2015 Term 3, Week 2: More on strings

Work in progress - more to come) 

(Seniors) Here's a dance to warm us up at the start of the lesson. Celebration!

Try out some of your cool '70s dance moves. 

(Juniors) Here's your warm up dance: I've Been Working on the Railroad.  

This term, we are going to practise our speaking and singing enunciation by trying out a new tongue twister each week.   This week it's:

 Scroll down to the end of the blog  to find the answers.

Another name for a violin is a fiddle.  We use the word violin when we talk about an instrument of the orchestra, but the word fiddle tends to mean a violin that is played for folk music or traditional music.   

This is a very famous piece of  fiddle music from America called The Orange Blossom Special.  What other stringed instruments can you see, and how are they played? 

 

 Here's a clip form a movie called Singin' in the Rain (1952).  We've already looked at some of this movie earlier in the year. It shows  actors/ dancers Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor playing the fiddles - and dancing. It's very clever, and a little crazy. The song is called Fit as a Fiddle.  

Learn more about the saying "Fit as a fiddle".

Watch this very old movie clip from 1942. It is mainly about  playing xylophones (called marimbas), but watch the bass player.  How is this double bass player different from those we have seen in an orchestra?

Answers to quiz: 
1.  violin   2. (b) a bow   3. violin, viola, cello, double bass, harp, guitar  4. guitar 
5.  violin, viola,  cello, double bass   6. lower   7. higher   8. (c) plucking 
9. (b) the violin     10. the double bass    11. the double bass     12. cello 
13.  cello and double bass   14. (a) higher sounds, because by pressing on the string he is making the string shorter. 15. (c)  horse hair  16. (b)sheep guts (sometimes goat guts, or cattle guts  17. (b) false - even though violin and other instruments' strings  (and tennis racquets strings) were originally made of something called  cat gut, it was more likely to have been named after cattle gut. No cats' guts were ever used to make musical instruments.

2015 Term 3, Week 1: Instruments of the Orchestra - strings

Instruments of the orchestra:
STRINGS
This week we  are looking at stringed instruments.  Here's a short video demonstrating how each of the stringed instruments in an orchestra look and sound when they are played.

 Now, can you name the parts on the violin below?

In the orchestra, most stringed instruments are played with a bow, but strings can be plucked or strum, too.

This is called Air from Orchestral Suite No. 3 by Johann Sebastian Bach.  It's also known as Air on the G String.

  Bach is one of known  of the greatest composers of all time.  He was born in Germany in 1685 and died in 1750.  His family was very musical for many generations  - over 300 years. His parents died when he was young and he was brought up by his older brother who played the organ in a church.

Bach once had to spend a month in jail because he tried to quit his job composing and playing for a duke. While he was in jail he wrote forty-six pieces of music - many of which are still performed today.  Even though he composed a lot of music, he was not famous in his life time, and it was not until almost 100 years after his death that his work became known, and he was recognised as a genius.


Bach had twenty children. Five were named Johann, two were called Johanna, and four became famous composers.

 Here are some more stringed instruments.

This young Russian girl, called Alisa Sadikova, is playing the harp. She is 11 years old in this video.

Check out this clip of the 2 Cellos playing a piece called Thunderstruck.  I wonder why everyone is dressed on old-fashioned clothes?  Do you think Bach could have imagined the cello being played like this?  This is another piece played by the 2 Cellos called Benedictus (from The Armed Man by Carl Jenkins - we looked at some of his work earlier this year.) How is this different  to the previous piece by 2 Cellos?

Here's a quiz about stringed instruments.  How many answers do you know?
And another  stringed instrument quiz where you get a second chance if you get the wrong answer.

Juniors:
 We are learning to recite a poem together, then we will add some music to it.

Here's  some information about turtles.
This is a short video showing how turtles hatch from their eggs.
And then they head out to sea.
This is a join-in song about the life cycle of the sea turtle.
This is an Aborigine Turtle Dance.  What music can you hear? What instruments are being played, and how do they play them?  How do  the dancers show the turtle movements? 

And another turtle dance - literally. No turtles were harmed in the making of this video.

2015 July Holidays

Here's some interesting activities and videos I've discovered during the holidays.
Keep checking this post, as I will add more over the holidays as I find interesting sites.

Here's a hauntingly beautiful violin / piano duet of Hallelujah - originally written by Leonard Cohen and covered many times by many other artists.  This violin is played by Rob Landes  and the piano is played by Aubry Pitcher.

Here's some very unusual instruments sounding like an electric guitar and a bass guitar. 

This boy is only three years old, but he loves conducting and has obviously practised this a lot. He is conducting the fourth movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

Have a bit of fun with these singing horses. You can click each horse on or off to change when they start or finish singing.


Here's a compilation of animal videos with backing music to suit their actions.

Click on this link to  play a fun game where you have to tap any key to maintain a drum beat rhythm over   a few seconds, then you get a score out of 1000 for your accuracy.

Follow this link to be able to pretend that you are playing Mozart, Beethoven and many other famous classical pianists.  Just touch the screen if you are using a screen-touchable device, otherwise, just use  any keys on the keyboard to play the music to a graphic of the notes being played.  It may take a while to work it out and to find all the options, but it's a lot of fun and you can almost start to feel as if you are a classical pianist.

And here's the chicken dance - literally!