Enero y febrero - January and February

After Winter Break, we started our drumming cycle. It shows differently at each grade level, as we adjust to the different curriculum requirement and learning needs.

As general guidelines, these would be the progression we are following:

·      Our work is based on patterns.

·      We create our own patterns.

·      We listen to our partners and we learn their favorite patterns… so we can copy and play together.

·      We listen to our partners and we look for little pieces we could add to his or her favorite patterns so we enrich that piece of music. We call this “Sal y Pimienta”.  The partner playing the main pattern is Salt, the partner adding some details is Pepper.

·      We listen to a grade level appropriate piece of music. Our listening effort is intentional, we are looking for a pattern that will enrich the music. We avoid overwhelming the music or drowning the main sound. And, we must keep in mind that not any pattern will match any music. We need to listen for positive opportunities to enrich the music.

·      We explore drumming through out the world. Drums, patterns and sounds in different cultures.

All these experiences help us grow as ensemble musicians. We learn to find out who we are (from a drumming perspective), look around to the other players, and participate as an ensemble musician, realizing we are building something beautiful and interesting as a group.

As a listening experience, this month we listen to “The Typewriter” as interpreted by the Brandenburger Symphoniker. You can watch it at this link:

It was a mind-blowing experience!

·      A typewriter can play alongside with a symphonic orchestra if you have the right patterns.

·      Even a typewriter soloist needs to get ready.

·      Orchestras actually tune their instruments when they play together and musicians make an effort to play along with each other.

Finally, we will be working with our drums until Teachers Conferences in February.  We did not stop working with our voices. One of our weekly sessions is devoted to “Vocal Work Out”.

Kinder and Grades 1 and 2 did a wonderful job at their winter concert. Now we need to keep digging in all those elements they learnt.  Grades 3 and 4 need to keep developing their skills because we have a very serious goal for our Spring Concert. More to come!

Learning music is a spiral experience.

Image retrieved from: http://vocalability.com/spiral-learning-and-voice/

Qué Pasa Clubs

We keep meeting on Mondays during lunch. Right now, both A and B groups are working together. Qué Pasa Dance Club meets both on Mondays and Wednesdays at lunch.

Recorder Ensemble – Música Antigua

Middle Age and Renaisance music are my little babies! In my culture, that music is still quite present. Have you heard of Camino de Santiago? Well, that´s where I am from! Right at the very end of the Camino. The Camino was a really important via of cultural exchange during all Middle Age and Renaissance periods. We all influenced each other!

Here you are a link with a sample of our music back in the North-West.

 It is a pleasure to share that music style in the context of this club. Right now we are working on the music of a Renaissance dance called “A Volta” by Praetorious.

Here your are a link with a performance of this piece.

The next post will include pictures of your students.

Noviembre - Remembrance Day

Kindergarten

Since September, we have been working hard to find our own voices. This is a life long process! By now, we know we have a voice, we know we can sing on our own as well as together in a group. Right now, we are exploring how the many voices we have: ·      Whispering voice, (voz de susurrar) ·       Speaking voice, (voz de hablar) ·      Singing voice, (voz de cantar) ·      Shouting voice (voz de gritar) Nursery rhymes are an important part of our learning, as we see students as stewards of their cultural inheritance both in English and Spanish. For this reason, we learnt, sang and played “Lucy Locket,” the girl who lost her pocket; and we felt sorry for “Old Mother Witch” the woman who fell in a ditch. During November, we will ·      Analyze loud and quiet (fuerte y suave) ·      We will meet Bach and one of his Gavottes, and we will ponder how music makes us feel. ·      We will initiate the exploration of fast and slow (rápido y despacio) ·      We will learn a song about the days of the week, both in English and Spanish. ·      We will explore “lento” with La Tortuga from El Carnaval de  los Animales, and we will feel how lento lento could be. ·      And we will learn, sing and dance with a new nursery rhyme: “Bobby Shaftoe” the boy who is gone to sea.

