2015 Term 3, Week 10: End of Term 3 - Favourite and Funniest Moosic

This week we will look at our favourite songs and dances from the term - and we can measure how much we have learned by how funny we find the jokes. If we understand them, we must have learnt something new this term!

Some of our favourite composers have a bovine connection . . .

Here's some annoying moosic - with a cow playing a guitar. . .

And this is just plain weird - someone had fun with computer graphics and cows, but it's also a bit of fun, with dancing cows.

For Juniors: A song to get stuck in your head over the holidays: The Duck Song

I knew You  Were Treble . . . .    A Taylor Swift parody to help you learn the notes on the treble clef.

Here's the Swedish chef from  The Muppets showing you how to make popcorn - and how to play music in the kitchen while you wait for the popcorn to cook.

 It's been a while since we've seen Danny Kaye's story of the Little Fiddle.

And our favourite conductor - Bugs Bunny

Here's something funny to check out over the holidays - singing dogs.

2015 Term 3, Week 9: Who were the best women guitarists?

We have learnt about stringed instruments in the orchestra, and learnt about guitars and famous acoustic and classical guitarists. So far all the guitarists we've learnt about have been men, but did you know that some of the most influential guitarists have been women?  When you  see and hear them playing you may think that they sound like a male guitarist you have seen and heard, but did you know that some of the most famous singers and guitarists were influenced by these women - who did this music first?

Because some of these videos and recordings are so old, the quality of the picture and sound is fairly poor - by our expectations today - but I'm sure you will enjoy them, just the same.

 

Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing Up Above My Head   
See "Songs We Sing" for lyrics.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She was most popular in the 1930s and 1940s but has influenced a lot of the most famous guitarists since then - including Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, and Johnny Cash, Meatloaf, Tina Turner and Little Richard.

She was a gospel singer first and included rock guitar accompaniment. She has been called “the original soul sister” and “the godmother of rock and roll”. Her music was a mix (or “cross-over” ) of pop, gospel, blues and rock and roll.

She was born Rosetta Nubin in 1915 in Arkansas, USA. Her parents were cotton pickers and her father was also a singer. Tharpe's mother was a singer, mandolin player, evangelist and preacher in a church which encouraged music and dancing in praise and allowed women to preach. Tharpe began singing and playing the guitar from the age of four and joined her mother singing in a travelling band.

She married a preacher called Thomas Thorpe, and changed her stage name to Sister Rosetta Tharpe after the marriage ended.

In 1931 Tharpe became a successful recording artist, with many songs recorded over the next years. She continued to perform at concerts and night clubs and many of her church-going gospel fans were quite shocked when she performed with blues and jazz musicians and dancers. People were not used to seeing women guitarists then either.

She travelled round Europe and Britain and one of her most unusual concerts was a concert at an old train station - in the rain - with her on one side of the tracks and the audience on the other.

1n 1970 she had a stroke and then she had a leg amputated because of diabetes. Sister Rosetta Tharpe died in 1973 after another stroke and was buried in Philadelphia. In 2007 she was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame and in 2008 a concert was held to raise funds for a gravestone for her grave.

A very short video talking about how Elvis Presley and other legendary musicians were influenced by  Sister Rosetta Tharpe 

This week's tongue twister: Selfish Shellfish

Check out the way some of the most famous composers drew treble clefs (above).

Scroll down to last week's blog for some notation games.

 Follow this link to learn about notation - the names of the notes we use in music. 

Here's another way to learn notes on the space spell FACE.  
Here's some mnemonics  to help learn the  notes on the lines. 

Here's  fun song about the treble clef, in the style of a '50s rock ballad.  

This week's unusual use of a guitar . . .

2015 Term 3, Week 8: Guitarist John Williams

                       

This is John Williams playing Cavatina.

John Williams was born in 1941 in Australia. He is one of the most accomplished classical guitarists in the world and is well known for playing in ensembles as well as solo performances. John’s father was from England and his mother was Australian. Her father was an Australian-born Chinese and he was a very well-known lawyer in Melbourne.

John’s father, Len Williams, played jazz and classical guitar and gave John his first guitar when John was four years old. The family returned to England in the early 1950s and Len started up a guitar school. Later on, Len set up a monkey sanctuary in Cornwall and was as well known for that as he was for his music school.

John Williams went to music schools and academies in England and Italy, and studied piano at the Royal College of Music in London - because there was no guitar department. When he graduated from there, he was offered the job of creating the first guitar department at the Royal College of Music in London.

He started playing concerts and had immediate success, being recognised as “a prince of the guitar”. He performed in many countries around the world and recorded many albums of classical music - at a time when most people associated guitarists with pop and rock music.

As well as being known for his classical guitar playing, John Williams has also played in a group called Sky, playing a mix of rock, classical and jazz music. He even played with Pete Townshend of The Who and has composed and arranged music.

He is possibly most well known for playing Cavatina (composed by Stanley Myers), which became the theme for the movie The Deer Hunter (1978).

This is Sky playing an arrangement of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. John Williams is playing the acoustic guitar.

This is a video of John Williams at the BBC Proms in 2005 performing with an orchestra. 

