra in the style and tempo she desires. She uses a baton in her right hand and gestures with her left hand to communicate messages to individual musicians, sections, or the entire orchestra.

The Lowdown | A-Rhythm-Etic

Rock out to a musical demonstration of math involved in constructing rhythms from groups of beats in this video from KQED. In the accompanying classroom activity, students consider how the note durations comprising a measure in 3/4 time relate to fractions that sum to 1. Then, they create and perform their own 3/4 measures comprised of quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes.

Grades 9-12

Sound: Standing Waves and Resonance | Physics in Motion

The Physics in Motion team visits a university orchestra to understand wave interference and how resonance affects waves moving through different types of air columns and strings. The team explores how to find various resonant frequencies using the wave velocity equation in combination with an equation that relates the wavelength of a wave to the length of a string, or a closed or open-ended tube.

Sound | Crash Course Physics

We learn a lot about our surroundings thanks to sound. But...what is it exactly? In this episode of Crash Course Physics, Shini goes over some of the basics (and some of the not so basics) of the Physics of Sound.