Category: dear students

dear students, music

Playing Mozart

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Happy Monday morning students!
Last week MPR posted a music exploring the structure of a theme and variations in music. They picked Mozart’s arrangement of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star as their example. As violinists, it is one of the first peices we learn – but do any of you know who wrote it? Did you know that Charles Bradlee borrowed the melody in 1835 when he wrote the Alphabet Song?  Most people think that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed the melody, but he actually borrowed it from a french folk song that already existed and arranged a Theme and Variations around it.  When composers write a theme and then want to make it fancy, its fairly common to have only two or three variations – but Mozart wrote twelve.  (They are all really pretty, but I think that number five, and number seven and maybe number 8 are my favorites.)

I found a video on Youtube that has the twinkle song in D major (starting on our open D string) that you can try play along with.  Even if you learned Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star a really long time ago, its still fun to try play along.  Pay close attention to the metronome’s beat before you start so you can match the tempo. When you’re finished, go back to the MPR music lesson page and use their guidelines to composing you’re own variation of Twinkle and we can go over it in our lessons this week. I can’t wait to hear what you create!

Practice well this week!
Miss Cara

dear students

Thursday Music Class: String’s Club Special

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Dear Students,
Just because we can’t have in real life practices doesn’t mean that we should be putting ensemble practice to the side. I’m working on a set of lessons we can do together that will help our group play skills, and this mini project is a hint at things to come.

MPR has their new daily music lesson up, and I was thrilled to see that its focus connects to some of the things we had been discussing in our February rehearsals. Do you remember when we played tag with a solo? One member played a measure from a piece of music, at at the following measure, the next musician had to be ready to take over – repeating through the group until the entire song had been played. The goal was to make it sound like one one instrument was playing instead of (in our case) five by matching the rate of decay for each last note in a measure. It was a really great exercise in reading music, counting together and listening carefully to match the tone and volume of the other players. What you might not know is that we were also experimenting with melodic contouring – the shape that is created with a line of music.

Today’s assignment = head over to the MPR lesson on Melodic Contouring. Take a careful look at the line drawings they posted, then pick one of the listening samples. Create a basic line doodle of what you think the melodic contour of your chosen clip looks like. Take a picture and send it to me. (Make sure your song title is on your doodle so I know which clip to listen to!) Then – and this is the really fun part! – get ready to see how visual artists get creative with melodic contouring.

There is a growing movement of animators to create line riders – tiny cartoon characters that ride a line of music. A year ago there was barely a handful of videos on YouTube and it was strictly classical music. At this point, there are line riders for pop songs, techno, soft rock, and even the mashups made popular by The Piano Guys. The ability to see the shape of music changes the way we hear it, as well as how we play it.
Watch the video for Edvard Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King and leave me a comment telling me if you thought the animator did an accurate representation of the music with their line drawing. Remember that harmony and rhythm combined with the melody make a three dimensional shape, so remember to listen to how the piece changes around the melody as you watch the line move.

I can’t wait to see what you create!
Miss Cara

PS – Bonus tip: sometimes the melodic contour can be a hint as to the quality of music. Think about the shape of one of the songs on your current play list – is it complex or is it simple? Is it repetitive or is it varied?

dear students

Monday Music Class

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While we’re waiting for MPR to release today’s music lesson, we can catch up on the Dance Party we missed yesterday. What a fun way to start the week! Leave me a comment and tell me what your favorite classical piece in the lesson was and if you’re working on any dance music for your lesson. (This is almost a trick question – almost all music can be danced to, but which pieces in your lesson assignment were written specifically for dance?)

