Younger Kids have been working on learning to keep a steady beat while alternating patterns on xylophones and drums. Using alternating hands to keep the beat is fantastic for strengthening the corpus callosum, and pretty fun too!
Since our current safety regulations don’t allow us to sing, we’ve been working hard on rhythm reading, note values, and some body percussion! It’s tricky to keep the patterns going on the steady beat and remember what comes next, but it’s such great practice for playing an instrument later in life 🙂 Here’s a short video peek into our classes.
Part of learning music is learning to memorize patterns. Have you ever played the game Simon? This is an online version of that game. Listen to the notes and watch the colors, you’ll be surprised how well your brain remembers patterns!
Leave a comment and let me know what your highest score was.
Our composer of the month for April is Dmitri Shostakovich. I am excited to share more about him, and his music, in our regular music lessons. Today I am linking two videos that teach body percussion to play along with one of my favorite pieces of his called “Waltz No. 2”.
If you want, you can play the video titled “Tutorial 2″ and just follow along, mirroring the players the best you can, while you listen to this beautiful waltz. If you really want to learn the patterns, start with Tutorial 1” and it will teach you each one.
Have fun! Leave a comment and let me know how you liked it, I thought it was pretty relaxing and fun!
Today I want to share another hand jive with you. This one might be easier because you don’t have to sing, but it might be harder because it’s based on sets of 3, which is always tricky. Watch the video (twice if you need to!) and see if you can get the pattern down. The first pattern was a little bit easier for me.
Once I did this pattern a few times, I realized it would go pretty well with the theme from “Mission Impossible”, so I’ve linked that below as well, in case you want to “jive” along with it.
Have fun, and don’t forget to leave a comment to tell me how it went, or better yet, send me a photo or video if you got it down!
Some of you might remember learning this song in music class at school. It’s so fun! But learning the motions is tricky! Watch the video and see if you can get the hand motions down perfectly.
The videos below are designed so you can play along with them using percussion instruments. You’ll have to be creative about what you can use as each instrument. Here are some ideas:
Drum – cooking pots, boxes, buckets, plastic tubs
Tambourine – silverware, bells, bag of metal hardware
Shaker – plastic container with beans or rice inside, toy maracas, plastic egg with beans or rice inside
Claves – block of wood hit by a spoon, two chopsticks hit together, two wooden blocks hit together
So, once you’ve gathered some “instruments”, click on the videos, watch the “conductor” and get ready to channel your inner percussionist. Choose which color/shape you want to be and when the “conductor” hops on that color/shape, that means you play on that beat. Have fun!
Good morning Rivendell kids!
For today’s challenge, I want you to invent your very own holiday or celebration! A lot of fun events in our lives are getting postponed and cancelled right now, which is a big bummer. Let’s think of a brand new something to celebrate, and then tell me what kind of music, food, dancing, games, and other activities your celebration will include. You can draw me a picture, write down the details, send me a video, or just leave a comment and tell me all about your new holiday, and most importantly, how you’re going to celebrate it!
My newly invented holiday is called “International Celebration of Cookies Day”, I can’t wait to hear about yours!
If you’ve never played with Incredibox before, you’re going to love this challenge! Incredibox is an app that lets you create really cool beats with a fun cartoon interface. There is a free version for every device type, or you can play it online. I included the link to the website, you’ll have to disable pop up blockers to make it work, and make sure flash is enabled. You can check out my Rivendell Jam, linked below also.
TO PLAY:
1.) Click on “try web version”
2.) Choose the version you want to try and click on the box/guy. It takes a little while to load.
3.) Once it’s loaded, click the “play” triangle in the bottom center.
4.) You’ll see your singers are all shirtless! Drag a costume from the squares below and place them on one of the singers.
5.) Each singer does one “loop”. To change his costume, drag from the singer back down to the clothes at the bottom.
6.) If you want to one guy to sing a solo, click and hold on top of his costume.
TO EMAIL YOUR BEAT:
1.) Once you’ve created a sick beat, you can also record it.
WARNING – this action resets the game so your beat is gone once you share it.
2.) Click on the three line menu at the top left of the screen.
3.) Click on the red “REC” button to start recording.
4.) Click the red circle to end the recording.
5.) A screen will pop up that says “Mix Finished”. Choose “save”.
6.) Enter a cool DJ name and the name of your mix.
7.) Another screen pops up and says “Mix Saved”. Choose the “share” icon.
8.) Enter your email in the bottom box and hit the big checkmark.
9.) The share screen comes back again in case you want to share it with anyone else.
Our composer of the month, Richard Wagner, has written some of the most well known melodies in music history. For this challenge, we are going to listen to “Ride of the Valkyries” from his opera “Die Walküre” and I want to see you transform into the most amazing classical orchestra conductors of all time. I’ve linked some videos below for inspiration.
If you’d like to listen to a funny story about a boy who discovers he wants to be an orchestra conductor, check out “The Remarkable Farkle McBride” read by John Lithgow (also linked below).
Ride of the Valkyries – Simon Rattle
Ride of the Valkyries – Daniel Barenboim