Todays post is another sequence that was built in the moment with my students’ input. I wanted to incorporate the buzz around the Spring Carnival at Carnegie Mellon University, and I used the excitement I felt from the students to create this lesson. I hope you’ll enjoy it! It’s in mixed meter, but the students don’t even notice. If you build the lesson gradually it will result in a really magical musical experience for you and the kids! But first…
Housekeeping:
On April 17th I’ll be hosting the TEAMM (Totally Effortless Approach to Musical Movement) Masterclass on #Winning with Dalcroze. Folks… you don’t want to miss it! I’ll be explaining the rules to some of my FAVORITE games in the Dalcroze tradition, along with valuable tools in order to execute them. These games are guaranteed #winners. Your kids will love them and they will be learning SO MANY valuable things, both musical and extra-musical.
Don’t miss my session at PMEA on April 18th!!!! (The Day AFTER the Masterclass). If you’re a Pennsylvania Educator, you really MUST come watch my session. It is going to be some pretty trippy research I’ve been doing into phenomenological aspects of flow in elementary students….
If you’ve been following my work you know I think that mixed meter is TOTALLy appropriate for kids of all ages. In fact, I don’t see an important difference between odd meters, mixed meters, or simple meters from a children’s perspective. We can start to move into those meters right away, they haven’t developed bad habits yet and are so flexible to catch the subtle differences between them! Adults are the ones who struggle with these. (Part of the reason I don’t use numbers in my instruction… more on that later)
If you haven’t done any of these lessons yet you might want to review them: