Musik & Me – Featuring Lets Play Music and Sound Beginnings

We learned the real names of our chords today! While it seems like most of the kids understood this concept, I’m posting this video to show you parents how we discovered the names during class. Feel free to watch this video on your own or with your child. This is another teacher (the creator of LPM!) demonstrating what we did in class.

We started playing the blue chord in its inversions today. We used counters on the keyboards – putting them on middle C, F and A, (which is actually 2nd inversion) and then jumped the first blue counter up to the next octave C – for the root position version of this triad. Remember, the letter names stay the same, the order is just mixed up! Here’s a quick demo video to help visualize how this works. Go ahead and try it with your child. Build a blue chord with 3 little erasers or small toys. Then jump the bottom note up to the next same note and keep going!

Showtime is back! While we haven’t been playing this in class, your child has been practicing “Cockles and Mussels” at home. Please send me a Marco Polo video or a video text message of your child playing it so I can be sure they understand the concepts we’re working on for this song.

Registration for next fall begins IN JUST A COUPLE WEEKS! I need to know how many BRIDGE classes I will be putting on my schedule. Please fll out this survey so I can get an idea of what my schedule should look like. I want to make sure you have the class time that works best for my students that have been with me for so long!

Have your children continue to practice their recital pieces. Don’t forget, it is THEIR composition and if they want to add to it or change anything, they are allowed to do that until lesson #11, when we have our next and final private lesson. You can send me revisions by text or email or send it with your child to class next week. They can use the lined pages in their composition section of their songbook to add extra music, such as a B part, if they so desire.

DO is Home
While finding a pitch (out of thin air) through audiation isn’t a new thing for our Let’s Play Music student, we are now switching it up. We started to find ‘fa’ and make F home instead of C and now we will make G home, instead of C and F. We are always doing this relative to Middle C to continually reinforce the sound of Middle C and to teach relative pitch.
     
Scale Degrees
Actually numbering the steps of the scale as ‘scale degrees‘ is the first step in transitioning out of calling our primary chords by colors. The Red, Blue, and Yellow chords are respectively the I, IV and V chord (we call ’em 1, 4, and 5) and they get their chord names because their root is that numbered scale degree within the scale. Here’s a fun ASL visual to help remember them:

(R)ED: When your fingers are stuck together, they look like a number 1
(B)LUE: You are holding up 4 fingers
(Y)ELLOW: You are holding up finger 1 and finger 5.

C Major and F Major Scales

Did you know that your little musician has super powers? They really do!!!