Kids in music: Louisville Leopard Percussionists

You may have seen this floating around the internet, but this particular video recently went viral after rocker Jimmy Page shared it on social media:

Led Zeppelin medley

The Louisville Leopard Percussionists are a group of 60+ kids, ages 7-14, from 48 different schools in and near Louisville, Kentucky. They're broken down into smaller ensembles, including a beginning group, an advanced group, and a steel drum ensemble (link to video below). The students play a variety of percussion instruments, including marimbas, vibraphones, xylophones, steel drums, drum set, and auxiliary percussion (maracas, vibraslap, etc.).

"Firework"

"Crazy Train"

Live for Music

Happy Music in Our Schools Month! Enjoy this song by Shaun Canon, featuring Lindsey Stirling and footage from Drum Corps International.

Music Notes: End of March 2015

Music Notes

End of March 2015

Hello, everyone!

In honor of 30 years of Music In Our Schools Month, let’s start some conversations at home! Students, here are some questions you can ask your family, friends, and teachers…see what you discover!

·        What did you learn in music class when you were my age?

·        Did you ever play an instrument? Which one? How long? Why’d you choose that one?

·        Were you ever in band? Jazz? Choir? Orchestra? Other ensembles?

·        If you were in any of those groups (or took lessons, etc.), what was your favorite part?

·        If you could play any instrument in the world, what would you choose? Why?

·        What’s your all-time favorite song, and why is it your favorite?

·        What’s your favorite song to belt in the car or the shower?

·        If you were in a rock band, what would your band’s name be?

·        What was the first concert you attended?

·        Have you ever met a famous musician?

·        If you could meet any musician, dead or alive, who would it be?

·        Fill in the blank: “Music makes me ______________.”

Did you learn anything you didn’t know about the people in your life? Share the neat things you learned – I’d love to hear them!

For more March MIOSM fun and information (and a musical Pi Day post that the math lovers out there will enjoy), check out our blog at:

http://lannoyemusic.blogspot.com

Still looking for donations: If you’ve got any empty small tissue boxes (not the long rectangular ones), I’ll take them from now until the end of the year! I’m planning ahead for a 3^rd grade rhythm activity next winter…

Here’s what we’ve been working on in March:

This month, the kindergarteners, 1^st graders, and 2^nd graders all learned the song “Here Comes a Bluebird.” They’ve enjoyed taking turns being the bluebird and coming up with different ways to show the steady beat with their partners and neighbors. In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday, they all read the book There’s a Wocket in My Pocket and played egg shakers on all of the rhyming words. They also all learned “Rattlin’ Bog” to celebrate the springtime and St. Patrick’s Day. Kindergarten and 1^st grade also practiced their steady beat movements (with dancing) to Celtic Storm’s song “Beggarman.”

In addition to the abovementioned activities, the kindergarteners have continued practicing their leadership with the echo song and game “Charlie Over the Ocean.” They also kept practicing pointing to beat symbols in a left-to-right pattern. They learned the song “Bee, Bee, Bumblebee,” and showed the steady beat in the game.

The 1^st graders practiced clapping, speaking, reading, and writing the rhythms they know. Our rhythm dictation activities combine all four of those actions! They also got to write their own rhythm compositions. They’re currently in the process of learning their first solfege pitches, so and mi, through the song “Bee, Bee, Bumblebee.”

The 2^nd graders practiced clapping, speaking, reading, and writing their rhythms, using rhythm dictation activities and other games to practice their skills. They also got to write their own rhythm compositions. Now they’re reviewing their 1^st grade solfege pitches (so, mi, and la) and adding a new pitch to their toolbox (do). We’ve been singing and playing “Apple Tree” to help us prepare!

The 3^rd graders practiced clapping, speaking, reading, and writing their rhythms, and put them all together in rhythm compositions. They continued singing 3-part rounds and partner songs as well. They’re currently reviewing their solfege knowledge and adding high do to their pitch vocabulary via “Lil Liza Jane,” a song they used for learning ti-ta-ti and reviewing call and response.

The 4^th and 5^th graders finished their round of speed-reading treble clef tests. Congratulations are in order for the following students who passed the 30 second test on the given dates: Madison (5^th grade, 2/21), Jake (5^th grade, 2/21), Aaron (5^th grade, 3/3), Jack (5^th grade, 3/13), Will (4^th grade, 3/13), Austin (3/13)! Also, an extra congrats goes to Jake for passing the 20 second version on 3/13!! The 4^th and 5^th graders all survived their first recorder playing tests (4^th grade on B/A/G, 5^th grade on B/A/G/C’/D’) and learned a new note (4^th grade: C’; 5^th grade: F#). They’ve all been working on supplemental material, including the song “B-A-G Lady” by Jim Tinter, and stretching their brains by improvising over different accompaniment tracks. Please make sure your students are practicing their recorders – ask for an in-home performance! J

