Music Monthly Update #5

Using children’s action  songs like “My Name is Pinocchio”, “This Old Man”, “Okki Tokki Unga” and others, we will explore pulse and rhythm. Students will learn how to recall and copy rhythms and patterns and how to create rhythm patterns based on words and phrases.

Students will be increasing their repertoire of songs and using tuned and un-tuned percussion instruments to accompany performances. We will also be examining the way we can notate musical ideas.

We are thinking about Children’s rights and how such values can be represented in music and songs such as “Give Us Hope” and “Free to Be”. We will also be exploring instrumental arrangements of songs.

Students are continuing to increase their repertoire of songs on the ukelele along with improving their knowledge of chords and their technique of changing chord shapes with their left hand. We are currently learning “Lily the Pink”, “Coming Round the Mountain” and “Down in the Jungle”.

Students are exploring how music can “grow” or develop. Creating their own compositions they are considering the musical elements pitch, dynamics, tempo and texture and the effect these constituents have on the composition.

We will be examining the role of a songwriter and how meanings are conveyed through lyrics, melodic lines and harmonic progressions. We will examine scat songs, folk songs as well as 12 bar blues progressions. The class will perform a twelve bar blues, bringing together their knowledge and understanding of the blues chord sequence and song structure, as well as using their improvisation skills.