Category: Beginning Orchestra

Tempo: in a heartbeat

Tempo means “time” in Italian, and it measures how fast or slow the beat of a song moves.

We measure tempo in beats per minute (bpm). This is great, because we all can relate to how many beats per minute our heart is beating.

We know that a resting heart rate should be slower than when we get up and walk, jog, run, or sprint. (Here’s a fun activity for you: print out this chart and find your heart rate during these activities.)

Sometimes there is a quarter note followed by a number that you might see at the beginning of a song, like:

quarter note=120

That tells how fast the beat goes in that song. Also, you might see other “tempo marking” terms that describe how fast or slow a piece should go. Here are a few you may have heard of before:

lento (=rather slowly, around 40 bpm)

adagio (=slowly, around 60 bpm)

andante (=walking pace, about 75 bpm)

andantino (=a little faster than andante, about 80 bpm)

moderato (=moderately fast, about 90 bpm)

allegro (=quick and cheerful, around 120 bpm)

vivace (=quick and lively, around 140 bpm)

presto (=fast, around 170 bpm)

prestissimo (=very fast, 180 bpm or more)

(For more terms, go here.)

Look at this piece of music (click on the link to view). Can you find a tempo marking, either in the number of in a word?

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik sheet music page*

See anything on this page**?

Why do you think they didn’t include a tempo marking?

How do these terms match up with your own heart rate doing different activities? When you run, is your heart rate allegro?

You can understand why different pieces of music are named after their tempo marking, such as in a concerto. Here’s an example in a famous piece by Mozart called “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.” It has more than one part to the piece. This part is called “Allegro:”

The song begins at 2:12. But there is lots to learn from watching before the music begins, such as from which side of the stage the musicians enter, how they tune, how the conductor enters, what he does before he begins conducting, etc.)

Antonio Vivaldi wrote some songs that he called “The Four Seasons” and named them each after a season. Notice the tempos he chose to describe each season.

In this video, Spring is played at 96 bpm (andante). Summer begins around 74 bpm (adagio) and then picks up up 108 bpm (moderato), then slows down again. Fall begins and stays at about 114 bpm (moderato) until it takes a big drop in tempo for a while before speeding up to around 134 bpm (allegretto). Winter stays at around 152, except for a little slowing towards the end, followed by accellerando to about 160 bpm at the very end.

If you were to write a song about a season, which tempo would you pick?

When you write your next song, be sure to choose a tempo for how slow or fast you want your song performed!

*This music comes from this webpage.

**This song came from this website.

Lift, place bowing: Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp K.299, Andantino


When you watch the violinists at the beginning of this piece, did you notice them lifting and placing their bows?

Did you see their bow holds? What about their shoulders?

Did you notice how the bows are going parallel to the bridge and the end of the fingerboard?

The violinists (and other string player) sometimes wiggle their left hand as they play. That’s called vibrato. (We learn that later on, after we get really good at placing each finger and moving our fingers around the fingerboard.)

Did you notice that everyone waited for the conductor and that the conductor looked to the soloists (the flute and harp players) before beginning the piece?

Did you see that everyone is dressed in black?

This lovely piece of music is part of a concerto, which is a song made up of 3 parts, or “movements.” The movements are named after the feeling or tempo of the part. Andantino means “slightly faster than walking pace.” Do you remember which language these musical terms comes from? Yes! Italian!

Mozart wrote this concerto, and this video is the movement andantino. Can you close your eyes and see if you can figure out the approximate bpm (beats per minute)? Remember that 60 bpm is 1 beat per second, so something slower than one beat per second would be fewer beats per minute and something faster than that would be more beats per minute. Andantino is often around 80 bpm (just a hint!).

The K in the name of this piece (K.299) stands for Köchel, the last name of a man (Ludwig von Köchel) who made a chronological list of all of Mozart’s pieces (“works”). The number stands for the number of the piece in that list. There are 629 works catalogued on his list!

