What makes you keep going back to a song to sing it over and over? Sometimes it’s a great rhythm or the meaningful words, but mostly it’s that memorable catchy melody that gets stuck in your head.

I came across this article ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Rip-Off: the dark secrets of the world’s most recognisable tune’ by Sebastian Doggart. In it he goes into a lengthy investigation of ‘the amazing steal-ability’ of a favourite nursery rhyme.

Did you know that there are  2,200 versions on iTunes of ‘Twinkle Twinkle’?. The famous composer Mozart wrote 12 Variations on the theme but even as recently as 2015, 70 composers around the world were asked to write their takes on the tune and some of them make for fascinating listening!

Together the students and I have been exploring the elements that make up a good tune by singing, playing, and experimenting with the Twinkle Little Star melody and ultimately creating our own variations or original ‘memorable melody’ to different stimuli.

Check out the different Level’s pages to see some of their fabulous work.