Our OrchLab resources explore the music and instruments of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and wider OrchLab project, using this as inspiration for musical activities, information and games.
Explore the four categories to start your musical journey.
In Autumn 2025, OrchLab worked with groups from Bramley Hill Day Centre (Garwood Foundation) and Brookside House (Shaftesbury) on a project inspired by a piece called En Saga by Jean Sibelius Sibelius (1865-1957) was a Finnish composer who often wrote music inspired by the beautiful scenery in Finland! One of his most famous pieces of music is
Posted in Listen & Discover, Resources
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) and tone poems Richard Strauss was a brilliant composer of music for stories. These pieces (called tone poems) don’t have a narrator, or pictures, they simply describe the story in the music. He wrote quite a lot of them. Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks is about a German peasant who played lots of
Posted in Listen & Discover
Can you imagine a film without background music? What would it be like? There are examples (for instance Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds), but they’re very rare – and often the lack of music creates a weird tension, leaving the viewer on edge, not quite knowing what to make of a scene. Film music helps the
Posted in Create & Compose, Resources
Can you find all the 8 orchestral instruments hidden in this wordsearch? See if you can beat your time each time you play!
Posted in Games & Quizzes
In this resource, we’re going to look at some of the different ways you can use the new OrchLab Soundmaker, Patterns, including some tips and ideas on how you might use OrchLab Patterns with some of the other Soundmakers on the OrchLab website. OrchLab Soundmakers are a set of web-browser based instruments that you can
Posted in Create & Compose, Resources, Staff guidance & training
OrchLab Soundmakers are a set of web-browser based instruments that you can use on a computer, tablet or mobile phone. The instruments available are called Circles, Squares, Percussion, Lines, Bars and Patterns. Below you can find a video which introduces Patterns to you. Feel free to use this as a starting point and then be as creative as you like
Posted in Create & Compose, Resources, Staff guidance & training
Test your memory by matching the musical sounds (make sure your sound is on!). Tap each card to flip it over, then try and remember where the matching sound is so you can match the pairs. The extracts you hear are from British composer Gustav Holst’s The Planets, performed by the LPO. You can find
Posted in Games & Quizzes, Resources
Ahoy! In this activity, we’re going to create musical waves inspired by Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Hebrides Overture.’ This piece was inspired by Mendelssohn’s visit to Scotland in 1829 and it’s also known as ‘Fingal’s Cave,’ after the landmark which inspired it. However, its original title was ‘The Lonely Isle’ – you can learn more about Mendelssohn’s
Posted in Create & Compose, Resources