Bugler's Dream

Alright, here's a mystery song for you (don't look at the title of this post, lol!):

Okay, so I gave it away, oops!  Yesterday I saw a few of my Kodály friends put the solfege for this on their facebook status.  I thought, what great do pentatonic review for 3-5 grade when we get back to school so I had to make this power point.  The three slides above I'm going to use with 3rd, 4th and 5th grade when we're reviewing the do pentatone as a "Mystery Song" during the high concentration portion of their lesson.  The rhythm contains elements that have not been taught in any of these grade levels, so one way I represented rhythmic duration is through the placement of the solfa below four hearts that are representative of the beat.

I need to preface the next section:  I LOVE power points.  I love that you can easily manipulate them for however you want to use them by adding, rearranging or deleting slides.  I will be doing that with this power point to make it applicable to the grade that I'm using it with.  Third and fourth grades will not see the next few slides.  They will skip from this slide to the slide that presents the name of the mystery song (the slide with the Olympic Rings below that says "Bugler's Dream).

My fifth graders will start preparing tim-ka this fall, so I have added these slides for that purpose.  Once tim-ka is presented, we will bring back these slides and read it with the new rhythm, as a mystery song:

With all three of those grade levels, once they have sang the solfa successfully, they will derive the mystery song.  I'm sure they don't know the exact title of the song, but they'll easily recognize it as the Olympic Theme (unless they were visiting Jupiter this August, lol!).  I will duplicate the slides accordingly to match the recording that I have.  I found a relatively short (45 second) version on iTunes that works really well:

These slides, of course, are for 5th grade and will be used for reading once tim-ka is presented:

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Elephant and a bit more of the Aquarium

A couple weeks ago I posted about "The Aquarium" from The Carnival of the Animals.  When I was at school today I took a picture of the listening map that I had made for it:

There is one more piece to it that I I forgot to take a photo of and that is the coda which is represented by a descending line of water drops.  

Here's what I do in "The Aquarium" lessons.

1. The students follow along while I point to the fish.  They are asked to listen for why they think the fish are different shapes and what they represent (shape=rhythm; placement=melody)
2. They listen again, following along by tracking the fish from their seats.
3. The next lesson we review and then the students use fish that I have mounted on popsicle sticks to follow along with the listening map.
4. The lesson after that they can either use fish or scarves to travel in space around the room, using the manipulative to show duration and melodic contour.  They are suppose to "swim" only when they hear the "fish" part)

Here is "The Elephant" listening map, also from The Carnival of the Animals:

"Elephant" from The Carnival of the Animals Listening Map

The first thing that is very obvious to students is the form of the piece and using their background knowledge it is very easy to identify that the form is ABA.  I've also made this into a power point.  You can download this file by clicking here.

"Elephant" Slide one of the Powerpoint

"Elephant" Slide two of the Powerpoint

"Elephant" Slide three of the Powerpoint

"Elephant" Slide four of the Powerpoint

The downfall and/or benefit of the power point is that the students don't immediately identify the form.  

Here is an activity that I do with the students for "The Elephant":

Pocket String Bass:

After listening to "The Elephant" all the way through the students identify that the string bass is the solo instrument.  I then make a big production over the fact that each and everyone of them is going to get to play a string bass that day.  Furthermore they are all going to get to play their basses at THE SAME TIME!  AND here's the best part: their string bass can even fit in their pocket!  GASP!  It's funny, when you first tell them that they all will get to play a bass in class they start looking around the room for the bass, which we all know would take up a large space in the classroom.

Here's how it works.  You will need a string for every student in your class.  The strings should be about 4 feet in length. At the end of each string make a loop and tie it in a knot so that you have a loop at each end:

Nylon string with a loop tied at each end.  The string is approximately 4 feet in length.

From there, you will make a slip knot, that is, pull the string through the loop just like you would for the end of a yo-yo.  Put one of the slip knots around your finger like this:

Make a slip knot at each end.

The other slip knot you put around your foot.  

The next part is very important: you are going to place your finger (the one with the string on it) on the outside part of the ear call the tragus.  We all know that it is very important that our students not stick their fingers IN their ears, so please go over this with your students.  Now, you should have the slip knot around your foot, a slip knot around your finger and the finger with the slip knot on your tragus.  Make the string tight and with your free hand pluck the string.  It will sound like a string bass.  Let your students experiment with how to change the sound of their bass.  They will learn that the tighter the string, the higher the pitch; the looser the string, the lower the pitch.  They can use their fingernail to slide along the string, they can make the string tighter after they pluck it to see how that affects the sound.

