Overture - Term 3 2009

A journal for music educators in Queensland state schools

Education Queensland

Introduction Welcome to the 2010 edition of Opus. After some time in abeyance we have decided to revive Opus as a journal for music teachers in Queensland state schools. Opus is aimed at classroom primary and secondary music teachers and instrumental music teachers, as well as teachers taking choirs, bands and ensembles in our schools. Through Opus we aim to promote professional discussion, share stories and resources, and provide a link for isolated teachers of music in our schools. Opus is produced by the Metropolitan Region Music Resource Centre. We are seeking articles for the next edition. Please email your suggestions to musicrc@eq.edu.au Index Choral Repertoire Linda Weatherhead

Professional Associations

What’s Happening in My Classroom Stella Rotar Amanda Glassop

Noise and Hearing

Bronwyn Goopy

String size Leone McNaught Brass tuning Vincent Fryer

Intro

News & Events Maryborough? AUSTA?

Specialist Focus

Woodwind Karen Hicks – Double Reeds program

Brass Bill Barker – Brass Ensembles

Percussion Jeff Jarrott – Djembe drumming

Strings Lisa Stevenson – celtic ensembles

Choral Kerry?

Conducting ?

What’s Happening in My Classroom

Primary Megan Grimmer – KG?

Secondary ?

Instrumental ?

Resources

Reviews

Flagship Programs

MOST Annie

Choral Fanfare Kerry

Camps BBMW?

Handy Hints Shaun?

Toolbox

Smartmusic – A wonderful tool.

Bruce Eddiehausen, Warwick District

Smartmusic is a tool that is useful to both teachers and students. It is helpful to collect evidence and keep track of student progress. Students can use the program as a home tutor and can self pace through each unit as they record themselves and email activities that they have been set by the teacher. Downloading. Students download a copy of Smartmusic over the internet and pay $36 US to access the program for 12 months. They can then access over 17 method books, more than 9000 scale exercises, solos for all levels and all instruments and thousands of band arrangements that they can rehearse on the computer screen. There are several excellent features that help students with their home practice. They can touch a note and it will give the student the fingering for that note, they can adjust the tempo of anything that they download and they can record themselves and email the recordings to anyone who wants to hear them. All they need is an external microphone and a computer that has the internet. Set work. Each unit that the students are working through can be split into several different elements that the students can practice and record.

Method Book - I use the Standard of Excellence and I set several of the medal songs for students to record. If the songs are too fast, they can slow them down before they finally record them. They also have the option of having accompaniment or just the melody line.

Tuner – A built in tuner gives students a chance to learn to play long notes until they can play them in tune. This is very helpful for students to learn posture and embouchure that results in tuneful playing. Scales can be recorded using the tuner.

Scales – There are a huge range of scale exercises for students to work through and master. This has to be the best way to get students playing their scales.

Ear training – Simple patterns are played that students listen to and copy. This eads to increasingly complex activities for students to master.

Singing – Students can record their voice as they sing either rhythms or melody to songs from the method book. This gives me another chance to build a portfolio of student progress in reading and rhythm work.

Solos – Smartmusic has a huge range of solos that can be downloaded, rehearsed and recorded.

Band arrangements – If you match the band arrangement that you are working on at school with those on Smartmusic, they can be downloaded and practiced at home. When students have learned their part they can email you the recording.

Student progress One of the biggest advantages of using Smartmusic is that students can progress through the book at their own pace and send you the evidence that they have actually completed the work at home.

To make things a little easier, I have set up a special email account for students to send through their recordings and I have folders for all students to store their work. A spreadsheet or checklist for each student keeps track of all assessment tasks that they have completed. Into the future. Not only is this technology highly motivating to students but it is opening up many new teaching ideas. I have only just begun to explore the use of Smartmusic on the interactive white boards and I am looking forward to using this technology in my band rehearsals. It is also a great way to preview new music before you buy it. You can download all of the parts that you need to check for difficulty level and hear the recording of the piece. Next year I am looking to start to select music for my bands that are all on Smartmusic so that students can use it as a practice tool for band. Bruce Eddiehausen Warwick District

