Yesterday, I shared a little bit about the Galaxy of Composers group class that we held in the studio last week. In preparation for this each student selected (or was given) a composition by a composer of interest to them. I tried to keep the duplicate composers to a minimum, but of course we did still end up with several of the more famous names!

I used to be opposed to using simplified arrangements of classics, but now I love them! I’m still not a huge fan of simplified arrangements of piano repertoire, but I love using themes from other instrumental and symphonic works to help familiarize the students with music they might otherwise never hear. I’ve compiled a list below of the pieces that were prepared for the Galaxy of Composers group class, along with links to the books in which they are located (these represent some of my favorite collections for both piano and simplified classical arrangements!). Hope it’s helpful!

Prelude – Isaac Albeniz

Kind im Einschlummern (Child Falling Asleep) – Robert Schumann

The Village Prophet – Jean Jacques Rousseau

Theme from New World Symphony – Antonin Dvorak

Theme from Trepak – Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Maple Leaf Rag – Scott Joplin

Rondo Alla Turca – Frederic Burgmuller

Solfeggieto – C.P.E. Bach

Fur Elise – Ludwig Van Beethoven

No Fear – Luke Wisner (original composition by the brother of a student)

Theme from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Pop! Goes the Weasel – Benjamin Schweitzer

Theme from Symphony in C Minor – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Wedding March – Felix Mendelssohn

Caprice No. 24 – Niccolo Paganini

The Magic Fountain – Szidor Bator

Firefly – Nancy and Randall Faber

In the Hall of the Mountain King – Edvard Grieg

Night of the Tarantella – Nancy Faber

Country Dance – Ludwig Van Beethoven

Theme from Fantasy-Impromptu – Frederic Chopin

German Dance and Allemande – Michael Praetorius

Stars and Stripes Forever – John Philip Sousa

Romance – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Taps – Daniel Butterfield

Theme from Spring – Antonio Vivaldi

In keeping with our Exploring a Galaxy of Music theme for the year, last week’s Briefing Session (a.k.a. group class) was themed A Galaxy of Composers. Here are a couple shots from the evening:

I held this session at the studio, so twenty of us crammed into the small space to listen to performances, play games, and learn about the various composers.

Prior to playing their piece, each student shared a brief report about the composer of their selection. I was impressed with the creativity employed in putting together their reports (the one pictured included a PowerPoint presentation)!

I’ve uploaded a free set of the A Galaxy of Composers Lesson Plans I developed for this class. If you’re interested in doing a composer-themed group class with your students, feel free to download and use the file and corresponding activities. We had a ton of fun with it!

Joy, of the Color In My Piano blog, has posted a super list of 30 Theme Ideas for the Music Studio Events. I’m partially posting the link here so you call can check out the great collection of ideas. But I’m mostly posting it here so that I can come back and refer to it in the future when I’m trying to brainstorm ideas for practice incentives, group classes, or recitals.

As I mentioned last Friday, we had a fabulous time with some fun games at our September Surprise! Here are some video clips and free downloadable files that you can use in your studios as well. (Refer to the Blast Off! post for game directions.)

Tappers and Listeners

Click here to download the list of familiar tunes.

Emotional Quotations

This one was especially fun, and gave a glimpse into some sides of each other that we hadn’t previously seen! My students even insisted that I take a turn at the end…

Click here to download the compilation of quotes and list of emotions.

It’s official! The year has begun in my studio! We had our September Surprise kickoff last night and it was a ton of fun! Almost every one of the students in attendance played something, and I was quite impressed that most of them worked up new pieces and did a very nice job with them.

One of my goals for the year is for all of us to improve our communication skills – in both musical and non-musical areas.  Here are explanations for two super fun games that we played related to this theme:

Tappers and Listeners Game

[Phase One] – group the students in pairs and assign each one in the pair as either the “tapper” or the “listener.” Give each of the tappers a slip of paper with the title of a familiar tune. Have each pair come to the front one at a time. The tapper taps the rhythm of the tune and the listener tries to guess what the tune is. Once all the pairs have finished, discussed why it was so difficult to guess the correct tune.

[Phase Two] – played the same as Phase One, except that prior to tapping the rhythm, the tapper may give information to the Listener that he thinks will help him correctly identify the tune. [This Tappers and Listeners idea was drawn from the book, Made to Stick, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath - an awesome book, by the way, that I highly recommend!]

Analysis: The tapper had the melody in his head, thus was privy to information that was not being communicated to the listener. In our mind, we perceive that we are communicating effectively, but there is a breakdown in the transmission. We have to try to place ourselves in the position of the listener and figure out how to actually communicate effectively. In the same way, when we play a piece of music, we have in our mind how we want it to sound, but unless we can “sit” in the seat of the listener, we won’t know if we have effectively communicated what we desired in our playing.

Part of our emphasis in learning to play the piano this year will be listening to our own playing more acutely, and taking advantage of opportunities to be our own listeners (audio and video recordings). We should always be thinking of and working on ways to improve our communication skills – both in music and otherwise. There will be lots of opportunities to do this this year! [e.g. Written Communication via The SPLOG, Verbal Communication via the Briefing Sessions, Musical Communication via recordings for The SPLOG, Briefing Sessions, and other recitals and festivals.]