Once they have had the chance to experiment it is now time for them to play their bass along with the solo bass in "The Elephant."  I have them pluck their string for every elephant they see (every strong beat).  In the b-section I have them slide their fingers along the string but you can change it however you like.  In my "old-school" listening map you'll see and hear that in the b-section there is a spot where they pluck (beats 2 & 4 of the second line of the b-section).  I found a way to add that to the power point  yet that I'm satisfied with.  If you do, please share it with me! :)

Happy bass playing!

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The Aquarium

So, my two kids and I were watching this video yesterday:


**  Beware: it's a lot of fun and my kids enjoyed it but if you show it to your students they use the "other word" for donkey a few times.

It reminded me of when I student taught.  I'm an instrumentalist, flute is my main instrument and it wasn't until I fell in love with general music that I actually learned and found a love in singing.  During my student teaching, I was quite shy/hesitant/scared of my singing voice still so I did a lot of listening exercises with the students and with 3rd grade I did an entire unit on the Carnival of the Animals.

It's fun to see how you grow as a musician and a teacher.  I need to go back are revisit my Carnival of the Animals materials, some of it was great stuff.  But since then and taking my Kodály levels I listen to music with a much more analytical ear.  I will be sharing some of my ideas, past and present, for the Carnival of the Animals starting with The Aquarium.

I have a listening map that I did for The Aquarium, but of course it's at school.  When I go into school later this month I will take a picture and post it.  It was a map from my student teaching that had fish that iconically represented the melody.  The students followed along the first time with me pointing along in the chart.  They then described how the fish related to the melody.  We also talked about instruments, dynamics and tone-color.  With a second listening, the students used Popsicle stick fish to follow the melodic contour along with the listening map.  We later used scarves to move musically to the phrasing and melodic contour (remember, this was not all in the same lesson.)

Listening to it yesterday I realized that The Aquarium is also a great listening example for dotted half note.  While my youngest was napping today I made this powerpoint for students to read along with the rhythm.  You can download the PDF of the powerpoint by clicking here.

Another great extension for this listening example can be found in John Feierabend's Move It DVD.  If you don't have this, it's a must have for any must teacher!  I've even used it on a concert with my 1st and 2nd graders.  We used black lights.  The students wore handbell gloves: the students on stage right wore left gloves and the students on stage left wore right gloves.  They did all of the actions but the gloves made it look very complicated.  They students loved it and it was a fun was to incorporate Art Music into their grade level concert.

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Augie Great Municipal Band & The Kodály Classroom

The Kodály methodology and philosophy is that children first learn folk songs in their mother tongue, then folk songs of other cultures and then music of the masters (art music).  I think though, it is also important to find ways to teach rhythm and solfége to children in music that is more contemporary.  I was told by Jill Trinka one time that it is equally important, as educators, to know what children are listening to, reading and watching.  This example, "Augie's Great Municipal Band" from Star Wars Episode I," is a little "out-dated/old" in that the movie came out in 1999, but children are still familiar with it, known movie and can recognize the main musical themes.

I use this specific example as a low-sol reading exercise.  The rhythms are very simple and it contains solfa patterns that are easy to sight read.  We start by reading these slides via powerpoint:

After using these slides as a reading exercise we then read them all together.  (Keep in mind that before this activity we'll have used these patterns in games such as "poison" (unspoken pattern), "Who has/I Have" and others):

After reading the excercise slides we then put it with the music.  The original is very quick so the first time or two we use a version that I slowed down by putting it in Audacity.  During the first listen, the student count how many times the pattern occurs.  The next time we listen to it they try to sing the solfa as the pattern occurs.  The third time through, we try to add hand signs (remember, this is a part of a lesson over the sequence of a few lesson.)

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Musette in D & a Couple Tech-Tips

One thing that I really struggle with in my teaching is incorporating meaningful listening into my lessons.  I love John Feierabend's "Move It" DVDs and have lots of various listening lessons that I've gathered over the years that I use with my classes, but what I'm talking about is focused reading while the students are listening to a piece of quality art music.  This year, with opening a new school, I decided to narrow that focus and concentrate on incorporating it with my third grade concepts.  I shared  in first post on this blog the PDF of my PowerPoint for "Rondo Alla Turk" which practices "tika-tika."  Here is a preview of my PowerPoint for "Musette in D" by Bach that practices "Tika-Ti."

As with "Rondo Alla Turk," I have saved the complete PDF in google docs, you are welcome to click here for the PDF.  And as with "Rondo Alla Turk," it is fun to incorporate body percussion once the students can successfully clap the rhythms.  You'll notice that on the slide of "Theme B" it says keep the beat for 16 counts.  There are rhythms in those measures that they will not be able to read until 4th grade and this was my way of making it accessible to my 3rd graders.  I have them "follow the leader" during those 16 beats.  To start, I am the leader the first few times and after some practice, individual students take over the "beat-leader" role.

The title of this post also mentions "tech-tips" and here's where the first "tech-tip" comes in.  Before I share, I must preface this with the fact that I teach in a school district that has 26 elementary schools.  Of those 26 schools, 9 of us have taken Kodály levels with the majority of us completing our certification.  We have, over the past four years, created a Kodály collection for ourselves.  Through this process we have become very close colleagues and friends and we share a lot of resources and ideas with each other.  So, this tech-tip actually comes from my dear friend, Loretta Harvey.  I have had a hard time finding a version of "Musette in D" that is slow enough for the students to successfully read and clap the rhythm.  Her suggestion was to put it into Audacity, which is a free download, to slow it down.  Audicity, if you're not familiar with it, is wonderful: in addition to being able to change the tempo or a recording, you can also adjust the key, speed, etc. and record directly into it.  

Back to "Musette," here's a fun extension: Bobby McFerrin and Yo-Yo Ma recorded a CD called "Hush" and one of the songs that they recorded was "Musette in D."  Click here to listen to that recording, via YouTube.  Once the students have listened to a standard performance of "Musette in D" and successfully performed the rhythms along with the recording, have them listen to this one: they always love it!  And I've got another tech-tip for you (again, from Loretta Harvey): copy the URL and paste it into KeepVid.  From here,  it will walk you through how to save/download the YouTube clip.  You can save it as an MP4 file (video) or an MP3 file (audio only) and it will directly accessible on your hard drive.  I must admit that I sometimes when using KeepVid I  feel like I need to put on my eye patch and shout "Arr!!" but I also don't trust the Internet to be readily available at all times when I'm teaching and this ensures that I don't waste any valuable class time with a technological problem.  

I hope you've all had a great weekend!  For me, my spring break is over today and this week I've got a second grade concert on Thursday.  Hope you all have a great week!

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Starting a Blog via Rondo Alla Turk

I've noticed a lot of music teachers have set up blogs in order to share ideas and to improve their teaching. I have decided to jump on the bandwagon!

First of all, I LOVE teaching music and one of my favorite concepts to teach is the "tika-tika" family.  You know, good old sixteenth notes.  Maybe it's my flute player past that makes me so fond of them or maybe I'm just quirky that way!  I teach tika-tika (four sixteenths) and their combinations tika-ti and ti-tika (double sixteenth-eighth note and vice verse) in the third grade.

After following the three P's of the Kodály method (preparation, presentation and practice) of tika-tika I love having the students read Rondo Alla Turk by Mozart as a late practice activity.  After reading the rhythms via a powerpoint, we add body percussion: the "ta's" (quater notes) are stomps on the feet, the "ti-ti's" (eighth notes) are claps and the "tika-tika's" (you know, those good old sixteenth notes) are patted on the leg with alternating hands.  The thing that's tricky about having students read the rhythms to Rondo Alla Turk is that, in my sequence, students have not learned about anacrusis yet so they must read it without barlines.

I'm a visual person so here's how the orinigal looks:

 And here is how I modified it to make it accessible for my 3rd graders to read:

 Here are the other two main themes:

The 4th theme is a flurry of sixteenth notes.  Given that I can even get lost in there (or so I tell the students) we do a follow the beat of the teacher activity during that section.

Another added variable to this activity is the speed of the recording that you use.  Try searching many examples in iTunes to find one that you like.  You will want to copy and paste the slides from the PDF that I posted below into a powerpoint so you can add your audio file.  I did not post the ppt to this as I used the MusicEd Font for it and not everyone has that.  If you haven't heard of MusicEd Font, you need to buy it: it'll be one of the best $25 you'll ever spend.

I have saved the whole powerpoint as a PDF in Google docs and any one should be able to access it by clicking here.  If for some reason it doesn't work please send me a comment.  Now, I will preface this with the fact that I usually do this activity in the fall so you might want to hang onto it for October! :)

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