What a Wonderful Sound
by Ms. Ben-Nissan’s class
Haskell STEAM Songbook

May be sung to the tune of “What a Wonderful World” by Thiele & Weiss

Every sound has a pitch, high or low
It’s caused by the frequency, fast or slow
And I think to myself, what a wonderful sound

Every sound has a volume, soft or loud,
If the amplitude is high it’s like the roaring of a crowd
And I think to myself, what a wonderful sound

Sound is a vibration of atoms in the air
It loses power in inverse proportion to the square
Of your distance from the source, this is why
I move away when I hear babies cry

We measure frequency with hertz, that’s vibrations per second
And decibels will tell you the amplitude, I reckon
And I think to myself, what a wonderful sound
Yes, I think to myself, what a wonderful sound

Notes

How does this help the kids learn? Numerous studies (Howard Gardner, Nick Page, Kaori Iwai, Greg Crowther, many others) show that integrating the arts into academic instruction enhances memory, motivation, and comprehension of the material we need our students to learn. This also fits with several thousand years of human experience: all of our oldest stories (Iliad, Beowulf, Gilgamesh, etc.) were shared and remembered as songs long before ordinary people had access to books. Although our songs are intended to be fun to hear and to sing, our music serves a serious purpose; and evidence shows that it really works.