Music Together

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Our dance this week was "Bounce Me Brother With A Solid Four." Check out this version by the Andrew's Sisters and dance along at home!

March and play along with Mickey Mouse!

Did you know that there are guitar chords in the back of your Music Together book?  If you have a guitar at home try playing Me, You, We, Trot Old Joe, and French Folk Song.  They are fun, easy songs to learn and your kids will love playing along with you!

The lullaby we sang this week was to the tune of "My Lady Wind."  You can find the lyrics we sang in your songbook at the bottom of the page.
My Lady Wind seems to be a very calming song.  It's slow tempo gives the singer plenty of time to take a big breath before each phrase.  When you pause to breathe before singing it it also gives you time to audiate (or hear in your head) what you are about to sing.  Taking this purposeful breath helps your child learn to audiate, which is an important step in their musical development, while helping clam them at the same time.




DANCE!

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Below are some fun songs and children's stories about dancing you can enjoy at home this Summer.

When you are dancing or playing instruments at home remember to play around with different beats (Macrobeat or the big beats, the steady beat, and the microbeat or little subdivided beat that your child will find easily).
"Repeating the melody while changing the rhythmic movement helps everyone learn the music more deeply because it involves more neurological pathways and more parts of the body."

"How Can You Dance" by Rick Walton and Ana Lopez-Escriva is a fun book that compares dance moves to animals and nature.  The book has a great rhythm to it and encourages children to try/create the dance moves themselves!  










"Color Dance" by Ann Jonas is a fun book that teaches primary colors and what colors they make when you mix them.  This is a fantastic book to go along with the song "Me, You, We" from the Summer Music Together Collection.  Sing one color for the first, another one for the second, and the color those make when they are mixed together for the last verse which is sung up a third from the first two verses.








Click the YouTube links below for some great songs to add to your collection of dance and play along songs. 

Malambo from Estancia by Alberto Ginastera



Waltz from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky



Bounce Me Brother With A Solid Four



Obla Di Obla Da by the Beatles

Favorite Classical Play Along and Dance Songs

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Here are some of my favorite Classical Play Along Songs and Dances that we use in class but are not part of the Music Together collection.  This post is a work in progress so check back for more songs.  I will add other categories of play along and dance songs used in class soon.

For the YouTube links you can click directly on the picture to play the music at home.  The YouTube links are typically similar to the version of the song we listened to in class, but may not be exactly the same.  If you want to buy the MP3 so you can put it in your playlist or burn your own CD click on the smaller Amazon links.  I have been very happy with Amazon music downloads and you can now save your music to their cloud player so it is never lost even if your computer crashes.

Most of the pieces listed below are from the CD "100 Of Classical Music's Greatest Moments."  The album is a great deal for 100 great classical songs.













The Can Can by Jacques Offenbach
Our dance to this song involved tippy toeing around the room at the beginning.  When the dancers start singing in the video we did the classic leg kicks followed by wiggling at the end of each phrase.  When the music returns to the soft bouncy music being played by the orchestra we went back to tippy toeing again.  We typically ended the piece with some combination of jumping and wiggling!  This is a fantastic song for dancing and playing instruments with.
















William Tell Overture - Finale by Gioachino Rossini
We used this song as a play along to go along with the Music Together version we sang in class.  This song can also be fun to dance or move around like horses to.















The Toreador's Song from the opera Carmen by George Bizet
We used this song as a play along in class.  It has some fantastic musical contrasts to listen to (loud/soft, legato/staccato, fast slow).















Sabre Dance by Aram Khachaturian
This piece was used as a play along in class.  It is a fun energy filled piece of music!














Russian Sailors Dance by Reinhold Gliere
We used this piece as a dance in class.  I asked you to listen for how the music kept changing and change your movements to match.  Each time the melody repeats it is presented differently.  We used big and little movement, heavy and light movements, fast and slow movements, and many others.  This is a great game to play with your older children to see if they can identify musical contrasts.  Also a fun play along song!















Waltz Masquerade by Aram Khachaturian
We danced to this waltz in class.  It is great for holding your child and dancing around the room.  Help your child feel the strong down beats while dancing or playing along.














Radetzky March by Johann Strauss
This is a great play along song.  The Vienna Philharmonic plays this song every year on New Years.  If you have never watched the the Vienna Philharmonic I highly recommend it!  Watch the video below and see if you can clap along at the correct times when the conductor turns to the audience.

Songs We Sang at The Reunion

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Here is some of the music we sang for for the Orff-Schulwerk reunion.  I hope you find something helpful here if you teach preschool music!  Recordings of Hoe-Down (horse song), Doop-Doo-Dee-Doop (free dance with scarves), Can-Can (great free dance song like Hoe-Down), and many others are on here so you can just click on them in the blog and hear them in your classroom or at home.
   




All Around The Kitchen


She Sells Sea Shells

Learning 9/8 Time Signature Isn't So Hard To Do

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For those of you who are registered to start the spring session of Music Together in Fort Mill (Starting Thursday, March 25 at 9:30, there's still time to register!) we will be doing a piece in the Tambourine Collection that goes:

12   34  56  789
Hip hip hip hippity
12   34   56   789
Hap hap hap happity
12    34   56  789
Hop hop hop hoppity
123       146       789
Hippity, happity, hoppity, clap, clap.

It is in 9/8 time signature which means it's a rhythm that most of our ears are not used to hearing. While this all may seem difficult to us adults, children don't know that. If you want to get a head start and hear what the rhythm sounds like listen to Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo Al A Turk. Whether you are in the Music Together class or not this is a great song to listen to.







Blue Rondo à la Turk

Favorite Dance and Play Along Songs

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One of my favorite play along songs is Buggy Ride played by Wynton Marsalis. Unfortunately I can't put the version I like from YouTube on here but if you click on the title it will link you to it.  It's a fun jazz song from the Charlie Brown soundtrack.  Have fun listening for jazz band instruments, (such as the saxophone, trumpet, trombone, bass, drums, and piano), playing along with instruments, and dancing.

Hoe-Down by Aaron Copland is another song I love to use with little ones.  We've danced to this song in almost every class I've taught.  Have fun pretending like you're cowboys out West riding your horses while listening to the orchestra play.  Listen for the horses to go fast, slow, jump, fall asleep, and go again!




More favorite songs to come soon....

Arirang

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For those of you who took the Music Together Drums Collection, here are some great YouTube videos of Arirang, a traditional Korean folk song.

The first is of the New York Philharmonic playing Arirang.  Listen for the melody that we sang in class and pick out the instruments you see with your children.



The next video is of someone ice skating to Arirang.  This is fun to watch and may give you some good movement ideas.  Pretend like you are ice skating and use scarves while you dance like we did in class.



The last video is of a family singing the song together.  The grandparents are very old, and grandpa doesn't have teeth, but they still sing together.  It is always wonderful to see a family singing a traditional song together.



The Montessori students will be studying Asia soon.  We will sing Arirang in class, and discuss the difference in tonality between American folk songs and Asian folk songs.  Your children have studied the instruments families a little bit in class.  See if they can identify instruments in the orchestra while watching the New York Philharmonic play Arirang (in the above video).  If you need some help identifying the instruments and what families they belong in check out sfskids.org.  This is the San Fransisco Symphonies kids website and is a wonderful place to play.  I used this website when I was teaching public school to help the students learn their instruments and musical concepts.