If I Had a Hammer

The recent death of Pete Seeger has brought this childhood hero of mine to the forefront of my thoughts lately. I decided that the kids at Vista need to sing If I Had a Hammer again, and I have pulled out my guitar and started introducing it to the kids. Of course, they immediately take to the song.

I'm surprised (but maybe not so much) that some of the teachers do not even know who Pete Seeger was. But today, in the teacher's room during lunch, I started talking about the song, and the teachers who know the song started singing it, clapping along, with great gusto. The office manager and one of the teachers just looked on, watching us. There was even mention that teachers need to sing this in the talent show in June. For sure, we are going to sing this as a whole school in the next month or so.

This reminds me of the time that I had to introduce Puff, the Magic Dragon to the students. It's probably time I dusted that one off, too.

The Art of Conducting

The Claremont Concert Orchestra is preparing for our March concert in which we will play Schumann's 4th Symphony. Our visiting conductor this semester, Brian Stone, invited us to watch a video of Herbert von Karajan in rehearsal with the Vienna Philharmonic just before they recorded this particular symphony. 

Here are some of my observations:

Even the Vienna Phil needs to be directed in how to interpret music (and they take direction efficiently!). This includes being reminded how to shape a phrase, giving it direction.

The seating arrangement of the orchestra was interesting. The first and seconds were next to each other in the usual place, but the violas were on the outside opposite the firsts, and the celli were between the seconds and violas. 

It's in German with English subtitles, and I could understand about half of what he was saying to the orchestra. Yay!

He took a few of the tempi too fast. I say this not because I cannot play that fast, but because I don't think one needs to play as fast as you can just because you can. 

You can watch this video on youtube, however, it has no subtitles at this link. Or, you can buy it at Amazon and have English or French subtitles. 

It was time well spent.

Teaching Recorders

I received an email from a friend-of-a-friend yesterday. She had been referred to me as someone who could be a resource for teaching recorders. Since I love teaching recorders I was happy to be of assistance. This morning I set out my basic set-up method, including a first lesson. I typed it out since I think that I could possibly be sharing this information in the future. Then it occurred to me that I could post my thoughts on this blog to have as an easy reference.

So here goes!

Teaching Recorders

Setting Up

Have a classroom set of recorders that STAYS AT SCHOOL. If you let students take home their recorders to practice, they will invariably forget them on music day.

I have written a blog post about this here:

http://musicmotifs.blogspot.com/2013/06/nuts-and-bolts-of-recorder-class.html

Getting Started

The first day is so much fun, but it sounds terrible. Here is my lesson plan for Day One.

Review quarter and eighth notes. I have flashcards with four beat rhythms. We look at each one, say the rhythm (tas and titis) and then clap the rhythm.

Review Mi-Re-Do with hand signs and flashcards. We did this in second grade, and I start with BAG.

* Note * Some brilliant educators start with G E, and some with A C. You will find what works best for you.

Have students hold old their hand in front of their mouth. With lips pursed, blow onto the palm as though you are blowing out a candle. Ask what it feels like. They will say several things, but you are looking for “It feels cool or cold.”

Next have the students breathe onto their palm as though they are going to fog up a window. It should feel warm. Our mantra “Warm, soft air, good sound we care.”

Practice du, du, du (gentle air tonguing) with rhythms.

Learn the chant “Left hand on top, forget me not.”

Have students pinch their left index finger and thumb together.

NOW you can pass out the recorders! Hang them around their necks.

Hold up the recorder in the right hand like the Statue of Liberty to see the thumb hole on the back of the recorder. Thumbprints not tips! Cover the holes completely! Have students place their left finger and thumb on the B.

Now, have them blow (Warm, soft air…. Warm, soft air) and copy your rhythms.

It will sound like chaos. Yuck! But they will love it, and they will improve very fast.

Resources

I have used these resources and others I find on the internet. These have CDs with backtracks.

Denise Gagne – The Complete Recorder Resource Kit (Book 1) with CD.

http://www.westmusic.com/p/complete-recorder-resource-kit-1-student-book-and-cd-805001

Recorder Classroom – a Publication by Music K8

    http://www.recorderclassroom.com

Recorder Routes by Carol King

            http://www.amazon.com/Recorder-Routes-Introducing-Soprano-Classes/dp/0934017204

This is an Orff-Based approach, if you are familiar with Orff-Schulwerk.

If you do Pinterest – there is a wealth of info there. Type in recorder classroom in the search box and see what you come up with.

Recorder Karate

This is the best thing I can think of to motivate kids to practice. After the kids can mostly play their first easy song like Hot Cross Buns, they take a test on it. They play for you individually. If they can play it, they get their white belt.

For belts, I have devised this system. I get a little hair band (the little clear ones that are about ½ diameter) and put it around the bottom of their recorder. Then I take a skein of embroidery thread, cut the loops at each end, then pull out one “piece” (about 6-8 strands together) and tie it to the hair band.

I am amazed at what they will do for a piece of embroidery thread. I think it is for bragging rights.

Each song gets progressively harder. Yellow belt, then orange, green, purple, blue, red, brown, black.  This can mean adding a new note, a harder rhythm, etc. If you google recorder karate, you can see various people’s lists for recorder karate. You can tailor this to your students.

I do not take up class time with testing. The kids come to me during some recess once a week. They stand in line and wait their turn and cheer on their classmates.

Gifts for Students - Fail?

For Christmas I decided to give my students something other than candy or a pencil. I decided to buy them a gift card to buy MP3s at Amazon. Brilliant, right?

Maybe not. Not one of them has bought a single piece of music yet. I think I will get a list of suggestions together to send to the parents who may need to help the kids download the audio files....

The Practice Revolution

The Practice Revolution by Philip Johnston

I wish that my violin teachers had read this book when I was learning the violin. I have no recollection of my practice habits as a kid, but I'm sure they weren't great. First of all, violin came easy to me at first, so I probably didn't "need" to practice in the first year to keep up with my class.

Then, I'm sure that this was the model. At the lesson, the teacher would write something in a book, or maybe in my music about what I should work on. Like, play this scale. Play this etude. Work on this piece.

Not very specific, huh? And that is how I have been operating as a music teacher for the past 18 years. The problems with this approach? We ask our students to define their own methods of practicing, and that can lead to very unfocused playing, working on only the easy parts, playing the wrong way over and over, playing too fast, playing through the entire piece instead of breaking it down, etc.

This book helps the teacher define small goals for students and games and methods for students to practice more effectively. For example, if the student is working on a difficult passage and they can focus and thus play it correctly in 10 minutes or 30 minutes, then they are done with that goal. In the old method, they set the timer and just play their instrument until the alloted time is up.

Disclaimer, it seems as though too much of this book is geared toward selling you other materials by Mr. Johnston, especially towards the end. Also, the link does not work anymore, although with a little googling, one can get to the site.

I have already started using a few of the ideas with my group students (as I wrote about in my last post) as well as my private students, and I see movement in the right direction!