Here’s some trivia for you: notice which fingers the harpist uses when he plays? Never the pinky finger! Also, did you know that flutes can be made out of nickel, silver, brass, and wood, or some are even made of gold! (A famous flutist named James Galway wrote a book about his life and career called The Man with the Golden Flute. He has a photo of himself holding his golden flute on the cover.)

Here is a video of a young harpist playing another Mozart concerto. (Check out the pinkies!) You can just leave this on as fabulous background music if you don’t want to watch it all…

Lesson 1.1.5 “What’s the secret ingredient?”

The main goals for this week’s practicing are:

1. Consider how you can add a little more fun to your practicing, if you need some;

2. To learn to do the “play/life/place” skill (see video);

3. To be able to play (both pizzicato and arco) “I Am Like an Apple Seed” at 60 bpm; and

4. Be able to play the song without stopping if they make a mistake. (Practicing along with the video will help them learn to do this.)

This last goal is in preparation for playing it all together in class next week and being able to play it while others play “Making Music Makes Me Smile.”

SO your child needs to be able to play it continuously without stopping, even if s/he makes a mistake. This is a very important skill for anyone playing in an orchestra!

I posted videos here so that you can practice along with me. Don’t mind my “morning look”–no movie star here :). Just a mom helping a child practice!

Please text me with any questions.

Thanks for working hard to help your child (and yourself) learn to play their instrument!

 

Lesson 1.1.4 “What’s for dinner?” Week 2

Last week we worked on learning to play do on D (open D). When we say “open string” that means playing the string with no fingers on it.

Remember, any note can be do. Do is simply the first note in the scale, and for our purposes this year, it is the first note of a major scale.

When you put the first finger down a whole step away, it is re. So we practiced playing do and re,  the first two notes in our Solfa scale.

The new song we started learning, “I Am Like an Apple Seed,” contains only do and re, as you saw when you practiced with your child. This week we keep learning the song. Our goal is to have the song memorized in our mind and in our hands so we can play it at 60 bpm by the end of two weeks from today’s lesson.

When we accomplish that goal, we’ll play it together as a class. Then we will ask those children who know Twinkle well at 60 bpm to play it while we play our song at the same time: our first duet! We will be a real orchestra!

We will begin singing the song at home as a duet next week. If any of you want to try it this week and email me a recording (either audio or video), that would be awesome!!! Remember that recordings don’t need to be perfect. They simply encourage others to try. Mistakes can actually be comforting and encouraging because they see that the other child hasn’t perfected the song yet, either.

To read the lesson plan and see the practice instructions, go here.

 

Solfa, strings on “Where Can I Turn for Peace?”

Here’s something to give the children a little vision of where learning to play Solfa on their D string can take them.

I sincerely welcome replacement recordings! I am neither a professional singer nor professional violinist. The notes are not perfectly in tune, and the breathing is poor. (I didn’t have time to do retakes.) PLEASE: if anyone would like to re-do these recordings and email them to me, I’d love it!

“Where Can I Turn for Peace” is a hymn in the key of D with no accidentals (no added sharps or flats), so it’s an easy transfer from learning to play a D major scale, beginning on open D, particularly for a child who knows the hymn already in their head.

The Solfa for the hymn goes like this:

s f m f f m
s t l s r
m f s l l l s
f l d r
s f m f f m
s t d’ d’ d
d’ t l s d l
f m r d

Usually, the note the song ends in is the key for that song. So in this song, the last note is do on D, and it is in the key of D.

“Setting the Table” again for the rest of the class

Today was fun! Thank you for your patience for those parents watching for the second time. I goofed on a couple of things:

1. Minor detail on the practice instructions: The third line of the poem goes “‘Till your good gets better.” The “r” was missing from “your.”