Grado 1

Since September, we have been reviewing some Kindergarten concepts that establish the foundation for a successful grade 1 experience. We concentrated on strengthening the Spanish classroom language that support our positive classroom routines and facilitate learning and communication. During November, we will work on ·      “Juanito cuando baila”, a song about the parts of our body in Spanish. ·      Learn some English songs related with Rembembrance Day, and use those songs to explore the concept of “Frase musical”. ·      We will learn “Bota, bota la pelota”, and study beat, rhythm and accented beat. ·      We will learn the “Cucú” song, and use it as an opportunity to learn to label So and Mi. So-Mi is the descending minor third. This interval permeates so much music in so many cultures! We will visit again our old friend “Lucy Locket”. We learnt and played and dance with this song in Kinder, but now we will use it to explore Phrase, and eco, and… So-Mi J

Grado 2

Since September, we started to explore the elements of music language “by name”.  So far, we sang and dance, and played, and felt most of those elements. However, in grade two we will start to label some of those elements with an “official” music name, and we will start to search simple scores for those elements. We have learnt that ·      Notes may be tied, ·      The many looks of La, So, and Mi in a score ·      Fast and slow is transforming in allegro, and presto and largo ·      Notes can be name in solfeggio and they can be name with a letter name. ·      We can use our rhythmic syllables to sing and to read a score. ·      We can sing songs of many different cultures. We learnt “Obwisana”, a song from Ghana. It says “oh! Grandma. I just hurt my finger on a rock”. After learning this song, we learn the Spanish song “Sana, Sana. Pupita de rana”. Excellent resource to heal little auchies! During November, we will work on ·      We will learn “Starlight”, and with this song we will brush up our So-Mi; we will applied our rhythm reading skills; and we will create a sound landscape. ·      We will honor Remembrance Day, and we will learn “Sing for Peace”. With this song, we will give it a gentle try to a two parts experience. ·      We will revisit our old friend “Doggie, Doggie”. We have enjoyed this song so much in the past! However, for this opportunity, “Doggie, Doggie” will teach us about timber (el timbre de la voz); we will discover how La-So-Mi was there all this time!

Grado 3

Since September, we have extended our musical formal language. We don´t talk about fast and slow per se. Now we now there are many different speeds, and each of those speeds have a name. This year, our goal is keep the beat with accuracy, that way our instrumentations will be way more interesting. We explore form with “Shake the Papaya” while improvising with our drums. We dance and explore the score with “Plainsies and Clapsies”. And finally, we got really into “ostinatos” with “Old Mother Witch”. During November, we will ·      Get ready to sing our grade song during Remembrance Day Assembly! You can´t imagine how much vocal exploration we are doing. ·      Review our note values. ·      Learn “Three Blind Mice”. We will use this song to review treble clef (Clave de Sol) and dotted quarter notes (negras con puntillo). Alongside this English “Three blind Mice” we will learn our Spanish “Ratón que te pilla el gato” and the game that is associated with this song. Finally, we will learn a little “four square” dance with the song Old Brass Wagon. This song will help us discover sixteenth notes (semicorcheas), compare and contrast negra, corchea and semicorchea; and review that notes can be name by their solfeggio name or by their letter name.

Grado 4

Since September, we have been advancing incredibly in our recorder skills on Mondays, intensely reviewing our music vocabulary on Wednesdays and working our singing voice on Fridays. Our Spanish vowels are so good! And we are training our intervals in our ears and our voices. We need these skills as we are jumping into two parts singing through Round form. In our recorders, we can play a blues with great style, and we can keep an ostinato up with a whole band of jazz musicians. This last week, we have concentrated in our ostinatos. Our goal is to become independent “ostinato” players so we can mix and match those rhythmic patterns with different instruments. That will make our instrumentations something really cool! During November, we will ·      Learn a “tableau” inspired in Remembrance Day. ·      We will work on a “Scale Round” ·      Review Land of the Silver Birch in order to learn a new rhythmic dividison of the beat: Ti ti-ka. Explore how minor keys patterns make us feel. And, build a really cool instrumentation for that song. Learn a Japanese song about a crane. It is a song of gratitude. We will explore the letter names of the notes, and we will build an instrumentation for this song. Then, we will learn a Spanish song about gratitude.

¡Qué Pasa!

¡Qué Pasa! is a CBE Spanish cultural festival held at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium. All CBE Spanish schools are invited to participate. This school year, ¡Qué Pasa! Festival will be on Monday May 7th 2018. ¡Qué Pasa! Festival requires careful preparation and lots of rehearsal and practice time. At Eugene Coste School, we will prepare for ¡Qué Pasa! through a lunch club which opens up this opportunity to all interested students who would like to participate. ¡Qué Pasa! Club will be our only music club. It will encompass all our other music clubs, as we will have choir, band, and dance as part of ¡Qué Pasa! Club. ¡Qué Pasa! Club will run on Mondays at lunch time all through the school year until the big festival day. The three performance ensembles (choir, dance, and band) will be taught on a rotation.