What’s Happening in Our Classroom

At Kelvin Grove State College Junior School, we are fortunate to have an extremely well-resourced Classroom Music program. These resources grew and developed with the assistance of program development funds the principal had discretionary access to for a period of approximately 5 years. The most valuable adjunct to the resources was the addition of significant, music-specific teacher aide time. The music teacher aide maintains all equipment; including IT, frequently accompanies (on guitar), and works alongside all classes to help facilitate withdrawal group activities and support instruction on a variety of levels. There are two classroom teachers who share the classes across the P-5 campus. One teacher takes P–2, the other Yrs 3-5 plus extra-curricular. As well as singing, our students have the opportunity to play guitars – inc. electrics and bass, recorders, ukuleles, marimbas and drum kit. Our aim has always been to involve as many students as possible in active music making. In order to attempt to achieve this we strive to holistically support David J. Elliott’s idea that:

....music making and listening are unique sources of the most important kinds of knowing that human beings can gain. (Elliott 1995).

Our primary classroom goals are to encompass the concept of how Music Matters by providing participation opportunities for all students through the ‘layers’ of what makes a song or a piece of music work (Elliott 1995). Because the number of students who possess a musical intelligence is also yet to be scientifically proven, it remains fundamental to our classroom practices to assume that all students need to have permission to discover just how musically intelligent they are (Gardiner 1984). Central to the operation of our classroom program is the use of a wide variety of songs as initial stimuli. These songs come from the students as well as the teachers and aide, and can be anything that anyone has experienced which is appropriate for use in a classroom. We very much enjoy working from the premise that: ......the songs that make the whole world sing...... are many and can present themselves at any time! Once we identify a song that someone has a particular emotional connection with it can quickly become the learning tool through which the elements are covered. This is done by a simple deconstruction of the song to identify things like; key, harmonic structure, lyric content, melodic appeal etc. One surprising recent example is: Numb by Linkin Park

At the beginning of this year it became evident that our Yr 5 cohort (our seniors) had many students interested in the keyboard (piano). This was in contrast to the last couple of years where the emphasis had been primarily guitar-based. In week 2 as we were exploring where we might go and what some of the new songs were, one rather quiet student came to us at the end of the lesson and said that he’d been trying to play the piano version of Numb. He went on to state that he wasn’t going to rest until he’d mastered it - and was getting most of it off YouTube and his piano teacher was helping a bit! This song is neither recent nor obviously accessible at a glance. He played a bit for us and we acquired the audio track.

The songs that:

.....Make the Whole World Sing......!

Some elements which have been introduced via this song so far include:

new recorder notes – both played and read

reading marimba notes on the staff and accurately playing them with everyone

else

keeping in time with percussion – both practically and conceptually

singing against what is being played – separately and together

fairly detailed discussion of the song’s meaning.

Outlined below are some of the deconstruction techniques explored by us in the song Numb. As it: Happens in Our Classroom, we do this style of activity frequently, often adding strings, band instruments from IM plus turns at beatboxing- and teaching and playing ukulele and guitar chords.

The piano version is in Dm (different from the whole track with guitars and vocals -

F#m ). This is of course not great for beginner recorders! The students were keen on

the ‘pensive piano-y’ version which actually underlies the vocal version. The melody of

the chorus isn’t heard so much in the piano piece but is able to be identified and

provides a specific listening activity.

We very often use a CD recording to play along with at the beginning of a project of

this nature. We used this song in its recorded key but often transpose a track through

Audition or Acid in order to get it out of keys with flats.

1. In Numb by Linkin Park, the first pattern or ‘loop’ is structured as follows:

2. It was decided that recorder notes C’ and D’ might be explored so we taught these to fit

into an accompanying practice pattern.

(Older students who are familiar with using both hands could naturally play lower D E F#, but at the beginning of Yr 5 we decided to go with notes in the left hand.)

3. Diatonic marimbas were then given:

(Some less capable students struggled with this at first, so they just played 3 D’s and 3

C’s to get the ‘shape’ of the song by still being able to play along.)

4. Hand untuned percussion (djembes) were added either singley or amongst a couple of

players along the lines of or between a team of 3 players:

By this stage we could practice variations on the patterns without the CD. I would play piano but in one class, another 10 year old student could actually play the whole piece from memory. This was unknown to us at the start. In fact, we wouldn’t have chosen this as a song with working potential at all - if the child who was desperate to play it hadn’t told us about his mission!

With these ‘layers’ of the song covered, students were able to play and practise a number of options:

either all together as a class choosing, or taking turns of a part

in smaller groups

various keyboard permutations on other keyboards or with me

sing the chorus and/or other appropriate parts.

