2015 Term 3, Week 4: Making a Song and Dance of it . . .

This week's tongue twister:

Following on from our last few weeks' blogs about stringed instruments of the orchestra, here's some examples of more modern versions of stringed instruments.  
This is a group called Asteria Strings and they are playing at a music awards show in Turkey.

Asteria Strings

They are playing electric instruments which look a little different to what you would expect. 

Electric violins

Electric violins

Can you work out what each instrument is? How can you tell?
The music they are playing is called  the Allegretto from Palladio by Karl Jenkins, and it was  written in 1995, so it is a very recent piece of music. 


This one  by Asteria is called "Storm"  from Winter by Vivaldi
and includes dancers. What instruments can you recognise? 

 Check out the tab above for "Songs we Sing"  for some of our favourite songs.

After August, we will no longer be able to use our hall as it will be demolished soon. This week we are going to practise some of our favourite  - and new - dances and songs s we can have some combined class singing and dancing in the hall before it goes forever. Here's some of our favourite dances - and some new ones to practise for our  dance party. 

I like to move it move it - because just about everybody has had to move  classrooms and offices at least once over the past year - and for some, more than once

Celebration - because we will get a new hall eventually. 

Footloose from the movie Footloose.  

Kung Fu fighting - but only when you're dancing!

Who let the dogs out?

Barbara Ann  
 
Mickey  

Hot, hot, hot - after all that dancing! 

Juniors:  Here are some special dances for you


The Chicken Dance 

The Hamster Dance

I've Been Working on the Railroad 

Sid Shuffle from Ice Age: Continental Drift.

I'm a Gummy Bear 

Freeze 

 And we will do last week's poem again - with sound effects - and the previous week's poem about the Turtle.    But try the  tongue twisters as a warm up first.

 
  

2015 Term 3, Week 3: The Centenary of Chunuk Bair

Instead of our usual assembly to commemorate Anzac Day on the 25th of April, this year we are commemorating another special event in our Anzac history.

Poppies growing at Chunuk Bair

This week marks the centenary of the battle  of Chunuk Bair in Gallipoli. We all know about New Zealand's involvement in the Gallipoli landing, on April 25th, and this day has come to represent New Zealand's involvement in all conflicts - and peace-keeping duties - and is called Anzac Day. 

 Some people argue that August 8th and the Battle for Chunuk Bair  is more relevant than April 25th as a date to represent the achievements of New Zealand troops in battle - even though the the campaign ultimately failed. 

Chunuk Bair is in the very top left hand corner.

The Battle for Chunuk Bair in August 1915  was New Zealand’s most significant action in the Gallipoli campaign,  and it was also the first action  to include the MaoriContingent. Chunuk Bair was one of the highest hills, and its capture would help the Allies take control of the Gallipoli peninsula.  Australian troops  would take the summit at Lone Pine,  a battalion of Gurkhas from the Indian Brigade were to take another summit called Hill Q,  and British troops were to land at SuvlaBay  as part of  a major campaign to break the  stalemate at Gallipoli.

The  NZ operation started  on the 6th of August.  Men of the New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade and the Maori Contingent had cleared a path for the other troops to follow.  But delays meant that the attack on Chunuk Bair was ordered before all the infantrymen were  in place. The Auckland Battalion suffered heavy casualties in the mid-morning attack on the 7th of August,   and the Wellington Battalion, led by Lieutenant - Colonel William Malone, were ordered to follow into direct enemy fire. Malone was a tough but respected commander. It is said that he told his superior, Brigadier-General Johnston:

 "We are not taking orders from you people… My men are not going to commit suicide!"

Malone risked a court martial for refusing to follow this order,  but he  insisted that his men would move out later that night instead.

By early the next morning,  on 8th August,  Malone’s men had reached the summit and they fought desperately to hold off the Turks, while waiting for reinforcements to arrive to help them.  Unfortunately, reinforcements were unable to reach the summit because they were  exposed to enemy fire.

The Sari Bair Range

It was not until that night that the reinforcements finally arrived to help Malone’s men,  and they endured  the following day’s long  battle in the summer heat, but more support was still needed to hold the position.

The New Zealanders were finally relieved  by British Battalions, but these quickly fell to a Turkish counter-attack led by Mustafa Kemal, who went on to become the founding president of Turkey. The Turks had taken back control of Chunuk Bair, and the stalemate continued.

Out of the 760 men of the Wellington Battalion who started, only 47 were left uninjured. The rest were dead or wounded, including  Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone who  had been killed by an Allied shell.

