2015 Term 3, Week 6: Guitarist Tommy Emmanuel

 This Friday, 28th August  is Daffodil Day in New Zealand. This is the Cancer Society's  major fundraising event.

This week's tongue twister:

 Last year we learnt this little  song about Daffodil Day.   

Dance like the sun
Swing with the breeze
Daffodil,  daffodil, sing with me.
Daffodil, daffodil, daffodil,
So pretty and yellow on my windowsill. 

It was written by a musician and singer called Suzi Fray who wrote it for a friend who had died of cancer. Sadly, earlier this year, Suzi herself was diagnosed with cancer and died in June. 

Here's a time-lapse of daffodils  Listen to the music. What can you tell about the instruments?

 This week's Junior dances:
 Shout!   Everyone loved this dance last week. 
The Freeze Game You get to walk, run, hop, march and skip - and freeze!
Jump Up   Another one form last week - which has slow motion as well as fast moves. 

This week's Senior dances: 
 Shout!   Because you enjoyed it so much last week
Kung Fu fighting -because everyone enjoyed this one too. 


This week we are looking at other instruments in the string family.  This is a guitar. It's a special kind of a guitar called an acoustic guitar. That means that the sound comes from the vibrations of the strings resonating though the guitar's body.  The strings can be plucked or strummed.  Look at the two pictures of the guitars. Sometimes the same thing can be called different names.

Classical Gas was composed and originally recorded and performed by Mason Williams. The original version, recorded in 1968, has orchestral backing. What instruments can you hear?  (Here's a video from then, but it's not very good quality.)

Here's a 2012 version of Mason Williams  playing Classical Gas with Deborah Henson-Conant accompanying him on an electric harp.

 Since then,  it has been covered many times, including by Tommy Emmanuel  below. How many different ways does he use the guitar to make sounds? Look at his guitar - why  do you think it is so worn? Why do you think he uses this guitar instead of getting a new one - that isn't so worn?

This is a deck made in the shape of a guitar. The tuning pegs are actually solar lighting panels.

And for a bit of fun . . . Here's the world's first 3D printed violin.  What do you think it sounds like? If you heard it without seeing it, what would you think you were listening to?