O Canada Multilingual

I really love this new version of O Canada arranged and recorded by Tech Voc High School here in Winnipeg.

This is a multilingual version of “O Canada” including Cree, English, French, Ojibway, Inuktitut, and Tagalog.

Rap Battle

Grade 3/4/5 classes are practicing their beatboxing, rapping, and beat keeping abilities while showing creativity.  Each group chose a nursery rhyme and is working on rapping it to one of the beats below.  They are encourage to create patterns, repeat parts, and add some interesting (and appropriate) movement or melody to their pieces.  We are looking forward to hearing what they come up with.

RAP #1 - haunting, intense, violin, hip hop, slower



RAP #2 - intense, minor, synth, hip hop



RAP #3 - intense, chimes, piano, low voice, slower pace, synth



RAP #4 - bluesy jazz, trumpet, walk down bass



RAP #5 - jazzy vibraphone improv



RAP #6 - island feel, reggae

Songwriting Collaboration

Mrs. Lowe and Mrs. Atcheson were working on developing a wacky idea to write a song about Winnipeg with Room 9 in their study of Winnipeg.  Mrs. Lowe and her students developed lists of ideas and facts and grouped them.

 Mrs. Lowe asked if we could somehow take these ideas and make them into a song. As we were thinking about the music and ideas, Mrs. Lowe remembered a song she liked by the band, The Weakerthans, called I Hate Winnipeg.  She played it for me and right away I thought, "Let's write verses for how we LOVE Winnipeg."  Almost immediately I started to pull phrases from the student ideas and wrote several verses.  I figured out the chords and developed a rough track on Garageband.  The next week I brought the song to the kids and they got excited and we started to develop their own verse.  After several attempts to make words fit, we felt it was good and then started to rehearse it to learn all the words.  We also want to add some body percussion and rhythm to the song and we are working on that as well.  Mrs. Lowe and her class also plan to make a video.

Just the other day I pulled a few kids to record a rough copy of the song with their voices.  There were a lot of giggles as they learned about the process of recording.  We have to wear the headphones to hear the music and we can also hear our voices when we speak into the microphone.  We also had to practice not singing too loud or it can distort the sound and make it fuzzy.  Some other things we have to work on are matching our voices, hitting the right notes, and singing in the beat.   We look forward to singing our song live during music listening in May.

We hope you enjoy our song about Winnipeg!

Music Literacy

Creating their own patterns.

Figuring out patterns from musical chairs game.

Grade 1 students are getting lots of practice reading, writing, and playing quarter note, eighth notes, and quarter rest rhythms.  We play games, sing songs, dance, read, and write, 4 beat patterns.

The classes shared presents they got for the holidays and we figured out the the rhythms of words and made this chain.

Outdoor Music Challenge

The fields are alive... with the sound of music!

I have been planning these last couple of weeks of music for atleast a year now.   When I first read @prairiemusik's blog on outdoor music learning, I started to see more possibilities and benefits of getting outside the 4 walls of the music room.  Our professional discussions on staff included the benefits of play and connecting with the outdoors.  We were all inspired by our next door neighbours, Discovery Children's Centre and the 2 week outdoor challenge taken on by many in our school, our division, city, and province .

I grew up on a farm and played outdoors alot.  Now that I am living in a city of concrete, it's hard to find time and space to connect with the beauty around us.  I wanted to give the Stevenson students a little taste of inspiration in their playing, singing, and dancing and above all, give them some platforms to create and use their imaginations to make music.

Here is a short video that captured some of the precious discoveries and activities going on throughout the past 2 weeks.

Celebrations

For term 2, our classes did a variety of music activities and practiced many instrument and team building skills.  One of our highlights was playing together on the barred instruments and creating songs and stories.

Grade 1 Abiyoyo by Peter Seeger

Grade 2/3 playing Old Mother Hubbard

Old Mother Hubbard Songs

The Grade 2/3 classes have been making couplet poems that we are turning into songs.  Wow!  I am amazed at how well they are turning out and we're excited to sing you some.  Right now we're in the process of writing lyric drafts.

