Listening Lesson

Here’s an idea I came up with for a little activity for a listening lesson, specifically addressing the subject of Classical music integrated with world music. The first video is a video of pianist Lang Lang playing a piece with his father playing the traditional Chinese string instrument, the erhu (二胡), on an arrangement of pieces called “Competing Horses.” Great questions to ask for this piece would be to ask the students what instrument they think is being played. How does it sound? Does it sound like an instrument we hear a lot in America? Then have them discuss the use of the piano, a modern Western instrument, with a world instrument. (The link below will start the video at 1:18, where the actual playing begins)

http://youtu.be/JhdKtVbHyPg?t=1m18s

 

The next piece to ask similar questions about would be actually a little clip from two different performances of the same piece. The piece is the prelude form J.S. Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No 3, the Prelude (first movement). The first performance is by violinist Hilary Hahn, and the second is by Bela Fleck.

The teacher can ask the students to identify the two instruments played, and give differences. Where do you mostly hear the violin? How about the banjo? How is the music the same between the two performances? How is it different? Is it different?

Ballet Song!

Here’s a little song I came up with for this ballet unit. This song teaches some rudimentary (and rather watered-down) ballet moves such as the plié, pirouette, en pointe, and jeté. Each verse teaches a new move, and after each move there is a dance break to “practice” the move. What I think would make this fun would be for the teacher to come up with an easy, choreographed dance after each verse that accumulates all of the moves into one dance. The text is sung to the tune of “Ach du lieber Augustin.”

 

Chorus:

Now it’s time to learn ballet, learn ballet, learn ballet

Now it’s time to learn ballet so we can dance

Verse 1:

You stand on your tip-toes and dance all around

Now you know the “en pointe” and now we can dance

[Dance Break]

Chorus

Verse 2:

You’re en pointe with arms up and spin in a circle

Now you know the “pirouette” and now we can dance!

[Dance Break]

Chorus

Verse 3:

You bend your knees low and you bring them back up nice and tall

Now you know the “plié” and now we can dance!

[Dance Break]

Chorus 

Verse 4:

You stick your let out front then take a leap forward

Now you know the “jeté” and now we can dance!

[Dance Break to the end]

 

I’ll upload a midi track that I have made for this song later today sometime. During the “dance breaks” I put in little phrases of famous waltzes, like the Blue Danube, Waltz of the Flowers, etc.

Let me know what you think!

 

Dalcroze approach activity for “Jake the Ballet Dog”

For a Dalcroze-based lesson, there are two basic variations on the same theme, so you can do both or, like I might, do the lesson in an arch form.

First, play music and have students enact what they think it “looks” like through what they think are dance-like motions. Make sure that they only use movement and not words.

Second, teach the ballet movements to the students and have them describe what kind of music they think might go with this. It is important that for all of these activities, you have a wide variety of music and movements so that the students do not see too much of the same thing. 

Finally, have the students repeat the same idea as the first lesson (maybe with new music or maybe the same music) but using the movements that were learned in the second component of the lesson.

It is important that you be creative in what musical components you teach in this lesson. Explore tempo, dynamics, articulation, orchestration and timbre, texture, and other musical elements. Intelligent people always have options!

It might give students a nice change of pace to use descriptive drawings in the second component instead of verbal answers.

Again, these are just some ideas. Let me know what you think!

Orff approach activity for “Jake the Ballet Dog”

When trying to think of an Orff-based lesson for my book, I was unsure how to make the connection between the music of ballet and the movement of ballet. Movement is easy to reinforce, especially in my Dalcroze activity later. The important think to reinforce with the Orff-based approach for music is a safe environment for exploration and improvisation. Here’s the basic idea behind my activity:

1. First, teach the students various ballet movements (pirouette, arabesque, etc.) and have them imitate those movements. If you get creative and use different (even non-classical) music for this, it can be very fun, even if they’re just doing the same thing that you’re doing.

2. Next, explore the music in a large group with Orff instruments. Have students make connections between the movements that they just did and the music that they play. For this part, you might want to write out various simple melodies that the students can play together, but in different styles and textures.

3. This is a lengthy one, so you might stretch this out over a few lessons. 

– Divide the class into groups of 5-6 (maybe more) with 2 or 3 instruments per group.

– Present scenarios to each group for them to “choreograph.” Make sure that each group has a different scenario and there are two per group. These scenarios do not need to have a plot, just an expression or a snippet of a story (“The hero chasing after the villain to rescue someone”)

– Have some students improvise melodies and textures on these instruments while the other students dance. Have groups trade out between the two scenarios. It is important that you mark off a “staging” area so that your performers to not use the entire space

 

These are just some ideas for the outline of a lesson. Let me know if you have any thoughts!

New Prezi!

Here’s a Prezi that I made explaining the expressive elements of music (tempo, dynamics, timbre, and texture) through ballet. This may help kids get a visual representation of what timbre or texture means to them, which will come in handy down the road. Hope you enjoy and let me know what you think!

http://prezi.com/hpf5g55vguno/expressive-elements-of-music-in-ballet/

Children’s Books

For our first project, we all picked children’s books that we could create a K-6 unit on that incorporates songs, listening, playing instruments, creating, rhythm, movement, drama, art activities, and other things. The book I chose was “Jake the Ballet Dog” by Karen LeFrank.

This book is a sequel of sorts to the more popular “Jake the Philharmonic Dog”. I chose this book, however, because it has so much information about ballet, one area that I feel like is under-taught in the public schools. Also, the book has a nice, “secular” Christmas theme, so it is easily adaptable for a Christmas program.

Sing songs about ballet or dance like “Dance, Ballerina Dance” by Nat King Cole, or “Nina Pretty Ballerina” by ABBA; or write a song about ballet, possibly to the tune of a famous classical waltz, etc.

Listen to music of various ballets. Bits of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker” and “Swan Lake”, but also “different” ballets like Ravel’s “Daphnis et Chloé”, Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”, and Copland’s “Rodeo”

Instruments: Have students play on glockenspiels and other metallophones to create “tip-toe” music; possibly have students play a melody (simple) from the Nutcracker

Create: Give each student (or group of students) a small segment of music and have them choreograph a short dance for that music

Rhythm: Any kind of Dalcroze-type activity to get the kids moving and thinking about rhythm; explaining how slow rhythms sound vs. fast rhythms using a ballet suite, or the like

Movement: Teach students the five basic positions and other moves like pirouette, arabesque, and en point

Drama: Have the students act out the story of the Nutcracker (for a school-wide performance, maybe) with each student or group of students choreographing a segment of the music. This could work very well for a Christmas program. 

Art Activities: Introduce students to Edgar Degas  and his paintings about ballerinas.