MUSIC FUN #13: Friday, June 12th, 2020
The band, “Five for Fighting”, that features the talents of Vladimir John Ondrasik, wrote this song in 2013. It’s still pertinent, 7 years later, as we stand up for those being bullied and not treated fairly. Please listen and watch this creative video, and ask yourself, 1. “What if I were you, and what if you were me?”. 2. “What can I do to make the world a better place for everyone?” 3. “Why do you think Ordrasik chose a young boy and a little guy from outer space as the two characters in the video?” 4. “What’s your feeling about a person before you really know them?” 5. “How does your feeling change once you become friends?” 6. “What is Article #1, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?”
Enjoy this song! It’s a piece that you can listen to and think, “Oh that’s nice”, or, you can really focus on the lyrics and the mood of the music, and understand a deeper meaning to the song. I hope you’ll listen deeply and understand the true meaning of the words, “What if were you were me? What if I were you?.”
Have a good weekend, everyone!
MUSIC FUN, #12: Tuesday, June 2nd, 2020.
Become a one person band!!
https://mixcord.co/acapella/p/2rGVMCg090QTEH7Aj-qubA/
“Acapalla”, is a recording app to turn yourself into a “One person band”, or to create a band with with your friends, online! A first attempt is above…please take a look, and sing along! How about trying to make your own video!! Have fun!!! 🙂
MUSIC FUN #11: Friday, May 22nd, 2020
Roundabouts in the Kitchen !
Remember the musical form, called Rondo Form? (ABACA) Well, if this sounds familiar, here’s a review, and a chance to add your own B and C sections! If you’ve not heard of it before, here’s your intro!!! Watch the video above, find a few pots and pans, create a rhythm by opening and closing cupboard doors, or tap a beat on your kitchen table, and away we go, creating music together!!! Super fun!!! 🙂
MUSIC FUN, #10: Friday, May 15th, 2020
There’s a super cool app, called, “A Capella”, which you can download for free, and then begin multi-track recording! The video above is super professional, but gives the idea of how you create one sound at a time, and layer it together to produce a really cool final product! Give it a try! My goal, is to try it with the Beatles song, “Here Comes the Sun”! Stay tuned! Have a great weekend!
MUSIC FUN, Class #9: Wednesday, May 13th
Yes, you read that correctly! Draw what you hear!! 🙂
Find a pencil, pen, pencil crayons, markers, wax crayons or chalk, and paper, or use your driveway(!), to represent music with colours, designs, and shapes, that relate in any way to the music you hear!!
I’m sure you have zillions of pieces of music that you love, but if you need a few suggestions, read on, and listen to the music below!
“Appalachian Spring”. Spring in the mountains. Spring, representing new life, new beginnings. Maybe spring is your favourite season? If so, this is the music for you!!! At 20:36, you’ll hear a clarinet play a beautiful “shaker” melody.
Btw, if you’re going into grade 7 in September, you may have the chance to play the clarinet, at Birchwood, if you send your registration in by TODAY, May 13th!!! Hurry! fill in the form right now, it’s found on your classroom teacher’s page, and then continue on with this music activity!!!
Iz is an iconic musician from Hawaii, who was a master ukulele player, and singer! The message of this song compilation, is amazing, and soooo happy!!! It just can’t help but make you smile! I think that would make Iz smile too!!! How can you draw this music? Well, what makes you happy? Answer that question, and then draw what it is…family, friends, a hockey net, a piano, a birthday cake, a sunrise, a daffodil, a puppy…you get the idea? The sky’s the limit! 🙂
When things get tough, hold on!! This video from 2016, features Beard Guy, and Marshall(in the middle), both who are not with the band anymore. This song is an inspiration…what are we holding onto? What means the most to you? Maybe…you’d like to draw a picture of it! 🙂
And, finally, below, here’s a motivator for sure!!! Remember, it’s also the tune of our school song? There are so many images in this video…choose one, or several, or make up your own!! Have fun! enjoy your day!!!
Friday, May 8th, 2020. ONLINE FUN #8
Music videos to make you smile on this sunny Friday!! 🙂
Amazing! This will bring happy memories back from the SES production of Beauty and the Beast! 🙂
Homemade instruments? Creative lyrics? that;s all it takes! Give it try!
Just for fun! You can make music anywhere!
Yup! They said it! “It’s gonna be okay!”
Finally, WOTE can’t help but make you smile!! Have you heard this classic tune, yet? 🙂
Tuesday, May 5th, 2020. ONLINE FUN #7,
1. Did you know that Eastlink TV, is devoting one hour, each weekday, from 11am until 12 noon for Music/Arts/Physical Education programming, created by Island teachers? Please take a look!
