Twinkle Arrangement

Here is a very simple two-part arrangement of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" that I used with my beginning orchestra last year.  Each instrument has a turn playing melody and harmony for a verse.  I've written the Part I and Part II for all four instruments, so you can mix and match instrumentation as you like.  I had cellos and basses play Part I (where they get melody on Verse 1) and violins and violas on Part II (where they get melody on Verse 2).  I double-sided the parts so everyone got a Part I and Part II for their instrument, but I starred the side they'd be learning.  The form is Introduction, Verse 1, Interlude, Verse 2, and Coda.  I used just a bit of Alpha notation where I thought it might be helpful.

I wasn't sure what my students would think of learning and performing this piece, if they thought they were too old to be playing "Twinkle," but they ended up really enjoying it.  I think that they liked that it was a familiar melody to them that they also knew the audience would recognize and that they liked how it sounded with both melody and harmony together.  The harmony part is very simple--pretty much either a third away from the melody using D string notes or just open strings so students were quite successful at being able to learn this quickly and confidently.  There were also opportunities to have to count measures of rests.

Because everyone gets to play both the melody and harmony (and the harmony is basically the same for all instruments), it was easy to rehearse in full orchestra.  I could have everyone practice the melody together (starting on whichever verse) or everyone practice the harmony together (starting on the other verse) or as written (everyone starting on the same measure number).

I did play along on the piano to fill out the harmony a bit and to provide more rhythmic support.  The piano arrangement below is pretty close to what I played--feel free to improvise something else too!

I'm planning to put this into my rotation of a first "full orchestra" piece--along with my arrangement of "Ode to Joy" and Michael Allen's arrangement of "New World Symphony Theme."

• Twinkle parts
• Twinkle parts with links to audio files (WAV files) to preview or for students to play along with to practice
• Score 
• Piano part (with basic score)

Enjoy!

C/E String Notes

 

Orchestra Expressions gets to the C and E string notes pretty late in Book 1, and I like to introduce them to first-year players in the spring, as we are preparing for our spring concert.  I created a double-sided sheet where students learn about half steps and whole steps to figure out the names of the notes on their newest string on the front and then the back side is music that uses these new notes.

I'll have a student read a paragraph out loud, and then we'll go back dissect it together, pointing to the notes on the keyboard poster to figure out the notes on the E or C string one by one and get them written down.  It is fun to see students make predictions about what the letter names or sharps will be, and then I encourage them to see if their guesses are correct as we work through the sheet together.  Many will independently fill in the corresponding bubbles on their fingering chart that's taped in their folder as we go through this sheet too.  Otherwise we do that together the following week as a quick review.

Ideally each student in the small group is on the same instrument, but this tends to be the time of year when I have to do combined small groups or creative scheduling due to testing or field trips so I'll have multiple instruments in a group.  When this happens, I have to be careful to keep the pace moving so we can get through all the notes/fingerings but not to go so fast that I am losing/confusing students--this can be a tricky lesson for some!  It can also be tricky to play these pieces together since they are in different keys depending on the instrument/string--I'll use my judgement in the moment if it makes more sense to have the E string instruments play while C string instruments air-bow or say finger numbers or clap/count or just listen and then switch or to just have everyone play the parallel 5ths together.  In full orchestra, we'll do "show and tell" with one of the pieces to avoid the parallel 5ths :)

In the both the Word document and PDF below, I've included three different versions of the sheet music--one with regular notation, one with a few Alpha notes at the beginning of each piece, and one with all Alpha notes.

C/E string notes worksheet/repertoire

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Contents:

1. C/E Pentascale and Arpeggio
2. Mattachins (Sword Dance)
3. Barcarolle
4. Funga Alafia

Image of labeled keyboard (png)

Feel free to use and update as you like!

Sea Shanty Arrangement

Here is an arrangement of "Drunken Sailor" I wrote for combined first- and second-year orchestra students--renamed "Variations on a Sea Shanty."  The version for beginners is mostly just open D and first finger E (with a few open As and first finger Bs later on), all in unison.  It has a variation with dotted quarter/eighth notes, which I taught more by ear.  The intermediate version for second-year orchestra students is all D and A string notes including high E, so cellos get to do a little shifting.  (Looking back at the bass part now, I might rewrite m. 7, 8 and the first note of m. 9 and similar places down an octave to give basses the option not to shift up to high E).  This second-year intermediate version includes the hooked bowing, a few slurs for violin/viola, and double stops for all instruments but the basses.  The theme is the melody in unison, and then violins/violas and cellos/basses are each featured in two variations.

Students enjoyed this melody and recognizing similarities and differences between each of the variations.  They also learned the lyrics from Bonnie Greene's Blue Book:

What do you do with a bow and fiddle...early in the morning?

Saw, saw away I tell you...early in the morning!

Sheet music (all PDFs):

• Beginning orchestra parts
• Intermediate orchestra parts
• Score (Violin I represents the beginning orchestra parts, Violin II is from the intermediate version)

Audio (WAV files) to preview or for students to play along with to practice:

• Sea Shanty audio files (Google Doc)

Again, I like to use clip art instead of labeling parts "beginning" and "intermediate" or by grade level, so you'll see matching images within the beginning and intermediate parts and on the score.