PART A

 PART B (students wrote these)

Global School Play Day

Today was http://www.globalschoolplayday.com/ and we got to have 'play time' in the music room.  We explored the arts - music, visual art, drama and dance.  Lots of great ideas and time to express ourselves.  One of my favorite quotes from musician and supporter of music play is from  Carl Orff -"Since the beginning of time, children have not liked to study.  They would much rather play, and if you have their interests at heart, you will let them learn while they play; they will find that what they have mastered is child's play."

The animals like to talk to each other - Questions and Answers!

Writing songs and playing them.  This is Twinkle Twinkle :)

Working as a team, making up a drum song.

He even came and sang it for me!  Nice job!

SJCI Sr. Jazz Band came and jazzed us up today.  Awesome talent!

'Rapping' Up the Year

On Tuesday, Ryeon McClenton from Kansas City, Kansas came to Stevenson.  He is a rap/hip hop artist who loves singing inspirational music and doing workshops with kids.  His CD "A Language Called Love" is on itunes.  Check it out.  Thanks for coming to our school, Ryeon.  We were challenged to be the best we can be and use music to be a positive change.  Love - Joy - Peace - Commitment - Goodness - Self-Control!

Here's some video highlights of the afternoon.

Rap Concert Coming Soon

Welcome with me to Winnipeg for the first time, Kansas City hip-hop/rapper, Ryeon McClenton.  He's putting on a concert for us at 1:00 pm and then will be working with the older kids on songwriting.

Check out some of Ryeon's music from his new album "A Language Called Love"

CDs will be on sale for $15.00.  Album soon to be out on Itunes.

Kids Can Compose!

Today our Grade 1 classes were busy writing their own music on the instruments.  Stay tuned for our creations.

This past week we created a body percussion pattern to accompany the poem:

RAIN ON THE GREEN GRASS

RAIN ON THE TREES

RAIN ON THE HOUSETOP BUT

NOT ON ME!

Music Monday 2015

This was supposed to be a Canadian flag...

Today we filled the skies with music to kick off the month of May and to video for Music Monday 2015.   Watch the live webcast on Monday, May 4 as various performances from Montreal and Calgary are broadcast.   Go to www.musicmonday.ca to find the link.  Tweet:  #MMWeAreOne

Mr. Miller and I created a Music Monday song for the 2015 Music Monday Song Search Contest.  Here was our entry and we wanted to share it with everyone.  Thanks to the students who recorded on the song.  Can you feel it?

Bird Song

Spring has sprung and with this new awakening is the sound of many birds.  I was in awe over spring break after stepping out in the quiet of an early morning to be ambushed by thousands of song birds happily singing their songs.  This week our Grade 1 classes have been discussing the bird/creature sounds we've been hearing around us.  We hope to take these to create a song over the next few week.

Our homework assignment is to stop and listen to the various sounds of birds and try and recreate them.  What birds do you know and what sounds do they make?

Check out this fun Walt Disney movie called Birds in the Spring from 1933.

App Smackdown

Great sharing of apps today in our assembly.  I love this app called "VidRhythm."  You can record sounds and video snips.  The app puts them all together in a song style of your choice: rap, hip hop, beatbox, dance, holiday, metal, funk, reggae, classical, jazz, pop, ragtime and ballad.  Check out the cool patterns, sounds and layers this app makes.  The only downside is that it costs $2.29.

Check out our video we made today in assembly.  Here is D-O-G-S!

Rhythm Writers

The Grade 1's were practicing writing and playing rhythms.  

Composing on the Instruments

Grade 3 students were hard at work creating melody patterns for their poems on the barred instruments.  We set up our instruments by taking off F and C.  The melody was only on B-A-G notes.  We got to share some of our patterns with the rest of the class and then we sang them.  Will blog about them another day.

How would you sing this?

I Can Write Music!

I am so proud of Room 11, 12, 17 & 18.  Today they learned a children's rhyme called "Pease Porridge."  We reviewed quarter (ta) and eighth (ti-ti) notes as well as the quarter rest (sh).  We did one measure together and then they had to complete the rest of the song independently.  For some students, this was their first experiences writing music and they did REALLY well!  After this, they had to practice playing it on the hand drum.

Hats off to this Grade 1 student for only learning about this a couple of classes ago.  She did this all by herself!

Next class, we are going to write our own melodies on the pitched instruments to create a little tune.  I wonder what this will sound like?