2. Homemade instruments. This is a topic with endless possibilities!! What might you create? Will your instrument be a percussion instrument, one that you have to tap/hit to make a sound? Maybe it will be like a brass instrument where you have to buzz into tube? Or maybe it will be like a woodwind instrument where you blow air across an opening, like a pop bottle! What patterns of sound can you make? Maybe Rondo Form, like we’ve talked about in school: ABACA, or maybe you;; create a song, with instrumental accompaniment: Intro-Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus-Interlude-Chorus-Chorus-Outro?
Instrument Examples:
Percussion: shake a Kraft Dinner box of macaroni, to create a pattern of rhythm! (It actually sounds super nice!) and/or, with a kitchen utensil, tap several glasses filled with water to create a melody.
Brass: add a funnel to a tube, like the cardboard roll from a tinfoil roll, or a small plastic pipe, and buzz into the end of it!
Woodwind: blow across the top of a pop bottle. Fill it with varying amounts of water to create different pitches.
HAVE FUN WITH THIS! Record your creations to admire for years to come!!!
Saturday, May 2nd. ONLINE FUN #6
Click on the link below, to find out more, and to watch various performances from across the country!! How cool is that!!! 🙂
In the meantime, how about thinking about music and how it’s a part of your life, in so many ways! You could then write about it, or draw to represent your thoughts!
https://coalitioncanada.ca/musicmonday/en/home-2020-online/
MONDAY, May 4, 2020
- 9:00am Spotlight Celebration
- 10:00am Atlantic/Eastern Canada (featuring musicans from Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and PEI)
- 11:30am Quebec – content presented in French
- 12:30pm Music Monday Anthem Singing
- 12:35pm Spotlight Celebration (repeat from 9am)
- 1:30pm Ontario
- 2:30pm Prairies (featuring musicians from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta)
- 4:30pm Youth 4 Music
- 5:30pm Territories (featuring musicians from Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and the Yukon Territory)
- 6:30pm British Columbia
- 7:30pm Spotlight Celebration (repeat from 9am)
- 8:30pm After Party
In place of music classes at school, feel free to check here twice/week, for music ideas and learning you can enjoy at home! 🙂
Monday, April 27th: Online Fun #5
1. CBC’s Canadian Music Class Challenge, is offering a kid’s contest to sing, record, and submit, yourself singing, “Together We Are One”, by Serena Ryder! Cool song; great message; super fun!!! Check out details here:
2. Would you like to perfect your note-reading skills? Remember the notes on the TREBLE staff, on the spaces, spell FACE; the notes on the lines, are E G B D F (Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge; Empty Garbage Before Dad Flips; Ernie Gave Bert Dog Food; Elvis’ Guitar Broke Down Friday…get the point? 🙂
For the BASS STAFF, you know, the staff that has a backwards letter “C” at the start with two dots, and all the letter names of the notes are different, than with a treble clef at the start? Tricky!!! If you play a tuba, trombone, euphonium, baritone, string bass, piano, or electric bass, or sing low notes, you’ll use this staff to read music. The notes on the spaces are: A C E G (All Cows Eat Grass); the notes on the lines, are: G B D F A (Going Bald Deserves Fast Action)
Take a look at this; challenge yourself…have fun! http://musicteachersgames.com/trebleClefOne
http://musicteachersgames.com/bassClefOne
Friday, April 24th: Online Fun #4: “Flashback Friday”!!!
Do you remember the fun we had, in February, learning about Vivaldi and Pachelbel, representing the Baroque period? We listened to “Winter”, from “The Four Seasons”, by Vivaldi, and, “Canon in D, by Pachelbel? How many times in the video below, does the tuba player, repeat the 8 note pattern, “do-so-la-me-fa-do-fa-so”? No wonder he passes the task over to the gardener!! Haha!
And, then we did a speedy question/answer game about Vivaldi’s life, learning that in spite of difficulty and disappointment, Vivaldi chose happiness and making the best of things? Well, here are the questions for you to answer on your own, and if you’d like, to time how quickly you can do so!!! It took me 29.21 seconds: I challenge you to beat this record!!! I “skim-read” the questions in my head, and said the answers out loud!
