Star Light, Star Bright

This week I sang "Star light, star bright" with my first graders with the traditional sol-la-mi tune. Based on a lesson I learned from Donna Massello-Chiacos at an Inland Counties Chapter of AOSA last month. Some students played a simple bordun on C and G, some students played finger cymbals when we sang "star", others played triangles when we sang "wish" and the rest played shakers on the rhyming words. 

Doug Goodkin on TedX

Through the Facebook page of the AOSA, Doug Goodkin altered us to a video of where he talks about the importance of music education, especially for children.

First he queries the audience and asks for a show of hands of how many are musicians. Then he asks how many consider themselves musical. His final question asks how many people enjoy music. Of course, with each successive question the number of hands increases until the final question when nearly 100% of the audience identifies. The question he then asks is, "what happened?"

He believes, as do I, that everyone is a musical being, and we all need the opportunity to be musicians, most importantly starting in early childhood.

The video is well worth your 15 minutes.

I have been privileged to have been to two Doug Goodkin workshops and feel as though I have been to church when the time is over.

Prepared Xylophone

Yesterday I went to an Orff workshop where the presenters (Lissie Quishenberry and Rachael Doudrek) used rubber bands in several great ways. First of all, they used large bands around xylophone bars ala John Cage. One can "pluck" the bands to create a new timbre, but also stick things underneath the bands to create a "prepared xylophone" with yet a new timbre.

Another cool thing to do with rubber bands is to use them to color code each note (ala boomwhackers) which can go with any visual that you might create.

Teaching Improvisation

Having attended a goodly number of Orff workshops in the past 8 years or so, I can definitely say that Saturday's workshop with Julie Scott was one of the very best. She presented a chronological and immensely practical approach to teaching improvisation from the youngest children on up. I particularly enjoyed this way of playing drums, and I think I may just have to incorporate that into my upper grade lesson plans very soon.

Name Games

Vista is a small enough school (around 300) where I can hope to learn the majority of students' names. Back when I ran the library there, I did know everyone's names (and who had late books, etc.), but I have not run the library in five years.

This summer I pulled out Doug Goodkin's Name Games: Activities for Rhythmic Development. I am going to make a concerted effort to use at least a handful of these games throughout the year. I would love for the kids to create ostinatos with their names as building blocks and transfer these patterns to pitched and unpitched instruments.

I am inspired by this youtube video where these 4th grade students, over a long period of time, created their own piece of music - over 8 minutes long - (ala Philip Glass, sort of) with ostinatos. I would love to work towards a student-composed piece (or pieces), and I think that using the rhythms of their own names would be a great elemental building block.

Orff Workshops

I have been going to Orff Workshops for a number of years now, and I always enjoy getting new ideas for teaching.  I can never keep doing the exact same thing year after year without getting bored, so I either tweak a lesson plan I like or replace it with something that I learn in one of these workshops.  (Of course, there are a few lessons I love so much that I never tire of them.)

When I went to Paul Cribari's workshop on Saturday, it dawned on me that I don't necessarily pay as much attention to the songs/movement being taught as I do to the tidbits and tricks and small ideas that the presenter brings.  For example, we were doing body percussion with a poem (what poem?  it doesn't matter) and Cribari talked about the quality of the clapping and stamping.  So, some of the clapping we did high, some lower (cupped hands), and the stamping (seen here) was given a special movement to make it musical, rather than just mindlessly setting your foot down on the ground.

This week I am doing a canon with my upper graders, and you can be sure we will be paying close attention to the quality of our sounds.

Orff Workshop

Here is a short snippet of a video of the fun we had at our ICCAOSA workshop this morning.  I was playing the big bass bar and filming at the same time.  The title of the workshop was World Drumming at Your Fingertips, which included singing and playing the Orff instruments (and a few found sounds, too).

Orffing

Still trying to write a melody from two motifs, I am listening to Druid Fluid from Appalachia Waltz. I like the low part at the beginning which gives me ideas for how to use my motifs in an extended melody.

Today I went to an In-house Orff workshop of my own devising. I rented some videos from the American Orff Schulwerk Association. 5 music teachers gathered to watch and share teaching ideas.

The first video we watched was a workshop by Avon Gillespie. By taking very simple pulse and beat rhythms, he worked the crowd first with clapping and other body percussion, then through found sounds (keys, shoes, pencils, etc), then with unpitched percussion.

The second part of the video showed an inspired rendition of Are You Sleeping? using a variety of meters as well as switching into minor (ala Mahler). I would love to write a piece for elementary string orchestra using some of those meters, and incorporating other instruments. Think of the open string borduns / drones. Think of the major/minor possibilities.

The second video was a presentation by Carol Roberts, an Australian teacher. She took a piece from the Orff Volumes and manipulated it in a variety of ways. The Hungarian Folk song is so enchanting that Pat and I want our beginning strings to learn it for the spring concert, using F and C naturals.