Upcoming performances in the area:

Thursday, April 9                 7:00 pm          PHS Guest Artist Jazz Concert

                                                                     PHS Ripley PAC

Sunday, April 12                   1:00 pm         Pulaski Area Community 
                                                                    Band/Choir Concert

                                                                     St. John’s Lutheran Church 
                                                                     in Morgan

Thursday, April 16               7:00 pm          Pulaski Area Community 
                                                                    Band/Choir Concert

                                                                     PHS Ripley PAC

April 17-19, 24-26               7:00 Fri/Sat,  PCMS Musical: Joseph and the 
                                             2:00 Sun        Amazing Technicolored

                                                                   Dreamcoat

                                                                   PCMS Auditorium

$8 tickets; $10 for 4/18 show, $15 for 4/18 show with spaghetti dinner – get your tickets now!

Thursday, April 23               7:00 pm          UW-Platteville Guest Concert

                                                                     PHS Ripley PAC

Monday, April 27                 6:30 pm          PHS Choir Honors Recital

                                                                     PHS Ripley PAC

Ms. Corinne Galligan                      
(920) 822-0433

cmgalligan@pulaskischools.org

lannoyemusic.blogspot.com                                                                                                      

Happy Pi Day!

From biznetis.net

Today is March 14, 2015, or 3-14-15. This is the perfect day for math lovers out there, because the digits of the day match up with the first few digits of pi. Pi is a mathematical concept that has to do with the relationship of the circumference of a circle (distance around the circle) to the diameter (distance across the center of the circle). We can use it to find the area of a circle.

A

=

π

r

2

From mathisfun.com

There isn't an end or a pattern to pi - the digits just keep going and going and going... Here are the first 10,001 digits of pi:

From johnparsons.net

Want to see the first million digits? Click here.

Now, what if someone were to make a musical composition based on the numbers in pi? That's what happens in this video!

Music Pun

Composer Eric Whitacre shared this picture on social media last week, and I thought it was hilarious.. I shared it with the 4th and 5th graders.

As a reminder, pizzicato means to pluck the strings with your fingers.

Welcome to Music In Our Schools Month

This March marks 30 years of Music In Our Schools Month (MIOSM). In 1973, the celebration began as a single statewide celebration. It grew to a day, then a week, then in 1985, it became a month-long celebration of school music. According to the National Association for Music Education's (NAfME) website, "the purpose of MIOSM is to raise awareness of the importance of music education for all children - and to remind citizens that schools is where all children should have access to music."

To begin our month of MIOSM blog posts, I'd like to share excerpts of Karl Paulnack's 2004 welcome speech to the freshman class of the Boston Conservatory. You can find the full text here: https://www.bostonconservatory.edu/music/karl-paulnack-welcome-address.

One of the first cultures to articulate how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you: the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. 

Paulnack goes on to share two examples of music's hidden power. One example is French composer Olivier Messiaen's piece Quartet for the End of Time, which he wrote in 1940 while imprisoned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Nazi Germany.

...in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

Paulnack's next example is from his personal experience of living in Manhattan in September of 2001. The morning after the terrorist attacks, he sat down at his piano to practice as he normally did, but couldn't bring himself to do it. He wasn't sure if he ever wanted to play again - in the gravity of the situation, it seemed "silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless."

And then I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York, on the very evening of September 11th, was singing. People sang. People sang around firehouses, people sang "We Shall Overcome." Lots of people sang America the Beautiful. The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on.

From those two experiences, Paulnack shared what they helped him understand.

...music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pastime. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds. 

Paulnack goes on with a couple more example pieces, including Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Aaron Copland's Sonata. He shares beautiful stories of heart-wrenching music. Finally, he tells the parents of the music students what he'll tell their children.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force, or a corporation. ... If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives. 

As a music educator, my goal for my students is to help them enjoy and appreciate music, no matter where they end up in life. I want them to have something to turn to when they have no words, when they want to express themselves, when they want to make or partake in something beautiful.

Music Notes: End of February 2015

Music Notes

End of February 2015

Hello, everyone!

As always, I invite you to check out our music classroom blog, which now includes our How the Penguins Saved Christmas videos, at:

http://lannoyemusic.blogspot.com

Looking for donations: If you’ve got any empty small tissue boxes (not the long rectangular ones), I’ll take them from now until the end of the year! I’m planning ahead for a 3^rd grade rhythm activity next winter…

Here’s what we’ve been working on in February:

This month the kindergarteners learned a new song, “Oliver Twist.” They’ve enjoyed coming up with different ways to show the steady beat with this song. They have continued practicing their leadership with the echo song and game “Charlie Over the Ocean.” The kindergarteners have continued to practice pointing to beat symbols in a left-to-right pattern (preparing for future music reading skills). They added long/short to their opposites listening practice, in addition to their existing knowledge of fast/slow, loud/soft, and high/low using actions and listening skills. They also read the book Frog in Love (Max Velthuijs) and played along on key words with hand drums, tambourines, and guiros.