This week's tongue twister:

Is this a giant rat or a miniature guitar?

 In this game you can make words by dragging the note names FACE and EGBDF to under each note on the staff. 

Note names

 Here's a game where you can name notes on a staff. It has 100 notes in each round, so be prepared for a long game.  It has a range of very easy (where we are starting) to very advanced. You can adjust the speed too.

Speed note reading tutor

Here's this week's unusual use of a guitar. Can you work out what parts are used where?

Juniors: 

Here's a Muppet video about a turtle. The turtle in our poem?  

2015 Term 3, Week 7: Guitarist Django Reinhardt

 This is Django Reinhardt performing live with Stephane Grapelli and the Quintette du Hot Club. 

Django Reinhardt is considered to be one of the world’s all-time greatest guitarists. 

He was born in 1910 in Belgium   His parents were  French gypsies and he grew up in gypsy camps near Paris, in France.  His father was a musician and entertainer, and his mother was a dancer.  His real name was Jean  but he was called Django which means “I awake” in the Romani language of his parents.  

When he was young, he learnt to play the violin and an instrument which was a cross between a banjo and a guitar.  He mostly taught himself  to play by copying other musicians, and he never learnt to read or write music.  By the time he was 13 years old,  he was able to make a living playing  music.   He had very little school education and  only learnt the basics of reading and writing when he was an adult.

A young Django Reinhardt - before his fingers were damaged.

He  played popular French music and then became interested in American jazz music and he was becoming a very promising musician in the Paris  club scene in  the mid 1920s. 

In 1928 he suffered serious burns in a fire in his caravan and he severely damaged the fourth and fifth fingers on his left hand and could no longer  use them to press on the guitar strings.  He continued to play the guitar using on his index finger, middle finger and thumb for guitar solos.  (Watch the video to see how he did it.)

Famous French singer Edith Piaf looks at Django's damaged hand.

Can you see how his fingers and hand were damaged in the fire?

He developed a new style of  jazz guitar technique - sometimes called ‘hot’ jazz or gypsy swing. Django formed a band with another French musician called Stéphane Grappelli who played the violin.  They were called  the Quintette du Hot Club de France and were considered to be one of the most original jazz bands of all time.  

Reinhardt died in France in 1953 from a massive stroke. He was aged 43. 

Here's another video of the Quintette du Hot Club playing J'attendrai.   What do you notice about the guitars?

This is a short video about the death of Django and his funeral. It has some interesting information about gypsy customs and culture. 

Follow this link to learn about notation - the names of the notes we use in music. 

Follow this link to the website for this image.

 Dances:Seniors
Surfin' USA  (Beachboys)

Juniors 
I'm Gonna Catch You!

This week's tongue twister:

Mystery Picture: Do you know what this is? 

Scroll down to the end of the post to find out. 

 

This week's unusual guitar. 

This guitar boat was made in Australia  for this music video by Josh Pyke, called Make You Happy .

Mystery picture answer: 
It's the inside of a violin. Can you see the sound holes (f-shaped holes)? 

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? 

2015 Term 3, Week 5: Remember Red Nose Day this Friday

 This Friday, 21st of August is Red Nose Day to raise funds for Cure Kids. You can find out more about Red Nose Day here.  At our school we are having a mufti day to raise funds for Red Nose Day.

New Dances for this week: 
(Juniors) 
ABC by the Jackson 5 
Jump Up  

(Seniors) 

The Hustle   A real '70s disco dance.
Shout!  How not to behave in the library? 


This week's tongue twister: Unique New York  - and try saying it with a New Zealand accent (Nyoo = New)

Unique New York

We all know the correct names for these instruments now. 

 And there's one more - called an octobass. They are very rare - and very big!  Have a look at this movie clip to see how much bigger it is than a double bass! 

Compare the size of the octobass with the violin.

And while we are still learning about strings: 

David Garrett, a German violinist, holds the Guinness world record for being the fastest violin player.  Here he is in 2009  playing Flight of the Bumble Bee.  

David Garrett

The Flight of the Bumblebee?

This group of musicians is called Well-Strung. They sing and they play strings, and in this video they have done a "mash-up"  of a very old piece of music with a very new piece.  Do you recognise both of them? 

Well Strung

 This week week we are returning to the glockenspiel to learn to play more music. 

First, let's have a look at the  glockenspiel keys. 

glockenspiel keys

  Look at the length of the keys. The longer the key the higher or lower the sound?  How does that compare to the sound of a stringed instrument and the length of the strings? 

Piano and electric keyboard keys, and notes on a stave.

What is the same between the glockenspiel and the piano keys? 
What is different?

Look for the note  names on the keys of your glockenspiel.  

You can find out more about how to play a glockenspiel here.
 

Learn how to hold the mallet correctly first.

Let's start with some really easy songs, just using the names of the notes.

Can you sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star while you play it?

Can you work out the names for each of these notes?

Here's a much harder one for those of you who can already read music. You can play - or sing - this as a round.

We are still working on the song Islands with lyrics and sign language.  

Follow this link for ukulele chords and lyrics for Islands.  We will use the ukulele chords for  glockenspiel accompaniment as well.