Monday morning also seems like a good time to lay out some expectations for practice under the absence of formal class schedules. So as an encouraging note to students, especially mine: homework is important, but so is lesson practice. Social distancing is an opportunity to catch up progress in music lessons that was delayed during the finish of the winter sports season. I’m very sorry that spring sports have been put on hold and extra curricular activities have been canceled because I know how much you enjoy them – but know that outside of dire circumstances (the kind where emergency calls are made and lessons are canceled) I will not be accepting “I didn’t have time” as the reason you didn’t practice. Every student, no matter their age or level of advancement, should have no problem practicing consistently for 30 minutes every day this week. (Notice I said practicing: this is intentional effort to improve your lesson material, not time spent experimenting with YouTube videos which is that is playing. Play is important, too, but needs to take secondary priority to practice.) I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes practice isn’t fun and doesn’t seem like it gets us very far very fast. But getting good at the basics is what makes music extra fun later; it is what lays the foundation for all those hard things we wish we could do now. Practice, even when it isn’t fun, is well worth the effort.

I don’t agree with Yoda’s insistence that the only options are “Do or do not – there is no try”. Try is how we learn. So keep trying students! If you are putting full effort into your practice you are going to be amazed by your progress when you compare where you are now to where you were in September!

You know where I am if you need me. You are always welcome to send me a text or a message on Google Hangouts if you get frustrated with part of your assignment, or you need just a little bit more to do. 🙂 I’m here to help.

dear students, music, practice, Uncategorized

Top Five Practice Tips

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Dear Students,
Congratulations – you did it!  You survived the first two weeks of a new school season and rolled through all the changes that happen at break-neck pace – new teachers, new classmates, new classrooms . . . all of the New Things All at Once . . . with in-process renovations.

I thoroughly enjoyed our first week of lessons – reconnecting with those who studied with met last year, and those who are just starting.  We are going to have so much fun this year!  To help us all stay on the same page I’ve put together a list of five practice tips to give us a good foundation to build on.

  1. Make practice part of your daily routine – just like eating breakfast and brushing your teeth before bed.  Find a time of day that you can consistently practice during, and ask your family to hold you accountable.  It might be right after you get home from school; or as soon as the dinner dishes are done; maybe even in the morning before school.  Find something that works for your family’s schedule do what is necessary to make it stick.
  2. Keep your instrument and books in the same place – that way you can find everything right away when you’re ready.
  3. Eliminate digital distractions – don’t practice where the TV is on, or audio stories are playing.  Leave phones/iPods/iPads in a different room so you’re not tempted to pick them up during your practice time.  This time is about practicing your music.
  4. Set a timer – it will take a while for you to get comfortable with the practice length we set during our first lesson.  If you sent a timer, you won’t have to check how much time you have left, and pretty soon instead of taking forever your timer will go off sooner than you expect.
  5. Maintain realistic expectations – and have fun!  Itzak Perlman didn’t become a world class musician over night – you and I are no different.  Practicing an instrument is really hard work.  Even if you understand the concepts we talk about in our lessons right away, it takes time and repetition to train your body to consistently perform the motions correctly.  You’ll enjoy it more if you give yourself grace to make mistakes and then try again.  Anything worth doing is worth doing well – and music is worth the effort, so enjoy your journey through it.

Practice well this week!

 

I’ve decided practice is practice, and progress is progress.  Hailee Maunu

 

 

dear students, music, Uncategorized

Music Students: Measuring for an Instrument

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Dear Students,

I feel like I blinked and missed summer . . . but fall means school starts . . . which means it is almost time to begin lessons!  Now is the perfect time to dust off your instruments – even though I know you practiced every day this summer 😉 – and brush up on your scales.

Find your music bag and make sure all your books are still there.

And maybe ask your mom or dad to measure you, just to make sure your instrument still fits well.

To measure for instrument sizing:

  1. stand up straight!  Extend your left arm straight in front of you, palm up.  (Make sure your shoulder doesn’t move up toward your ear, or push out toward your hand)
  2. with a tape measure, measure from the middle of the shoulder (between the top of the shoulder and the collarbone) to the middle of the palm of the extended hand.

18.4″ – 20.4″ = 1/4 size

20.4″ – 22.2″ = 1/2 size

22.2″-23.5″ = 3/4 size

23.5″ = 4/4 size