S6: E131 Carol of the Bells

Season Six

Episode 131

Carol of the Bells

We’re in our series on rhythm! This episode is all about Carol of the Bells - you likely hear it as often at this time of year as we hear piano students playing Fur Elise the rest of the year. This piece is simplistic and difficult at the same time. The triple meter is awesome - a great way to emphasize strong-weak-weak with students, it’s usually fairly familiar for most students, they enjoy it and feel proud to be able to play a familiar piece. Maintaining a steady tempo and not rushing can be a challenge with this song so it’s important to have students move to it, speak the text, find ways of doing things in the rests that supports movement through space so that they can feel the length of the rests and not rush. It’s also a great piece to have students learn about motifs!

In Episode 130 I shared about how the tech tool Pear Deck can be a great way for students to engage in learning. One of the great things about Pear Deck is that if you don’t want to engage that feature within Google Slides, you don’t have to do so in order to use it. Check out the show notes and the blog for the Pear Deck that I use with my students for this lesson.

I’m going to walk through each step of the lesson - what I do with Carol of the Bells in terms of teaching motifs, writing/reading rhythms, comparing/contrasting different performances of the piece, and then teaching students how to play the piece on barred instruments.

Carol of the Bells Pear Deck

Carol of the Bells Arrangement pdf

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