"The Joker" - Sopranino Solo Part I

Hey Dora -- here's the first half of your Sopranino Solo (actually a duet with me). Gets started on this and I will put up the other half later this week.

"The Joker" - Chorus w/xylophone

...And here's the way the whole chorus sounds with the xylophone part added.

"The Joker" - Chorus Phrase 4

Here's Phrase 4... The pitch pattern is A-A-B flat-A-A-G-G.

"The Joker" - Chorus Phrase 3

Here's phrase 3... The pitch pattern is F-F-A-A F-F-B flat-B flat F-F-C-C D-A-G-F-F.

"The Joker" - Chorus Phrase 2

Here's Phrase 2... The pitch pattern is A-A-B flat-A-A-G-G A-G-F.

"The Joker" - Chorus Phrase 1

Recorder Ensemble -- sorry I couldn't get this up a bit earlier. Here is the recorder part of the chorus of "The Joker" broken into 4 phrases. Try to learn them by practicing them one at a time. (You can also go back at watch the video on B flat I posted a few weeksn ago).

Here's Phrase 1... The pitch pattern is F-F-A-A F-F-B flat-B-Flat F-F-C-C F-F-B flat-B flat.

Second Grade Week 6/7 -- Learning to play our drums

The last couple of weeks in 2nd grade music we've been learning how to use the drums we made, how to achieve different effects by playing with our hands or sticks and also how to improvise. To that end (and this being black history month) we used African children's game songs like "Ise Oluwa" and "Che Che Koolay" to develop our drum vocabulary. As I have observed in the past having the kids fabricate their own drum goes a long way in getting them to really focus on some of the abstract musical concepts I want them to learn.

Next week we will begin talking about how these ideas of beat and rhythm can be transferred to pitched instruments.