Art in the Park - "Pick a Little, Talk a Little/Good Night Ladies"

One collaboration we're especially pleased with with working with Mr. Bassett and Mr. Pratt on their songs from "The Music Man," which the 4th grade is putting on later this year. This arrangement of the partner songs "Pick a Little, Talk a Little" and "Good Night Ladies" was something we put together the day of the show. Enjoy!

Art in the Park - "10 Short Pieces #1"

We also always try to do one piece from the traditional "Music for Children" repertoire. The music is always beautiful. The titles on the other hand...

Art in the Park - "Falling Water"

Here's another student-composed piece entitled "Falling Water". IN developing this piece one of the kids suggested that putting the mallets between the openings in the bars and trilling on the sides might make for an interesting "water" sound so we put it in. In Orff anything goes.

Art in the Park - "Dream"

One of the things we have also started doing is developing into performance pieces some of the compositions our fifth graders wrote in general music class. Here's one example entitled "Dream."

Art in the Park - Shepherd's Hey

The ensembles very successful evening concert on Friday night, but we also had a lot of help. Art in the Park is something we started to do in conjunction with the PTA Reflection's art show and it has become a really nice community collaboration -- this year we had short films, a traditional Korean dance, musical theater presentations from the after school group Art of Third and from Mr. Pratt and and Mr. Bassett and, of course, a showing of the reflections art. It was a wonderful program.

In this video the Recorder Ensembles plays a traditional English tune "Shepherd's Hey" using Alto and Soprano recorders for the first time.

4th Grade Week 9 -- Adding Melody to our Songs

This week in a somewhat shortened class we began to construct melodies to fit our our existing lyrics and rhythm patterns. To do this we are revisiting the idea of melodic contour -- this idea that melody is like a line that rises and falls. As we saw in class, successful melodies tend to have subtle contour without large jumps and repetition is a good thing.

I can not, unfortunately, allow students to take home a xylophone to work on the melody but here's link to an online xylophone.

You can also use a piano at home, if you have one, or the online piano on the left under links, if you don't. White keys only and don't go any higher that an E.

Blog Back Online!

I am pleased to announce after a nine week absence that Third Street Music is back. A combination of technical difficulties and time constraints have been settled, so I hope to get back to regular posting for the rest of the year.

Here's a couple of pictures of what we've been working on lately: