Start and Stop
This warm up starts in a similar way to Contrasts but then develops differently. Show the group a clear conducted ‘start’ signal, and a clear conducted ‘stop’ signal. The simplest way to do this is have closed hands (palms together) for stop (or silent) and open hands for play.

Ask the group to start and stop precisely when you give the signals. The children can play anything they like or an idea you have jointly chosen, but must you watch very carefully.
Ensure everyone can see you clearly. Be strict, especially about the stop signal! Ask children with resonant instruments to stop their sound ringing and demand accuracy.
As you conduct, vary the length of the playing time, and the length of the silences to make the activity challenging, to encourage excellent watching and to demonstrate the creative use of silence.
Now ask one or two of the children to be the conductor. Each time ask them to demonstrate the ‘start’ and ‘stop’ signal before the group plays. Encourage strong, clear gestures, and ensure that the whole group is watching the conductor.
Louder & Quieter
Carrying on from before, explain that as you move your hands further apart, they should play louder and when they are closer together they should play quieter.
Ask the children to play and match the dynamic as indicated by your hands. Be playful - allow some extended loud playing as well as controlled quiet playing, with lots of mixing up in between. Keep using silences of different lengths. Try to encourage the full spectrum of dynamics from very very quiet to very loud. You may need to practice the very very quiet playing a few times. Ask one or two children to conduct.
Chops
Introduce a new signal – the chop. Explain that when you do a single chop with one hand (like a karate chop) everyone will play one short note (on any pitch) altogether. Practice conducting single chops with varying lengths of silence in between. Be very precise about the ensemble sound and make sure that the group is exactly synchronised on your ‘chop’.
Ask one or two children to conduct some chops. Again, make sure their gestures are clear and strong.
Combining Signals
You can now experiment with combining the different signals explored so far to create an improvised piece - chops, continuous sounds with varying dynamics and silence. Invite different children to try this. Comment on their effective use of dynamics, silence and the mixing of the two gestures.