Enjoy!  I'd love to hear if you end up trying out this arrangement with your students!

Everybody Loves Saturday Night Arrangement

Here's a sort of mix-and-match arrangement of "Everybody Loves Saturday Night," from Nigeria.  There are two versions in this arrangement, one for beginners and one for second-year orchestra students.  Each version has its own melody and harmony.  The beginner version has an all open-string harmony with a simplified melody with just D string notes, and the advanced version is mostly D string notes with a few G string notes (including a C# on the G string).  Students did really well learning the syncopated bits after hearing the lyrics sung.  We also would stomp our feet on the eighth rest in practice.

My students studied this piece in the fall of 2020, when we couldn't have full orchestra or in-person concerts.  My colleague and I ended up recording ourselves individually playing the different parts using the Acapella App and then added pictures of our students to create an "Orchestra At-Home Winter Concert" play-along video, which we also used for our virtual version of String Fest that year.  That being said, this is a super flexible arrangement--you could play through the piece twice and assign or give choice to who plays which parts when. 

Here's a link to some history of the song from Art Podell and results of research about its origins from Deanna deCampos (which shares that the song is actually from Ghana from at least 1932 rather than from Nigeria in the 1950s), as well as a website with translations to more languages than I included (and even more languages here).

Sheet music (Alpha notation included at the end of each document):

• Beginning parts (PDF) (melody/open-string harmony)
• Beginning parts (Word document)
• Advanced parts (PDF) (melody/harmony)
• Advanced parts (Word document)

Sheet music with links to audio files (WAV files) to preview or for students to play along with to practice:

• Beginning parts with audio files (PDF) 
• Beginning parts with audio files (Word document)
• Advanced parts with audio files (PDF)
• Advanced parts with audio files (Word document)

Enjoy!

Ode to Joy Arrangement

Here is a very simple arrangement of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" that I used with my beginning orchestra last year.  Each instrument has a turn playing melody and harmony.  After the short introduction, violas and cellos begin on the melody together, while the violins and basses begin on the harmony together.  The violas even get a solo measure in the introduction and ending!  Every rest in this piece is a bow lift, so it's good practice for getting bows to match direction :)

The beginners were excited to have their first taste of playing a "real" full orchestra piece, where there are actual melody and harmony parts going on at the same time, and they enjoyed playing a piece that they recognized.  I did play along on piano to provide some fuller harmonies but didn't write out a part for myself.  Please let me know if you'd like me to write out a piano part for this! Update--see below for a notated piano part!

We watched parts of this Ode to Joy flash mob on Youtube too.

• Ode to Joy parts
• Ode to Joy parts with Alpha notation
• Score
• Audio files

• Updated Ode to Joy with fewer bow lifts--parts/score/Alpha parts
• Score with piano part
• Piano part (would work with either version)

Enjoy!

Rounds by Ear

 As we near the end of the school year, I like to teach a round by ear to the second-year students.  Then in our final full orchestra rehearsals of the year, after the spring concert is over, we can play a two- or three-part round without the use of sheet music.  The orchestra has been invited to play at the end-of-the-year assembly in recent years, and everyone lined up in the front of the gym and performed one of these rounds first in unison and then in parts.  It was easy setup because I only needed chairs for the cellists--no stands required :)

Each of these are in the key of C Major, as that is the key we're focusing on during this time of the year, but the rounds could easily be transposed to the key of your choice.  Students do get the sheet music eventually, but ideally they don't need it by then; it's just for reference.  The sheet music documents include Alpha note versions at the end.

Music Alone Shall Live

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Oh, How Lovely Is the Evening

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Lachen

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Enjoy!

D String Notes Packet--Audio Files

In keeping with my theme of updating supplements to include audio files, here are the audio files for the packet of music that uses notes on the D string.

• Audio files

And here's the link to the original post about this packet of music.

Updated Winter Packets (plus audio files)

I often have one or two students who enter fifth grade already having studied a string instrument privately for a couple of years.  I have the flexibility to add them to sixth grade orchestra as fifth graders, which better meets their needs.  However, this means that those students take sixth grade orchestra twice.  Concert repertoire changes every year, more or less, but the packets of additional repertoire hasn't always.  This year I figured it was time to switch up the winter packet for the students in the second-year orchestra.  I've also been on a kick with creating audio files in Finale so students can play along with accompaniment at home, so I did that to these too.  Each piece has audio files in at least three different tempos.  The packet for first-year string players is the same as before; I've just added audio files.


Winter packet (for first-year string players):

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Contents:

1. Jolly Old Saint Nicholas
2. Good King Wenceslas
3. Up on the Housetop
4. Overture to The Nutcracker
5. Carol of the Bells
6. Here We Come A-Caroling

Winter packet--revised version (for second-year string players):

• Word document
• PDF
• Audio files

Tenor clef version of winter packet--revised version (for second-year string players):

• Word document
• PDF

Contents: 

1. Jolly Old Saint Nicholas (duet)
2. God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen (duet)
3. Sivivon Sov Sov Sov (A two-part round)
4. Winter Is Coming (A three-part round)
5. Over the River and Through the Wood
6. Auld Lang Syne
7. "March" from The Nutcracker
8. Troika
9. Carol of the Bells

Winter packet--original version (for second-year string players)


Enjoy!