| Botendere | Teach simple movements, then have the students march in with the song |
| This is something I intend to teach properly over a few weeks, but Botendere's melody is simple enough to introduce as an opener. I first just repeated the sung part, and simplified the motions (arms out with a clap on the 3rd beat, arms out, arms up, hands in front moving back and forth (like the original)). After I had led the students into the room (again in a horseshoe arrangement), the students seemed to be able to handle the pattern. It also helped that the sung line is pretty short, which allowed for several repetitions. For both classes, I then repeated the pattern and sped it up until it started to fall apart (which was pretty fast). I then tried adding the mostly clap line, with two claps to the left, two claps to the right, then a slower clap in front-back-front and then a sung "Botendere" with the same hand pulse as before. I then had the students do the full song as sung with the limited motions/clapping - 2 sung lines, 2 clap lines. That I figured was enough for Botendere for the first time. | |
| Find The Beat | Sing/play various songs, have students find the beat and introduce tempo |
| I always want to empower the students to discover musical things on their own, and one of those things is of course the beat. I first sang "Hey Ho, Spring Is Here" and had the students just clap to the beat without me clapping or indicating the beat (other than singing a song). In both class, there was at least one student who was clapping on the eighths instead of the quarter notes, and that gave me a good opportunity to talk about beat and its potential relativeness. The tempo terms that I introduced were "largo", "andante", and "allegro", and there were plenty of other students who wanted to add others (like presto and adagio). I then proceeded to play various songs, most of which the students have heard before. There were actually several choices for andante, but for allegro, I used "I Hope My Mama Says Yes" by AudraRox, and "Sunshine and Lollipops" by Lesley Gore, while for largo, I used "Say Goodnight" by Justin Roberts and "Wandering In the Summer Wind" by Dan Zanes. I then played for the students "The Rabbit and the Turtle" by Laurie Berkner, which is actually in 6/8 but "slows" down to a 3/4. I didn't try that hard to explain to the students what was going on with the beat and the sudden slowdown, but I did show them how you could clap to 6/8 (or rather, 2/4) and then maintain that while the song "slowed" down. The Laurie Berkner song also allowed me to talk a little bit about triplets (including writing them on the board alongside ta's and titi's). That then let me move onto the next item... | |
| Human Percussion | Try walking quarter/eighth/sixteenth notes |
| This was something that turned out to be a lot of fun the previous week, so I figured I bring this back. The students still found this to be a formidable challenge, and I had the students tap the sixteenth notes with their dominant hand on their opposite shoulder; that seemed to help. After doing this for a while, we talked again about triplets, and then I played for them the irish jig that we used for the Paddy O' Furniture (also in 6/8). We didn't have enough time to do the dance, so I played the song enough for the students to re-acquaint them with the song and march out of the room to it. | |
Similar to the previous class, there were a lot of other things I had planned that I never was able to get to, including introducing La and Ti, and of course, doing the St. Patrick's Day dance. Other things had in the backpocket included Tuwe Tuwe, King Kong Kitchie (Dan Zanes), Eia Makou, Brown Girl In The Ring, Zemer Atik, The Longer The Faster, and Don't Want to Know You. Of course, I wasn't really going to get to all of those, but it sure would have been nice to get to some of them.
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