The 1^st graders have been practicing quarter note, quarter rest, and two 8^th notes. They’ve been clapping, speaking, reading, and writing these three rhythms. Our rhythm dictation activities combine all four of those actions! The 1^st graders got to use their rhythm skills with a Valentine’s Day word sort and composition activity. They learned the song “Oliver Twist” as well, and have been creating different ways to show the steady beat while singing the song. They also read the book Frog in Love (Max Velthuijs) and played along on key words with hand drums, tambourines, and guiros.

The 2^nd graders added whole rest to their rhythm repertoire. They’ve been practicing half note, half rest, whole note, and whole rest, in addition to the three 1^st grade rhythms in their vocabulary. They’ve been clapping, speaking, reading, and writing their rhythms, using rhythm dictation activities and other games to practice their skills. They got to utilize their rhythm knowledge with a Valentine’s Day word sort and composition activity. The 2^nd graders learned the song “Oliver Twist” as well, and have been creating different ways to show the steady beat while singing the song. They also read the book Frog in Love (Max Velthuijs) and played along on key words with hand drums, tambourines, and guiros. We finished out the month by learning the folk song and dance “Alabama Gal.”

The 3^rd graders reviewed their quarter note, two 8^th notes, and four 16^th notes rhythms with a Valentine’s Day word sort and composition activity. They also learned some new rounds (including “Ho! Every Sleeper Waken”) and partner songs (including the combination of “One Bottle of Pop,” “Don’t Throw Your Junk in My Backyard,” and “Fish and Chips”) and have been singing 3-part rounds regularly. The 3^rd graders have also practiced music math while learning the process of how musical dots work (for example, in the dotted half note rhythm they just learned), and they prepared to learn a syncopated rhythm (ti-ta-ti, or 8^th note quarter note 8^th note). We finished out the month by learning the folk song and dance “Alabama Gal.”

The 4^th and 5^th graders continued to review their treble clef literacy skills. We’ve practiced using rhymes and acronyms to remember the lines (EGBDF) and spaces (FACE), always building from the bottom to the top. The students worked together to create their own acronyms. This month, they played SMART Board games, did written practice (including a Valentine Poem that used treble clef reading to fill in missing letters), and continued to take timed tests to improve their accuracy and speed. They all started out labeling 24 pitches in 90 seconds. Once they got 100% in that time limit, they moved to 60 seconds, then 30 seconds. Congratulations are in order for 5^th graders Madison and Jake, who have passed the 30 second test as of February 21^st! For at-home practice links and apps, please check the music blog. The 4^th and 5^th grade students have also begun their recorder unit, in which they began combining their treble clef literacy with recorder fingerings. They also finished February with the folk song and dance “Alabama Gal.”

The 5^th graders took a fantastic field trip to Milwaukee at the beginning of the month! They attended a Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra youth concert and explored Discovery World. This field trip has been in the works since last April. The students were great, with a strong work ethic and drive to learn. They learned about five orchestral pieces, two songs, and four composers in a month! They supplemented this knowledge with fun facts, historical and cultural context, music excerpts, full recordings from Naxos and YouTube, photographs from Europe, and activities like square dancing and singing. Within that month, they also reviewed treble clef reading with short activities and timed tests every class, and they learned about 6^th grade music options before our Google Hangout with the middle school music team.

At the concert, I saw my sweet, hard-working 5^th graders nod and grin with recognition when the conductor gave a brief background of each piece and composer. I talked to chaperones who shared that they enjoyed the concert far more than they had expected. I watched the students fulfill my behavior expectations in the concert hall. I giggled when one of them turned to me incredulously before the last piece and said, “Wait, that’s it?!”

I’m so proud of the 5^th graders, and I’m glad we got to experience this trip to the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra together. It was fun watching them explore all sorts of hands-on exhibits at Discovery World during the afternoon too. What a growth-packed day with a variety of knowledge and applications! I’d like to extend thanks to the Lannoye PTO for funding the transportation for our trip, as well as to Mr. Klawiter and my colleagues for supporting our students’ music education and personal growth opportunities.

Earning DRUM cards outside of class: If students are able to attend any performances outside of the school day, I ask that they bring in a program with their name on it and tell me (or write on the program) something about it (something new they learned, their favorite part of it, etc.).

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me! Please feel free to stop in the music room during conferences on March 10^th. J

Ms. Corinne Galligan
(920) 822-0433
cmgalligan@pulaskischools.org
lannoyemusic.blogspot.com