1. When was Vivaldi born? 2. When was he baptized? 3. Where was he born? 4. What natural disaster happened the same day? 5. What 2 things did his father do to make a living? 6. What was the first instrument Vivaldi learned to play? 7. What did Vivaldi want to be when he grew up? 8. What was his nickname after he accomplished this goal? 9. Why could he not continue in this profession? 10. What did he do instead? 11. Where did he work next? 12. Who did he teach? 13. How do we know he was greatly admired in this new job? 14. After 40 years, he changed jobs, and moved where? 15. Who hired him for this new job, to write and perform music for dignitaries? 16. Why did this job only last for two months? 17. Why did his, “boss”, pass away? 18. How many months later, did Vivaldi pass away? 19. What did Vivaldi die from? 20. Where was Vivaldi buried? 21. Did he have a head stone? 22. What is now on the site of the cemetery? 23. What was dreadfully sad about his funeral? 24. How many years after Vivaldi died, was his music rediscovered? 25. What is Vivaldi’s most famous composition?
(Answers: 1. 1678 2. The same day! 3. Venice, Italy 4. Earthquake 5. Barber and violinist 6. Violin 7. Priest 8. Red priest (He had red hair) 9. Allergies or asthma 10. Became a music teacher 11. The Pieta Orphanage 12. Girls 13. His salary doubled within a year. 14. Vienna, Austria 15. Emperor Charles VI 16. The Emperor died 17. The Emperor ate poisonous. “death cap” mushrooms 18. Nine months later 19. Internal infection 20. In an unmarked grave, in a field outside city limits 21. No headstone, as he was impoverished once his job ended with the Emperor 22. Vienna University 23. No music was played at his funeral, only the church bells tolled 24. Two hundred years 25. The Four Seasons)
Here’s another way to learn about musicians, improvisation, and composition! A student has already created her own version of Pachelbel’s Canon using the program below! Try to duplicate a melody you already know, or create your own melody using the site below! It’s super fun!!! Thanks to Natalie Hardy for her website suggestion.
https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Song-Maker/
Monday. April 20th: Online Fun #3: “What is kindness?”
What can you do, to show kindness? What can you do right now, and tomorrow, and the next day, to show kindness to your family, and friends?
As you watch the video above, think about what your answer would be to the following questions:
“What does it mean, to be kind?”
“What is the golden rule?” (Treat others as you would like to be treated“) “What is Article #1, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?” (We are all born free and equal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv1SOp06geE) “What is your hope for the future?”
Musical elements:
1. Mood: What is the mood of the music above?
2. Tone: Which instruments do you hear? (more than just piano!)
3. Tempo: What is the tempo of the music? (speed of the beat: largo or slow; moderato or medium; allegro or fast)
Extension: Draw a picture, write a poem, or write new lyrics to a song you already know or to a melody you created yourself, that reflect the meaning of kindness.
Wednesday, April 15th: Online Fun #2: Favourite singer: Photo Op!!!
Okay. This is going to be fun!! Do you have a favourite singer, or band, or composer, or musician of any kind, from the past or present? Well, if you do, great! If you don’t, no worries! Keep reading!!
1. Choose a musician who you, your parents, a sibling, or a friend likes!
2. Find a picture of that musician, and using items in your own house, try to imitate that picture, the best you can!
3. Take a picture of yourself posing as, “your” musician!
4. Show your family your favoutite musician’s picture, and your, “photo take” of it!
5. While you’re at it, do a little research on the musician, and write an info sheet, including the following:
A) musician’s name
B) place of birth
C) date of birth
D) family details
E) why he/she decided to become involved in music
F) most famous song/piece
G) other interesting facts, including why you chose this musician to learn about!
(I’m looking forward to working on this project myself. I’ll share a photo with, soon!!!)
Monday, April 13, 2020: Online Fun 1: MUSIC for RUNNING and RELAXING!!!
To begin, have you ever thought how music affects your mood? It can help you relax when stressed or tired, or help you get pumped up like at a hockey game!
Today, maybe you’d like to add music to your day while you go for a walk, jog, or run. Did you know that your speed, endurance and happiness level will increase if you listen to music while you exercise? It’s true!!! You might even like to do a mini-experiment, by running outside, around your house, 10 times; the first time WITH music playing on your phone or iPod, or by singing or humming, and after resting up a bit, the second time without any music at all!!! Which set of 10 laps did you run the fastest??? I hope your experiment proves that your set running with the music was the speediest!!! Good luck with this!!! Have lots of fun!!!
Maybe you’d rather chill out, and listen to some calm music, to give your mind a break. If so, find a comfy spot; stretch out; close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and chill!!
Try both activities!
What music is your favourite?
Feel free to choose your own selections; the two videos here are just ideas!! Which activity do you feel you need most today?
Did either activity make you feel better afterwards? (Hopefully they BOTH did!!! 🙂 )
Have a good day!!! Take care; stay safe!!! Check back here in a couple days for another music activity!!
Music Matters 