Meanwhile, the Australians had successfully taken control  of Lone Pine - with huge loss oflives, and many wounded -  but no further advancements could be made by the Allies,  and this situation lasted until all the Allies were evacuated from  Gallipoli in December.

A view of Gallipoli in 1915.

Corporal Cyril Basset was awarded New Zealand’s only Victoria Cross at Gallipoli,  for his bravery laying and maintaining communication wires in the face of enemy fire at Chunuk Bair.  Basset did not believe he did anything more than any of the other men who died, and attributed his luck in staying alive to the fact that he was so short that the bullets sailed over him. He said, 

"All my mates ever got  were wooden crosses."

A New Zealand memorial  now stands on the summit of Chunuk Bair. It has a narrow slit, through which the rising sun shines on 8 August.

The memorial to fallen New Zealanders at Chunuk Bair. Note also the memorial to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who led the attack against the Allies at Chunuk Bair.

This is a song about Chunuk Bair which was recorded for the Anzac Day commemoration last year.



This is a link to to the digital track and lyrics of the song Chunuk Bair by New Zealand Band Gravel Road. 

A tv news item on the centenary of Chunuk Bair - This one's about Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone. 

Gallipoli Poem by Alistair Te Ariki Campbell 

These are some songs that were sung in World War 1: 
 Keep the Home Fires Burning - sung at the Chunuk Bair memorial service on Anzac Day, 2015. 

Here's an original version of Keep the Home Fires Burning from 1917. (It was written in 1914)


This week's tongue twister: Try starting off with: Soldier's shoulder then work up to the entire sentence.  You may find that the sentence is easier to say than "Soldier's shoulder".  I wonder why?

 

Juniors: 

 We are going to have some fun with this poem. How many of these sound effects can you make?

 

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!

2015 Term 2, Week 11: Last Week of the Term

Well, Term 2 went pretty quickly!

This week we will have a change of plan as some classes will miss their usual lessons because of parent interviews and cross country.   Instead, we will have a "Greatest Hits" session of our favourite songs and dances, and a bit of fun (although every week in music is fun, surely).

 Something just for fun . . .

Here's a Gangnam Style bird dance - literally!

Here's 16 different genres of music demonstrated in one song in 3 minutes. Notice that this is one continuous video - without any editing.

This pianist plays the theme to Harry Potter in a lot of different musical styles as they are asked for randomly.

These are  not the kind of singers you would be expecting if you were at the opera "Carmen" by Bizet. 

And because this Saturday is the 4th of July, the day the United States celebrate the anniversary of their Declaration of Independence in 1776, here's the most famous of American marches, called The Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa. It is the national march of America.   The  "Stars and Stripes" is also one of the names for the flag of the United States. Other names are "Old Glory" and "The Star Spangled Banner".   This version includes a choir. Note the way the cymbals and triangle are played, and look for the piccolo players who have a special part to play.

Here's an animated version of the score of The Stars and Stripes Forever. Choose an instrument to follow and note when the tune goes higher  and lower.  Can you see how the percussion is shown?

And, of course,  a Muppets version of The Stars and Stripes Forever. 

Finally, for the holidays - here's a Kid President message about holidays (vacations in USA). 

2015 Term 2. Week 10: Bananas, Baked Beans and Body Percussion

What was Beethoven's favourite fruit?

We have been working on body percussion activities.  These are some of the ones we have adapted. 
Boom Snap Clap
Sevens   

How many different body percussion patterns can you make by changing the orders of these sounds? 

From Mrs King's Music Room 

Here's a rhythm matching game.  Click on "play" to hear a rhythm, then choose which one of the  lines of rhythm matches.

Where would you put bar lines to make a 5 bar rhythm?

What has setting the table, or putting the cutlery away got to do with music?  
Click here to find out.

Our New Zealand music clip of the week is a fun "novelty song" from 1977 by the Dunedin band called Mother Goose and is called Baked Beans.   

 The band members dressed up in outrageous costumes, each member with their own trademark look, as you will see in the video clip.  The song was very popular and was played frequently on tv stations in Australia and New Zealand.

The band "Mother Goose".

 Here's another silly baked beans song - just for fun. try singing along with it.

We are still working on  the song Islands with lyrics and sign language.  
Follow this link for ukulele chords and lyrics for Islands 
 
Link to metronome for our rhythm activities.

Follow this link to have fun making your own music patterns 

Here's a new dance for the Juniors - it will help warm us up on the frosty mornings this week, especially as the dance is called Freeze!