At the end of term 1 we had accomplished this much in and around other activities. If we choose to present a demonstration performance of this we will continue to work on a final ‘edit’. In Our Classroom we are fortunate to never find ourselves short of new experiences which are rewarding to us as much as to the students. We frequently marvel at how these types of activities change perceptions of old songs or introduce details of new ones and continue to do so across age levels and instrumentation options. Because there is always another good song to discover we find ourselves constantly on the look-out for possibilities - at the movies, in the car with our own children and discussing with friends. We gratefully acknowledge and thank those who have assisted us pursue and ultimately realise this artistically and musically satisfying occupation.

“A Band Director’s worst nightmare… instructing string players in the high school orchestra”

David Maddick; Kelvin Grove State College

Late last year, I was approached by a school band director/teacher, on how to conduct a secondary school symphony orchestra, having had little knowledge about string playing. She asked me whether I would present a session at QBOC which would give teachers in her position an insight into string playing in the school symphony orchestra. I thought long and hard about how I could condense a life time of experience into a one hour presentation. This is what I felt was relevant.

The Symphony Orchestra

The Symphony Orchestra is built on the string ensemble. Each of the string sections has the ability to carry unison melodic lines, the ability to play lengthy passages at great velocity if needed, the ability to sustain organ-like vertical movement. This is the basis on which the Symphony Orchestra is built. Therefore, each of the other sections has the enormous task of creating timbres and colours; the winds with their almost vocal qualities coupled with the sounds of the single and double reeds. The brass with their fanfare like nature and enormous dynamic power…. And finally, the secret to any good high school orchestra, the percussion section. The importance of balance and ability to create rhythmical drive, the diversity of sounds, whether tuned or untuned, can be the magic ingredient in any orchestra.

Brief History Music was first written for groups of instruments (ensembles) for dance and performance in the court. The 1st collections of such works date back to the 15th and 16th centuries. It was the 17th century, however, with the introduction of opera, that the orchestra, as it is now known, grew. Opera became popular in Germany and France and in the latter part of the 17th century through Purcell in England and Lully in France. The 18th century, saw the development of the classical orchestra. Beethoven is the 1st of the classical/romantic composers to develop the symphony orchestra lineup which has grown from about 30+ musicians to a modern day symphony orchestra of 90 and upwards depending on the work of the composer.

The instrumentation line up Late 1600’s – present; the breakdown.

Classical Orchestra Modern Orchestra

Woodwinds Woodwinds

2 Flutes Piccolo

2 Oboes 2 Flutes

2 Clarinets (in C, B-flat, or A) 2 Oboes

2 Bassoons English Horn

2 Clarinets in B-flat, A

Bass Clarinet (and/or Clarinet in E-flat)

2 Bassoons

Contrabassoon

Brass Brass

2 or 4 Horns (in any key) 4 French Horns in F

2 Trumpets (in any key) 3 Trumpets in B-flat

3 Trombones (2 Tenor, 1 Bass)

Tuba

Euphonium

Percussion Percussion

Timpani Timpani

Snare Drum

Tenor Drum

Bass Drum

Cymbals

Tam-tam

Triangle

Wood block

Tambourine

Glockenspiel

Xylophone

Vibraphone

Tubular bells

Keyboards

Celesta

Piano

Strings Strings

6 Violins I Harp

6 Violins II 16 Violins I

4 Violas 14 Violins II

3 Violoncellos 12 Violas

2 Double basses 10 Cellos

8 Double basses

The School Orchestra a. The layout Brass on risers and preferably winds also… brass then on double height riser. Percussion split… normally tuned (immediate stage right with auxiliary percussion next. (including snare and bass drum as central as poss.) Timpani to stage left with Double Basses as timpani generally play the bass of the chord. b. Rehearsal techniques Warm ups Scales in the keys of the pieces you cover; know the starting note for transposing instruments. Set meter and tempo as used in the piece. Keep in mind blend, balance, tonal quality, dynamic when performing

