Supplement: D Major Sheet

At the beginning of the year for second-year students, I like to start with this sheet of pieces in D Major for review.  We don't get to all the pieces together in class, but it's a nice supplement for those that want extra music at home.  The D Major scale is provided as a reference on the the top of the page.  "Hallelujah" is a round that we spend quite a bit of time on during the first weeks of school.  We spot the D Major scale hiding in the second line and work on the skips in the first line.  Eventually students will get an opportunity to lead their group for the round by standing in front of the orchestra, taking a breath to start off their group, and playing along.  Over the years, I've switched out pieces here and there, so I have a couple versions of this D Major sheet.

Contents of Version 1:

• D Major scale
• Hallelujah!
• A Mountain View
• Do, Re, Mi, Fa
• Where is John?
• Play from "For Children"

D Major Version 1 (Word document)
D Major Version 1 (PDF)

Contents of Version 2:

• D Major scale
• Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow
• Hallelujah!
• Do, Re, Mi, Fa
• Where is John?
• Play from "For Children"

D Major Version 2 (Word document)
D Major Version 2 (PDF)

Contents of Version 3 (also includes a version at the end with Alpha notation):

• D Major Scale
• Do, Re, Mi, Fa
• A Mountain View
• Gopala
• Shortnin' Bread
• Sea Shanty
• Hallelujah!

D Major Version 3 (Word document)
D Major Version 3 (PDF)

 Enjoy!

Together We Will SCALE New Heights! Bulletin Board

With the new school year quickly approaching, I created a bulletin board that is welcoming, punny, and music-theory based: "Together we will SCALE new heights!"

I used the same color scheme for the solfege and scales that I use in the classroom, just on a smaller scale (2-inch squares for the letter names).  Thanks to my mom for letting me use her Cricut to cut out the letters, and then here are the key signatures and images of the hand symbols.  These are the three scales we focus on in beginning orchestra as well as the first scale learned in band.

Happy school year everyone!

Jupiter Arrangement

My students are learning an arrangement of "Jupiter" from The Planets by Gustav Holst, but I wasn't pleased with several aspects of it, so I arranged it myself for the next time I teach this piece.  This arrangement includes just the hymn part of "Jupiter," no introduction, and violins/violas have the melody while the cellos/basses have the harmony.  It's transposed to G Major, so low second fingers are needed, as well as E string notes for the violin (I put viola down an octave in those spots).  There are a few slurs for the upper strings and a few hooked bowings for the lower strings.  I did switch the original dotted eighths/sixteenths to even eighth notes, made the harmony part all arco instead of pizz., then arco, and I added some bow lifts that would not be in the original melody just to help students who might need an extra spot to regroup in case they get lost.

Sheet music (all PDFs):

• Jupiter score
• Jupiter parts

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

•  Jupiter score

Selected YouTube links:

• Chicago Symphony Orchestra
• BBC Orchestra with 2-piano score to follow along with
• National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain

Enjoy!

 

Books of Compositions

When my school started a section in the library dedicated to student writing, I made up two binders of student compositions from my first year of teaching up to the present.  Each time students write a new composition, I make sure to print an extra copy to add to the binder.  Now current (and future) orchestra members can check out what current (and past) students have written.

Women Wow the Music World! Bulletin Board

March is Women's History Month, and this year I wanted to create a bulletin board highlighting female musicians throughout history.  Thanks to my mom for coming up with the title: "Women Wow the Music World!"(and for cutting out and mailing me the letters)!

As with some previous bulletin boards (see the post "Celebrate Music with these Great Americans!" for Black History Month), I printed out the "condensed" file, trimmed and laminated each half sheet, and then attached them to a folded piece of colored paper.  If you'd rather save some steps, just print out the "double sided" file, fold each page in half, and you're ready to staple them to the bulletin board!

For each musician, I included her name and picture on the front and then her name, dates, country, instrument, profession, genre, and one famous title when you lift up the flap.

Here are the 24 musicians included (feel free to add your own):

• Martha Argerich
• Amy Beach
• Hildegard von Bingen
• Nadia Boulanger
• Regina Carter
• Cécile Chaminade
• Sarah Chang
• Sandra Dackow
• Jacqueline du Pre
• Ella Fitzgerald
• Aretha Franklin
• Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
• Jennifer Higdon
• Billie Holiday
• Alma Schindler Mahler
• Midori
• Soon Hee Newbold
• Florence Beatrice Price
• Clara Schumann
• Ruth Crawford Seeger
• Anoushka Shankar
• Bessie Smith
• Esperanza Spalding
• Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Women Wow the Music World!--heading

• Google doc

Names, pictures, and trivia (condensed)

• Word document
• PDF

Names, pictures, and trivia (print double sided)

• Word document
• PDF

Enjoy!

Dr. Seuss Door Decorations

This year my school is doing a whole Dr. Seuss week, complete with door decorations inspired by different Dr. Seuss books.  My book was The Foot Book, and what better way to decorate the door of the band/orchestra room than by adding feet to instruments?  I colored and cut out photocopies of feet from the book and added them to laminated pictures of instruments that I already had from an earlier bulletin board, and voila!  I think I like the feet on the trumpet and bass the best :)

Composer Trivia Bulletin Board

One thing that I like about our method book, "Orchestra Expressions," Book 1, is that it highlights several composers including Bach, Beethoven, Bizet, Copland, Strauss, Jr. and more.  The featured composers each have a portion of a page with their portrait, a short bio, a listening map for a specific composition, and a timeline.  The CD that comes with the book also has a recording of that specific composition for each composer; students are encouraged to listen to that CD track while doing various warmups.

Anyway, I took five of the composers and came up with a bit of trivia for each.  I put the fun fact on the front of a folded sheet of paper and the corresponding composer's name on the inside.  This way, it's an interactive bulletin board--students can flip up the flap to see if they guessed the correct composer!

Here are the pdfs of the text and pictures.  I laminated each bit before taping it onto the colored paper so they would last longer.  I've also included some pdfs of the same trivia written as a word balloon coming out of the mouth of each composer. Enjoy!

• Composer portraits (pdf)
• Composer trivia (pdf) 
• Trivia with word balloons (pdf)
• Great job! plus trivia word balloons (pdf)

William Tell Overture Arrangement

For this year's district-wide String Fest, I arranged Rossini's "William Tell Overture" for beginning orchestra.  There are two versions for the very beginners--one is a mostly open string harmony part with a few first finger Es and Bs, and the second is more melodic part that sticks mostly to D string notes.  The arrangement for second year players is very balanced--everyone gets the melody at some point!  Instead of writing repeat signs for repeated material, I wrote it out so violins get the melody the first time and violas/cellos/basses get the melody the second time.  This is written in G Major (so some low 2s) with no slurs (but a few tricky double down-bows in the intermediate arrangement that take some practice).

Orchestra members really enjoyed learning a "real" piece that they had heard before and seen YouTube recordings of professional orchestras playing.  While some students were initially put off by its length (two pages instead of one for the intermediate version), they quickly realized there's a lot of repetition and felt a sense of accomplishment as the orchestra learned each section.


Sheet music (all PDFs):

• Beginning orchestra score and parts
• Intermediate orchestra score and parts

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

• Intermediate arrangement audio file

Intermediate melody (first 8 measures only), which I used when introducing the piece:

• PDF sheet music of melody
• Word document of melody

Selected YouTube links:

• Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra
• Animated graphical score

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 scores.