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

Comments

S4: E107 Active Listening Through Storytelling and Classical Music with Robert Franz

Season Four Episode 107 Active Listening with Robert Franz Robert Franz Website Stella's Magical Musical Balloon Ride Ted Talk: Active Listening and Our Perception of Time Robert Franz Bio: Acclaimed conductor, Robert Franz, recognized as "an outstanding musician with profound intelligence," has held to three principles throughout his career: a commitment to the highest artistic standards, to creating alliances and building bridges in each community he serves, and a dedication to being a strong force in music education. As Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra and Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival Orchestra, Associate Conductor of the Houston Symphony, and newly appointed Artistic Advisor of the Boise Baroque Orchestra, he has achieved success through his focus on each of these principles. His appeal as a first-rate conductor and enthusiastic award-winning educator is acclaimed by critics, composers, and audiences of all ages. Composer Bright S...

Recorder: What to do with Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns... it might be the bane of your existence, a song to start with students with B-A-G on the recorders that really doesn't affect you one way or the other, or a great song to use that is simplistic and gets the job done. No matter what your feeling on it, it's likely that you've used it because it is effective at teaching simple rhythms, B-A-G and giving students a great starting place when learning recorder. Personally, I find it useful but I'm honestly tired of it. I decided to do something new with it this summer and wanted to change it so that it was more musical. For many days of my summer break I spent time in the morning playing the recorder. I wrote down melodies I had improvised and liked, played with modes and scales, added unpitched percussion parts/piano/guitar chords and enjoyed seeing what could be done. Not all of the pieces were very good but it was a great creative way to figure out some solutions for recorder pitch set...

S6: E127 Mini Soundtrap Project

Season 6 Episode 127 Mini Soundtrap Project In the last few episodes I’ve shared some Soundtrap lesson ideas that I created and used with students. Podcasts, Fictional Character Themes, Found Sounds, and Poem with Loops. Check out the resources provided for each of these lessons in the show notes or on the blog. Today’s episode is about a simple Soundtrap project that could be done as a collaboration by several students or by an individual in whatever time frame you provide. The benefit of this lesson is that it’s incredibly flexible. It could be done in as little as 20 minutes or as much as 45 minutes or more. The idea is to allow students to create a piece containing a specific amount of loops that includes an introduction and ending. Like I said super simple. This might be a great way to introduce students to loops and even form structure depending on how you set up your rubric. This was a lesson I used while I was out th...

Afternoon Ti

Search This Blog