Emotional Quotations

One student comes to the front of the group and draws a word from the “Emotions Box” and a quote from the “Quotes Box.” The rest of the students are given slips containing a list of all the possible emotions. The student at the front reads/quotes the quote in a manner that attempts to convey the designated emotion. The rest of the students have to guess what the emotion was. Continue until each student has a turn. [This is a game that I used when I taught drama and public speaking classes, but it served this purpose quite well, especially with the use of composer quotes.]

We shot some video during these games, so I’ll try to get some clips posted so you can see these games in action. They were both perfect for a large group of age-integrated students. All of the students stayed very engaged trying to figure out the “answers”! Let me know if you’re interested in having downloadable files for these games and I’ll post them next week.

If you teach in a lab setting or have access to multiple keyboards in your studio, you might be interested in checking out this new Keyboard Ensemble sheet music over at SoundTree. For $9.95 you can download a pdf and print as many copies as you need. You can also listen to audio samples of each piece. This would be fun to incorporate into a group class!

HT: Music Technology in Education

For our final day of Piano Camp, I decided to switch things up just a little and play a game to start off the lesson.

Since we were focusing on relative keys today, I printed off a copy of my Major Minor Scale Matchup Worksheet on cardstock and then cut it into rectangles with one scale per piece. I distributed the pieces to the students and had them write the scale names, using the patterns from the previous two days to determine if a scale was Major or minor.

Once all the scale names were written, we mixed up the cards and then layed them out for a fun (and long!) game of memory.

Also, today I had each of the ensemble groups perform their piece for the rest of us. For one week’s worth of practice, I think they all did a pretty good job. And I think each of the groups are planning to keep polishing up their pieces so that they can play them at our September Surprise kickoff event. Here are video clips so you can watch each of the performances:

Noelle and Luke play Important Questions, from Simply Silly Duets by Kevin and Julia Olson. Even though Luke still has trouble with music notation, he loved this piece and really got into the feel of it!

Naomi and Isabella play Smile, Op. 280, No. 1 by Ernesto Becucci, from Easy Classical Piano Duets for Teacher and Student, Book 3.

Joey, Graham, and Ryan did a super job working together on Camptown Races, Arr, by Carrie Kraft. But I think they had the most fun planning and rehearsing their special surprise ending!

Next up, I’m planning to post a Piano Camp 2009 Resource list with quick links to all the resources I used to plan this year’s camp…

We just finished our third morning of Piano Camp. Hard to believe we only have one day left! One of our daily activities is a Composer Spotlight. I wanted to highlight some of the lesser known composers, and also incorporate aspects of how they used their music to glorify God. I already had on my shelves the perfect book to accomplish this dual purpose: Spiritual Lives of the Great Composers by Patrick Cavanaugh. So, for about 15-20 minutes at the end of our time, I read the story of one of the composers while the students color the picture of that composer in their workbooks.

I selected Haydn, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, and Ives as our composers for the week. Several of the coloring pages came from this page of the Making Music Fun website. For the ones I couldn’t find, I used detailed portraits and then had my sister convert them into coloring pages using her design software.

Here, Luke and Graham display their colored pictures of Haydn. (I found out how much my students love coloring when I did a Carnival of the Animals Piano Camp two years ago.) After I finish reading the story, I play one of the corresponding radio broadcasts from the Classics for Kids show. I also included the correlating activity sheets produced by Classics for Kids in each of the workbooks. They can work on these if there is any extra time after they’ve finished coloring, or they can do them on their own after Piano Camp is over.

To be continued…

Continuing with the Piano Camp theme for the week, here are a few pictures from another one of our daily activities – ensemble playing! I played through a whole stack of ensemble repertoire last week looking for the perfect combinations for the group of students attending Piano Camp this week. We allocoate about 15-20 minutes each day to learn and rehearse their pieces. I make the rounds between each group, but for the most part just let them work on their own. This is always really motivating for them. They work hard to get their pieces down by the end of the week – an exciting accomplishment, to be sure!

Naomi and Isabella are loving this lively duet: Smile, Op. 280, No. 1 by Ernesto Becucci, from Easy Classical Piano Duets for Teacher and Student, Book 3.

These three boys are quite the trio! They all have strong personalities, so it’s definitely a challenge for them to work together, but they are doing a fantastic job! Their trio is part of the Keyboard Ensemble Series: Camptown Races, Arr, by Carrie Kraft.

I paired Noelle with Luke because I knew she’d be willing to help him figure out his notes and rhythms, and because she could easily learn and play the teacher accompaniment. They are playing the really cool-sounding Important Questions, from Simply Silly Duets by Kevin and Julia Olson.

To be continued…

One of the other activities we are doing each day of Piano Camp is improvising. I start out by having all the students play the pentascale, chord progression, and arpeggio of a given key. We do this several times all together. Then, I play an accompaniment CD and they play along with the CD.

After one run-through, I let them choose what order they want to play the various elements in (scale, arpeggio, etc.) as long as they stay on beat and try to match the style and character of the accompaniment. I conduct while they play and give them a signal leading into the final measure so that we all end together.

I have a couple of students at the piano, a couple at one keyboard, one at another keyboard, one on the bells, and one on the xylophone. After a couple times through, they all switch to a different instrument, and those on the keyboards can select another orchestral instrument for their sound setting. (The ones on the xylophone and bells just play the chord root or the chord shell during the chord progressions.)

By Thursday and Friday, I should be able to let them do a full-fledged improvisation in the key, but for now it helps to give them some structure within which to play. Either way it’s a lot of fun and sounds pretty cool!

To be continued…