Musical Alphabet

These cards print up the musical alphabet 15 times, in various colors and fonts. They include sharp and flat signs. Here are just a few ideas for using them that have worked well for me:

Student draws a card out of the bag and plays that note on the piano.
Use sticky tack and hide them around the room. When they find one, they play that note.
- If I’m on the ball, I have them hidden before the student arrives. If I’m not, no worries. I have them play their song for the week while I hide them. They’re too busy to see exactly where I’m putting them.
- If it’s taking too long, we play Hot and Cold to find them.
- It’s also possible to have them hide a few for me. Then I find them and play them, but they have to watch to make sure I don’t make any mistakes.
Student draws several cards out of the bag and lays them out. Then they play the sequence of notes they have drawn.
Very young students can practice putting the cards in order on the floor.
- We practice it both forwards and backwards.
- We also try building a tower that is longer than they are. (If you do this, make sure that A is on the bottom of the tower and build up, just like the notes on t he staff work.) Periodically, they lie down on the flower next to their tower to see if they need to build it any higher.
More advanced students can play a major or minor scale starting on the letter than they draw.

Naturally, there’s no limit to the different ways you could use these, which is the only reason I was willing to go to the effort of creating them.

Silent Night

“Silent Night” was meant to be simple. Franz Gruber took a text by Joseph Mohr and set it for voice and guitar, and it was first performed on Christmas Eve, 1818 in the village of Oberndorf, near Salzburg, in Austria.

To my thinking, a large part of the beauty of this carol comes precisely because it is so simple. I have tried to reflect that in my setting for violin and piano, which I have uploaded here.

When we lived in Europe we never made it to Oberndorf, but the original St. Nikola parish church is no longer standing anyway. Salzburg itself was one of our favorite places. The Salzburg cathedral below is probably a bit more grandiose than the church where “Silent Night” premiered, but it has an illustrious musical history of its own. Mozart was baptized here, and he served as organist from 1779 to 1781.

*** This post originally appeared on my other site here..

The First Noel

”The First Noel” is a traditional English carol. It has an unusual structure which made arranging it a little difficult. It essentially only has one music phrase. That phrase is repeated twice in the verse, and then it is repeated again in a slightly different form for the chorus. All of this is just fine in a vocal setting where you have different lyrics to distinguish these phrases. It works well enough, that I had never even noticed how repetitive the melody is until I tried to set it for solo piano. Without words, it quickly verges on . . . boring.

My own arrangement has three verses: one with a simple arpeggiated bass, one with altered rhythm and meter, and one that is partially set in a canon. If you try to sing along the words you will find that my technique for avoiding boring was actually to mutilate the traditional structure. I don’t repeat the phrase before the chorus. Each verse is quite a bit shorter than it would have to be if it were sung.

Below is a typical English scene, except for the fact that it’s technically in Scotland. This was the park around the block from where we used to live, with a view of the parish church just across the hedge. I have no doubt that “The First Noel” has been sung there many, many times.

***This post originally appeared on my old site here.

Be Thou My Vision

Be Thou My Vision is one of the world’s most gorgeous traditional hymns. It’s originally Irish, but it’s so beautiful that it’s very well known in most Christian churches, though that sadly doesn’t include the one I belong to.

There are several different English versions of the text. I took liberties with all of them. I wasn’t such a fan of the battle imagery in one verse. (That imagery is fine in a different kind of song, but I don’t think it really fits with this melody.) I also modified the verse about being God’s son. I wrote this for high voice (mine), and I’m not a son.

My arrangement for high voice and piano is now available here.

An Irish cross in the cemetery at the Rock of Cashel, County Tipperary, Ireland

***This post was originally published on my old site here.

The Giant Valentine – A Lesson Mashup

I’m always on the lookout for ways to make lessons more interesting. Here’s what worked this week.

I cut out lots of hearts out of different colors of paper. On one page, I actually had a heart template, but I quickly discovered that it’s a whole lot easier just to make a random fold in your paper and cut hearts in random sizes.

On the back of each heart I wrote things like:

Sight Read
Improv
Student’s Choice of Past Song
Current Song – Right hand only
Current Song – Left hand only
Rhythm Challenge (this means they pick a random rhythm out of my rhythm cards and clap it back)
Note Challenge (this means we open a music book at random, I randomly place my finger on a note and they tell me what it is)

I also wrote some that were specific to each student, like a measure number or a phrase that was causing difficulty.

During the lesson, they picked hearts from the pile, do the challenge and tape it on to our Giant Studio Valentine, which formerly was just blank piece of poster board.. The picture above was early on in the week, but we ended up with it covered with hearts, and the kids enjoyed approaching the practicing in a new way.

**This post originally appeared on my other website here.