Rounds are an amazing way to get students of all ages to start singing in tune, build part independence, and improve aural skills. Below you will find 10 rounds that can be used for warm-ups in choirs from elementary age to high school. In the elementary setting rounds can be used in the general music classrooms to help prepare students for two part music. Additionally rounds in middle school and high school can be used to focus on intonation or other key concepts. Plus students highly enjoy t
A canon for the elementary music classroom called Who'll Buy My Roses. A short and catchy song for 3rd grade and above.
Ah Poor Bird
Clever echo is an instant dictation exercise in music learning. Check out this blog post for a bunch of ready-made examples you can use now!
Coordinates church choir, recruits singers, develops and trains musical talents, and selects music for performances.
Vocal warm up routines that are fun are EASIER to remember. And singing warm ups using animal sounds employ a lot of the "primal" sounds beginning singers need to learn how to use.
I've seen several posts on FB pages about what to do at the end of the year. If you've been here before you know I started a tradition a fe...
I am happy to report that I am typing this post from my big, cozy orange chair at HOME, enjoying my first official day of summer! Before I get to the "meat and potatoes" of my post, I want to take a quick moment to celebrate the work we do as Kodály educators. I have now had the chance to work in several buildings where I was the first teacher to use the Kodály method of instruction and the folk literature that accompanies it and, after finishing my first year in a new building, I can say with certainty that it is amazing! I heard parents comment all year with statements like, "Sarah won't stop singing at home" and "Drew can't wait to find out what the next rhythm you will be learning is!" I listened as students told me about how they taught their brothers and sisters at home the songs we learned in music. I saw kids playing music games on the playground and at girl scouts, watched as kids connected the dots of music literacy, and experienced the joy that comes from singing and playing together. Aileen posted about the upcoming opportunities for taking your Levels classes here. If you haven't already completed your levels, I can't recommend it highly enough! Okay...back to business. After reading Karla's last post, I was inspired to take a minute (well, many minutes) and reflect on my school year. As I tried to brainstorm what I could post about that would be helpful during this time of year, I decided to share some of my favorite choir pieces from this past year for you to consider as you plan for your concerts in the upcoming year! I would describe myself as a "Children's Choir Fanatic." I just love the sound of children singing together! I have directed children's choirs for the Denver-based Young Voices for Peace, the Spokane Area Youth Choirs and currently serve as the Preparatory Choir Director for the Boulder Children's Chorale. When it comes time to choose repertoire, I spend hours and hours wading through piles of octavos and playing through piece after piece. I often find it helpful to keep a running list of possible song ideas and use a concert planner, because it can become overwhelming to keep track of all the music that is available! I have a sample concert planner that you can download for free here and I'm working on a new and improved one that will be available soon! This year, I conducted a few of "tried and true" favorites and found some new gems, too! I hope you will find one or two new ideas or at least be reminded of an old favorite that you can use in the future! I have posted the links to the scores below, but I always encourage people to search YouTube if you want to hear a full recording! For Unison Choirs 1. Path to the Moon by Eric Thiman I consider this a must have for every children's choir library. Beautiful melodies, beautiful poetry, and great opportunities to teach breath control, phrasing, and dynamics. 2. The Little Birch Tree arr. Mary Goetze* This is based on the traditional folk song, which is a great way to make a connection to your classroom teaching. I also love to draw the connection between this melody and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4. Great for teaching vowels (especially oo), dynamics, and phrasing. *Mary Goetze has a wonderful collection of folk song octavos for children's choirs. Some of my other favorite titles by her are Piglet's Christmas and Fire. You can see some of her other titles here. 3. Wee Little Piute arr. Heirholzer I taught this song for this first time this year and loved it. It is in a great register and has a lot of references to Native American traditions and language. Plus, it has some amazing "ahs" to help your young singers open up their head voice. 4. A Great Big Sea arr. Lori-Anne Dolloff A fiddle player and a spoons player are a must for this piece. The text painting in the piano is wonderful and opportunities to work on larger vocal leaps are great! For Two or Three Part Treble 1. The President's Tea by Tom Benjamin This is a piece by a modern composer filled with fun language like "sassafras silk" and "pillykin." It has several tempo and meter changes, making it a great piece to work on following the conductor! 2. Dodi Li arr. Doreen Rao (one of my favorite arrangers!) This piece sits beautifully in the child's voice. The piano is energetic and rhythmic, and it is great for teaching form to your singers. 3. Skylark and Nightingale arr. Audrey Snyder (another one of my favorites!) I already mentioned this piece in a previous post, but it is just so beautiful. It has an optional glockenspiel part which is pentatonic improvisation (perfect for tying in your classroom teaching) and the text is just lovely. 4. Kokoleoko arr. Donnelly and Strid I taught this for the first time this year after hearing the folk song in my Orff Level 1 class. It has very approachable harmonies and a fun, upbeat feel. It is a little bit long (I ended up editing one section out), but it is very easy to teach! I added some drums and other percussion to my performance to make it an energetic opener! 5. Fod! arr. Miller I love the humor and nonsense in this song, and my kids had fun singing it, too! 6. Windy Nights arr. Cynthia Gray Great poetry, 6/8 meter, and minor! My students really enjoyed this piece and it was a great way to break up the collection of major, duple meter pieces available for children's choirs! I could go on forever! I intentionally left out my Winter/Christmas/Hanukkah songs to post later in the year, but these were definitely some keepers from the year! I am always on the hunt for a new and wonderful song, so I would love to hear some of your favorites, too! And now...back to my summer book. I hope you have a great week!
One of my all-time FAVORITE resources this book: Susan Brumfield turned me onto it when I took levels at PSU. First of all, the songs were collected my Alan Lomax and Bess Lomax Hawes so it's a great primary resources and it's got a wonderful accompanying CD of songs that they collected from the Caribbean. If you've taught elementary general music you're probable familiar with "Gypsy in the Moonlight." I believe both McMillan and Silver Burdett have it in their text book series. That song was collection by Alan Lomax and Bess Lomax Hawes and is found in this book. There are many WONDERFUL songs in this collection, but this is my all time favorite: One, Two, Three. It's a mixed meter song, which is wonderful for 5th graders. The tone set and rhythmic features are accessible to fifth graders to read in both stick notation and on the staff by the end of the fifth grade year. AND it's got a great game that's perfect for playing both inside and outside as the spring weather becomes more and more beautiful. Here's One, Two, Three: Formation: standing circle, with partners facing each other with and extra player in the middle. Action: The song is sung numbers one through twenty while the players clap a steady beat. At the word "Twenty-one" a partner clapping pattern begins as such: Beat one of each measure all players pat both hands on their legs. Beat two of each measure players clap their own hands. Beat three of each measure players pat the hands of their partners. The other action that begins when the text says "twenty-one" is the middle player (the person without a partner) cuts into one of the sets of partners, replacing one of the players who then becomes the new person in the middle. This action continues throughout the game with the new center person cutting into a new set of partners and taking one of their places and leaving the partnerless person to become the new center person. This continues until "one-hundred" and the goal is to not be the person in the center without a partner.
Song Index
Dnešní článek bude oproti ostatním vypadat jako "štěk":-), ale věřím, že obohatí Vaše hodiny. Včera jsem našla na španělských stránkách pěknou písničku, která lze propojit s hrou na boomwhackery nebo jiné melodické nástroje a dnes jsem objevila partituru ke známé písni Happy, která je veselá, i když je mollová. SO FA Jazz Pod odkazem ZDE najdete stránky, kde jsem píseň našla, stáhnout jako MP3 neumím, ale pustit online lze. Happy - Pharrell Williams Partituru jsem našla na Pinterestu. Nahrávku jsem transponovala v Audacity. Návod, jak na to, najdete ZDE. Překvapilo mě, jak moc jednoduché to bylo, jistě využiji i pro jiné písně a skladby. Transponovaná nahrávka i s partiturou: Poslechová mapa zase od Španělů: Hra na tělo ("Vyšší dívčí":-)): Hra na lavice:
Song Index
I ran across this video on YouTube one day last year. I think we may learn it in class. I don't like the format in which it is "notated". (I don't mind that there is no staff, but bar lines would be helpful) ...but it is pretty catchy. It is three different melodies sung added one at a time on top of each other. What you can not tell from the "notation" is that the second and third melodies begin on HIGH "Do". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tH91ppPkAag Okay...I can't give that to my class...this is AP for goodness sake. The rhythms have to be correct ... So here it is in C Major ! TGIF ! See you next week,
Ritsch Ratsch Filibom Bom Bom
Use this free listening map of Astor Piazzolla's Libertango to teach timbre to your elementary music students.
African Folk songs
Write for the NAfME Blog SEARCH & FILTER Search Category Subscribe to NAfME Notes Subscribe to NAfME Notes, our biweekly e-newsletter, to receive highlights from the blog and other NAfME news in your inbox. Subscribe Now Write for the NAfME Blog Interested in sharing your experience with the music education…
Hello! This is Tanya LeJeune. I hope everyone is keeping warm. It’s cold here in Colorado! For my first blog post here at Kodály Corner I’m going to focus on what I refer to as opening songs. Before they walk into the music room, most students have been sitting in the classroom at their desk and working independently. In music they have to work musically as a group and independently. Students need to change gears. Opening songs set the stage for music and provide a warm-up for the voice and the brain. Additionally, the structure and predictability that an opening song provides is helpful in keeping students focused for the class time. The song we sing may or may not be connected to the specific concepts that grade level is working on. An opening song is not the focus of the lesson and should not take up more than a few minutes. Most of the opening songs I use are also canons and give us the opportunity to practice part work. I keep my opening songs for 1 – 2 months. As students become more confident singing their opening song we add complexity with canons, ostinati, and instruments. Here are a few opening songs I’m using this month. 4th Grade I Love the Mountains The 4th graders are preparing for their Colorado concert and this familiar song will be included. For concerts and performances I like to have an audience participation piece to end the performance. Sometimes the audience participation piece is a simple line dance audience members can do from their seats, (last year the students taught their families the South African dance Pata Pata,) and sometimes I choose a well known song. This might be the audience participation song for the Colorado concert. (or I may use This Land is Your Land, I’m still deciding.) I Love the Mountains is a good song to inspire the students to create accompanying movements. We'll sing and move in canon for the concert, possibly adding the audience as a 4th part. 3rd Grade To Stop the Train Here’s a fun and melodically challenging song to sing. I'm preparing low sol in 3rd grade and later we'll extract the last two note, "five pounds!" (We won't be decoding the rest of the melody!) The movements are as follows: To stop: hands out in “stop” position The train: slide hands together in a circular motion In cases of emergency: hands up “flashing lights”moving fingers out and in on the beat Pull on the chain: both hands up and pull down Penalty for improper use: waggfinger Five pounds: show 5 fingers on “five” and then flatten hand down as if to receive payment This song also provides great audition (inner hearing) practice. I'll have students audiate and perform the motions of sections until they are inner-hearing the entire song. 2nd Grade Are You Sleeping? The 2nd graders are practicing half note. Are You Sleeping is a perfect opening song for them. They sing the lyrics and then sing the rhythm syllables. I hand out hand chimes to four students to add the “ding, ding, dongs,” at the end of the song, (we sing it in F major with the hand chimes playing F C, F F C, F.) During the next class period we’ll turn the “ding, ding, dongs” into an ostinato with half of the class singing with the hand chimes. I have a ostinato song that is sung to the tune of Are You Sleeping that I’ll use as well. (It’s one of those songs I’ve known forever and I have no idea where I first heard it, definitely BK!) Soon they'll learn the Are You Sleeping? lyrics in french and we'll create a class arrangement using ABA form. 1st Grade The 1st graders love moving and grooving to That's a Mighty Pretty Motion! Due to the cold and snow, it's looking like we'll have an "inside recess" day everyday this week. You can bet we'll be very active in the music room! Stay warm and continue singing, playing, and learning!
Banuwa
Hi, Jane here from SillyOMusic! Today I want to share a song that I (and pretty much every other Korean person) sang as a child, Santoki.
Song Index
Visit the post for more.
Visit the post for more.
