Find the Beat Complete the following activities as you listen to each piece of music on the tempo playlist. Find the beat – clap along with the steady pulse of the music Once the class has found and clapped the beat for a little while, have your students identify which of the following four tempo […]
Practice Conducting Patterns Since most of us can’t just call up an orchestra to conduct, we’ve created a fun playlist so that you can conduct an orchestra you’d like! Use the handy chart below to remind yourself of what conducting music in 2, 3, or 4 looks like. On this playlist, the first four songs
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Xylophone Composition This composition activity combines music and math is such a smart and simple way. Children will get to flex their creativity and work on their basic addition or subtraction skills all at the same time. This blog post goes into even more detail, but the basic steps are as follows: Grab an instrument
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Ragtime Dance Ragtime music is a forerunner of jazz music and was popular around 1900. It grew from African American musical traditions, combining the jig and march styles commonly performed by African American bands. Ragtime became immensely popular as a musical style and a dance. It is called ragtime because of its syncopated, or ragged,
Drumline A drumline is a group of percussionists and performers that march and move their bodies while they’re playing music. Watch this video to see the Montbello Drumline in action. Now, create your own classroom drumline. Choose three (or more!) simple rhythms as a class. We suggest that one of the rhythms is just quarter
You’re an Arranger! We learned that an arranger is someone who takes music that already exists and creatively changes it to be different in some way. You students can become arrangers with this simple activity. Choose a simple song that your kids all know. For example, Happy Birthday, the ABC song, or Row, Row, Row,
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We’ve Got the Blues Use this activity to have students create their own blues story. Students can listen to “I’ve Got the Blues” by Sam Myers to get a sense of how lyrics and storytelling can happen over a basic blues line. Then, using this backing track video, have students create their own blues story.
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Animal Tempos Vocabulary Let’s focus on just four main tempo dynamic markings: andante, moderato, allegro, and presto. Here is a helpful way to imagine four different tempos as animal speeds. Activity Step One: Try acting each animal move while you listen to these four pieces in this playlist: Feel how each animal has a different
Singing scales – Introduction to Major and Minor Most pieces of simple music use one scale throughout the whole piece. A scale is a pattern of notes organized in order of pitch (low to high or high to low). In Western music, scales usually contain 8 notes. Sing a major scale together (or sing along
Dynamics Performance Game Use the two dynamics charts below during this activity (click on them to make them full screen) to help your students learn different dynamic terms. For this activity, students can use percussion instruments, their voices, body percussion sounds (like patting their legs with their hands), etc. Ask students to start making sound
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Music Salad! Activity Say the name of each fruit and vegetable out loud. Clap out each syllable. For example, “beet” gets one clap, “lettuce” has two, and “watermelon” has four. Once you’ve practiced each word through, point to an image and have your students say and clap it. As soon as they finish that rhythm,
Body Percussion Body percussion activities are a great way for students to explore percussion performance no matter where they are or what instruments you have access to at your school. Follow this body percussion lesson to bring fun, rhythmic learning into your classroom. Sound Exploration Before you start any of the activities below, discuss the