scale movement. Scales and arpeggios can be used on rhythmic figures, different articulations (bowing articulations to be discussed shortly). Major, natural minor, whole tone, chromatic, canonic etc. Chord Progressions Write a set of chord progressions for your orchestra. These are invaluable for vertical balance and blend. You can use these, not only for intonation, but rhythm patterns which are employed in the written score. Rehearsing like voices Try each section eg ww, brass, strings for all the elements as mentioned in the warm ups above. This is also a good practice to use with sections of music from the score. Let each section hear what each other sounds like during a rehearsal. KEEP AS MUCH OF YOUR ORCHESTRA INVOLVED AS MUCH OF THE TIME AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN. LEAVE THE LEARNING OF INDIVIDUAL LINES FOR THE TUTORIAL. Focus your attention towards the instrument sections you don’t specialize in rather than those you teach. ie strings for the band directors. c. Score analysis Firstly, make sure all parts have bar numbers and that letters/figures are clearly marked. It will save time and frustration if it is done at the 1st rehearsal. Make sure you mark your score so that you are aware who has melodic lines, counter melodies, natural harmony to the melody, ostinatos, bass movement. This will help with setting dynamic levels among other things. Talk to the musicians about the piece, not only historically but stylistically. d. Matching articulations 1. Strings need to anticipate the start of a note as the response of the string sound is slightly delayed. 2. Strings need to listen to woodwinds, brass and percussion for stylistic attack and release of note. eg. tpts tonguing fanfare style. e. Associated problems 1. Strings like sharpened keys… band instruments don’t… If a school has a strong band program and the director feels compelled to involve the handful of strings that learn at their school, because they don’t have an ensemble of their own, the trap is to transcribe flute or horn or trombone or tuba parts to allow the strings to participate. Either write a part which will feature the string sound at some stage and write rests just as most symphonic composers do for the brass or percussion, or compose string unison lines that use melodic or rhythmic material from the written score. In this way you are not breaching copyright, as there is no music written for these instruments and you are featuring the strings timbre as a colour change within the written score. This does not mean the strings should not double any of the lines of the band instruments, but do it discretely, not from bar 1 to the end. 2. The conductor does not use a balanced line up. Go back to the lineups of the classical and modern orchestras. 3. Take great care with dynamic levels of each section within the orchestra. Try to make the softs really soft but not weak and the louds strong but not forced. 4. Take care not to choose compositions/arrangements that expose weaknesses with individual instruments or sections within your orchestra.

THE LIST IS ENDLESS… SUGGEST YOU JOT DOWN PROBLEMS TO BE ADDRESSED AT THE END OF EACH REHEARSAL. WORK ON THE SOLUTION; DON’T JUST SWEEP IT UNDER THE CARPET.

The Bow Tonal Quality …is dependent on /point of contact on string /weight on bow /speed of bow stroke Full sound = flat of hair Light sound = outside of hair Meaty sound is achieved in the lower half. String crossings are best executed at the middle of the bow. Softer sounds are best achieved in the upper half. There are many different kinds of bow strokes employed in string playing. Understanding these takes considerable explanation. Can I suggest you refer to “Guide to orchestral bowings through musical styles” by Marvin Rabin and Priscilla Smith. www.nastrings.org/.../guide-to-orchestral-bowings-through-musical-styles.

Noticeboard Maryborough Music Conference is on for 2011. Presenters include The magnificent Queensland Symphony Orchestra participating for the first time · James Morrison returns to present and this time to perform and showcase the new range of amazing Shagerl wind instruments

· Julian Bliss (UK) the amazing clarinet virtuoso joins us for the first time to present and to

perform on his own range of Leblanc Bliss Clarinets

· Bob Phillips (Alfred Publishing, USA) returns as strings conductor and brings a Celtic focus

· George Torbay (Hal Leonard, NSW) back by popular demand to conduct the choir

· Dr Peter Boonshaft (Alfred Publishing, USA) outstanding author, conductor and motivator

visits for the first time to conduct the Conference Concert Band

· Bruce Pearson (KJOS, USA) returns to present and conduct and add

the further prestige these highly respected musicians/clinicians always bring Further information and Online Registration available at www.maryboroughmusicconference.com.au Professional Associations; A number of professional associations support music teachers, classroom and instrumental, in schools. More information is available on their websites; ABODA Australian Band and Orchestra Directors’ Association ANCA Australian National Choral Association ASME http://www.asmeqld.org.au/ On this website you will find information about all that ASME Qld offers its members and all of those involved in music education across our great state. We frequently hold Professional Development workshops and presentations which focus on the many and varied aspects of teaching music in Queensland AUSTA Australian Strings Association KMEIA Kodaly Music Education Institute of Australia QOSA Queensland Orff Schulwerk Association Finally, further information about events, professional development as well as links are available at the Music Resource Centre website; http://www.musicresourcecentre.org.au