2. I failed to teach Solfa to the children! Yikes! That’s a little major. (Hopefully they got the idea from the sharing time.)  Here’s a video to help out:

Another link (embedding was disabled on this video). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcGFiTnA0HA

 

Parent Meeting Summary

Many thanks to all of the parents who attended our parent meeting this week! It was great to visit with you! I am so excited about our semester ahead and the work we get to do with our capable children.

Please remember to check this blog each week for updates on the lesson from that day. The more connected you are, the more you will find resources that can help you in practicing with your child.

For example, you can find all of the papers that are in your binder online here. If you or your child loses one, you can print it out again. Phew.

I talked a lot about giving feedback. I wanted to remind us all that it’s great when we try to give feedback at a 6:1 ratio–6 positives to one negative. I may not need that many positives, but I sure will feel overwhelmed if all I get is negative feedback :). So thank you in advance for texting, emailing, or posting positive comments about how things are going.

PLEASE let me know if there is something you don’t understand or a link that is missing, etc. If something doesn’t make sense, tell me! I’ll happily fix it.

I have added content to the website today. Check out these pages to see what is here for you:

Please check your child’s violin and bow hold, and make sure they begin practicing in tune.

Also, remember that your child earns one smile simply for completing all the steps in the lesson each day. Be sure that at the end of the week (i.e. the last practice session before class) you add up the smiles, write how many they earned, and initial it so I know you are aware.

I also need one parent volunteer per week to attend. I will send a sign up sheet around today in class. Parents will help record smiles earned and which skills a child passes off each class. They will also help reward awards at the end of class when a child has earned them.

I have treats (candy) that are nut-free and most that are dairy-free. They are not sugar free.  A child who earns 6 practicing smiles is awarded one treat each week. If you have concerns with that, let me know. (These are small treats: single Lifesavers, Tootsie Rolls, etc.)

 

 

 

 

First day of Beginning Orchestra (Lesson 2.1.1)

Yesterday we had a “preview” class for Beginning Orchestra for those eager students who were dying to get started. And we had fun!

I set up the table with a snack and colorful plates, napkins, cups, chips, salsa, apples, oranges, and water. The children were thrilled to have an after school snack before starting!

I reviewed names and visited while they snacked for a minute, and then we started. I started out by teaching them the Delicious Music theme song, including the new phrase (second to last phrase in the song) that says, “We will work to train our fingers how to play our inner music.”

I explained that when we have a song in our head, we want to be able to write it down so we can play it again and share it with someone else. That is what we will do this semester: begin learning not only how to play our instruments better, but also how to hear, read, write, and move to the notes we hear–whether they are in our head or coming from outside our ears.

We began by learning how to sing and sign a Solfa scale. Solfa is a music language in which we use hand signs for notes, kind of like ASL (American Sign Language), but for music. We learned the signs for low do, do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, and high do. We practiced singing and signing an ascending Solfa scale and a descending Solfa scale.

Then I showed them how you can write down a tune using the abbreviations (first letter) of each Solfa note. For example, if you were to sing the first line of “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” it would look like this: m r d r m m m.  

Then we learned to sing two more songs in Solfa: “Making Music Makes Me Smile” and “Let’s Go Build a Snowman.”  We sung them in using our soldège signs and then just with the lyrics.

Finally, we talked about our practicing homework. I shared the analogy of preparing a meal, and all the steps that are required (hence the snack first to help them imagine it!). I showed them the practice reporting page, on which they must cross off one image each day they follow the instructions for that part of practicing. They earn one smile for each day they complete their practicing.

It was a great day!

Our parent meeting will be Tuesday night at 7 pm at my home. (See your email for directions.) Then Thursday will be our first OFFICIAL day! Those who came yesterday will go to work on their instruments after our beginning sharing time.

If you have any questions about the practicing instructions, please email me! You should begin practicing with your child (if they attended class) immediately.

P.S. The lessons are numbered to indicate the semester (2nd), month (1st), and week (1st)= 2.1.1. Our themes change monthly, and the lessons will support the themes. The theme for this first month is “Making music takes preparation, hard work, and fun!”