Bass Drum(link to Dallas Symphony Orchestra (DSO) Kids page on the bass drum, including a sound clip of it)
Marching Percussion (including snare drum, bass drum, and tenor drums; link to video below - the Bluecoats drumline warming up for a competition in 2014)
Xylophone(link to DSO Kids page on the xylophone, including three sound clips of it)
Marimba(link to video below; everything is bigger than the xylophone - the bars, the resonators (tubes underneath the bars that amplify the sound), the range, and the sound, which has longer resonance than the xylophone - a way to remember this difference is "massive marimba")
Also, check out this video of Pulaski High School student Destin Wernicke performing his composition for marimba, "Going Home." (If you search his name on YouTube, you can also find videos of him performing on drumset, piano, and more.)
Vibraphone(link to world-famous jazz vibraphonist Joe Locke's video page of his website. We watched the beginning of "Summertime" in class.)
Piano
The piano is often considered a percussion instrument because its sound is produced by a hammer striking a string when the corresponding key is pressed (link to animated video below).
Want to see other ways the piano can be used as a percussion instrument? This video by the Piano Guys is really neat! (Actually, all their videos are neat - check them out on YouTube!)
Crash Cymbals (watch the video for timpani near the top of this post, and pay attention to the crash cymbals. Remember the purposes for holding the cymbals so high - the sound waves can carry over the orchestra instead of getting blocked/absorbed by the orchestra, and humans are visual creatures, so it's easier to pick out the sound when you can see the instrument creating the sound.)
We've been talking about the new season in the younger grades. One of the songs we've sung, "'Round About Autumn," is from Music K-8 magazine. It's a smooth waltz that talks about the different colors of fall, including purple, yellow, scarlet, gold, orange, and crimson. We learned about the colors scarlet and crimson, and how one is a bright red and the other is a dark red. We also learned the word "enthrall," which is what amazing things sometimes do to us when they capture our attention so completely. :)
Some of the colors in "'Round About Autumn"
The 3rd graders have taken it to another level by singing it as a round. (Ask your 1st, 2nd, or 3rd grader what a round or a canon is! If they can't remember the exact definition, give them the hint "two or more groups," and see if they can get the rest.)
The 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders have also learned a Dutch spinning song called "Sarasponda." In addition to the lively song, we learned what a spinning wheel is and how it works, as well as where in the world the Netherlands are!
A couple students told me today that they heard Flight of the Bumblebee while watching Full House last night. How awesome is that that they're finding music from class in real life?!
Here's a neat brass quintet arrangement of Flight of the Bumblebee, performed by Canadian Brass. A brass quintet consists of two trumpets, a horn, a trombone, and a tuba. In this case, they've got a regular trumpet and a piccolo trumpet (the smaller one that the man second from the left is playing). The word "piccolo" means "small" in Italian, so it's basically just a smaller (therefore higher) trumpet.
Here's another Canadian Brass version of this piece - this one is called Flight of the Tuba Bee...and you'll find out why! This is a very skilled tuba player.
About the Performers: Canadian Brass
Canadian Brass is perhaps the world's most famous brass group. This brass quintet (two trumpets, a horn, a trombone, and a tuba) was formed in 1970. Different players have come and gone, but the group has maintained a characteristic sound in the more than 40 years that it has existed. During that time, they've recorded over 100 albums, have sold well over 2 million albums worldwide, and have toured the world multiple times. If you want more information about this world-famous group, check out their website.
Today we worked on reviewing rhythms in 4/4 time with grades 3, 4, and 5. There are so many neat resources out there for SMART Boards, including these Lego rhythms! Each bump on top represents one beat, so it's a great tool for visual learners. We also verbally reviewed for auditory learning, and tapped each student-written rhythm out using rhythm sticks (while speaking the rhythms) for kinesthetic learning.
These were some of the rhythms students created:
(from top to bottom, 5C, 5NW, 4G, 4W, 3K, and 3B)
SQUILT stands for Super Quiet Uninterrupted Listening Time. I created worksheets that ask the students about musical elements such as dynamics, tempo, instrumentation, and mood. This follows the state standards for musical analysis.
The piece I chose for our first listening activity was a short one: Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This piece is from the opera The Tale of Tsar Saltan. In class, we discussed the word "tsar," and that it's the Russian equivalent of a king. We also learned that the bumblebee in the piece isn't just a bumblebee, but a prince that was turned into a bumblebee by a magic swan!
Before we explored the background of the piece, we watched this video to get an idea of what we would be getting into:
As for the musical elements on the SQUILT sheet, we decided that it's both forte (loud) and piano (soft), it's fast, it uses instruments and not voices (lots of woodwinds and strings!), and it evoked a variety of moods in the students, including happy, energetic, mad, upset, and relaxed.
Today was International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so we
celebrated in K-2 by exploring our pirate voices and playing the pirate
version of the singing game "Doggy, Doggy."
The new lyrics:
Pirate,
pirate, where's your gold?
Someone stole it from your trove.
(Pirate:) Who stole my gold?
(Thief:) I stole your gold.
While we
sang this in a seated circle, a student designated as the pirate stood
outside the circle, facing away from us. As we sang, we passed around a
small piece of "gold" on the steady beat. The last person to get it
within one round was the "thief." Once the thief sang, the pirate got
three guesses to figure out who the thief was. I was impressed at how
well the students knew their classmates' voices!
