Today in MusIQ Club!

In class this week we reviewed rhythms and rests, and Pratik and Ryan took turns filling up some measures with combinations of half, whole and quarter notes and rests.  We did some clapping with the different note values from whole notes to eighths, and then finally went back and forth between two different meters, the first meter was groups of four quarter-note beats, and the second was groups of three.  This was tricky, but everyone caught on after a few times!

We also talked about intervals, unisons, fifths and thirds in particular.  Our musical alphabet hopscotch board came in handy, and we learned that unisons and fifths, as well as octaves are called perfect intervals and sound “good” to us because of the way their overtones (my elementary school definition: combinations of the sound waves they make) line up.  I explained that a bee’s wings making a particular sounding pitch would sound one octave higher if it beat its wings twice as fast.  These ideas will come back as we learn more about pitches and how they relate to each other.  We practiced listening to the different intervals, and then we all took turns playing melodic (one note followed by the next) intervals for each other.  A harmonic interval is when both notes are played at the same time, a little trickier to hear at first so we started with the melodic intervals.

While getting ready to play Twinkle in 2 parts, we talked  about folk tunes and where they come from (out in the “country,” far from city life, usually) and that they are tunes passed from generation to generation and not written down (originally).  The tune for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star was originally a French folk song, used by Mozart for his Theme and Variations for piano, and many other songs like the A, B, C’s and Baa Baa Black Sheep, so familiar!  By the end of class both Mrs. Owen and Ryan were playing Twinkle as a duet, including switching hands because they both had learned both parts!  Well done!

For home practice this week:

1.  Review Old Grey Goose (2) and learn the left hand part.  You may learn quickly by ear and not need to look at the music, but try to learn and memorize the fingerings as well!

2.  In Piano Player, review Row, Row, Row Your Boat as well as Ode to Joy.  If you can play these from memory, please look at Pop Goes the Weasel and practice it with both notes and timing (watch out for the rests!).

3.  Please spend some time with the Grand Staff Note Placement game (bottom middle icon on lower left of Theory Thinker page, we did some of this in class)

4.  Don’t forget to play some C scales (Pratik and Ryan: just one octave!) keeping good relaxed hand positions and not moving your elbows.

5.  Print out this activity sheet for practice with rhythms and rests.

See you next Monday!

Filed under: Blanchard Memorial Elementary, Uncategorized