NZ School of Music Day at Eastern Hutt

Earlier this term the senior Orff group at Muritai came to Eastern Hutt School to take part in a morning of ensemble playing with performance students from the NZ School of Music.  We played some rhythm games and workshopped two pieces as a group, children on the barred instruments and percussion and the NZSM students on double bass, trombone, violin, classical guitar, piano, and voice.

Junior Music Terms 3 and 4

Below are some pics from the junior music classes in Term 3 and 4.   We have done lots of creative instrument work, improvising, and rhythm work.  We spent time this term creating our own jungle themed music and a jungle animal movement piece, which the children loved!  We worked with lots of different poems and songs including Dr Knickerbocker Number 9, Pease Porridge Hot, Here is the Beehive, Dr Foster, Funga Alafia, Alice the Camel and many more.  We have made a number of music maps where we have used hand gestures (simple solfege) and drawn pictures on paper to show the direction of pitch in songs.  We have also done lots of rhythm work using the rhythms of language in simple poems and using cups to notate simple rhythmic patterns (whole size and half size cups to show crotchets and quavers).  We also played a few simple ensemble arrangements on the instruments.  The classes have been full of energy, joy, and enthusiasm for music and movement making.

Music and movement with untuned and tuned percussion

Conducting and exploring different dynamics using hand gestures

More conduting

Playing xylophone set up for C pentatonic

Improvising and rhythm play

Soprano glockenspiel set up for improvising on C pentatonic

Rhythm improvising: Dr Foster went to Glocester in a shower of rain!

Creative music making.

Dr Foster.

More Dr Foster.

Creative music play - Metallaphone set up for improvising on C pentatonic

Using different size cups to represent different rhythms (crotchets and quavers)

Senior Orff Group Term 4

This is a recording of a piece in progress!  We had just had our first two lessons on recorders and we also wanted to try out what the viola sounded like playing the melody line.  This piece was put together very quickly by the group in only two lessons.

Junior Music

The owls fly round the town while the church bells make their music.

Beautiful expressive playing!

Senior Orff Group 1

Using Cups as Graphic Notation in Senior Music

The different sized cups represent crotchets and quaver beats.  The conductor creates different rhythms by moving the cups around and changes the patterns as the instrument players 'read' the music/rhythmic patterns.  We have explored improvising on top of these rhythmic patterns also, which is a lot of fun.

Instrumental Play in Junior Music

We have been exploring different rhythms on the instruments and playing bass lines to our songs.

Senior Orff 1

Senior Orff Group 2

Juniors: All Around the Gardner's Bench

In this session we learned a song called 'All Around the Gardner's Bench' to the tune of Pop goes the Weasel.  In this song flowers in the garden pop up and when each flower is visited by the watering can they improvise a small song about the flower they are holding.  The songs that were created were beautiful.  We then had a go at creating a little melody on the glockenspiels to go with the flowers too.  We had songs and music for a sunflower, poppy, lily, blossoms, cornflower, water lily, rose, daisy, and a tulip.

Flowers ready to 'pop' out of the garden.

Watering can visiting flowers in the garden.

Creating a flower melody on the glockenspiel.

Middles: Haunted House Music

In this session we created 4 beat rhythms using words.  Having done lots of work using fruit and vegetables the boys chose the theme of a haunted house.  They created 4 beat rhythms for each other to play on the xylophone.

Middles: Music Mapping: The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods

In this session we followed a music map for the piece from Carnival of the Animals: The Cuckoo in the Depths of the Woods by Saint Saens.  Every time the cuckoo bird makes its call (played by a clarinet) we landed on a feathery card.  The other cards showed the piano chords in the piece.

Middles: Clapping Games and Trains

In this session we learned a clapping game that went with a rhyme called 'Engine Engine Number Nine'.  We then transferred the rhythms of this rhyme to the glockenspiels to play a train piece.  We also listened to Bobby McFerrin's piece called "The Train".

Middles Music: Rhythm Play with Cups

Using two different cup sizes we made 4 beat patterns for each other to clap.  The big cups equal whole beats and the smaller cups equal half-beats.  It was lots of fun creating rhythms and conducting them for each other.

Senior Orff Class

Here is another piece we are working on.  It is a canon by Gunild Keetman.  When we get this piece more up to speed confidently we will try it as a canon!

Senior Orff Class

This term we have worked on five different Orff style arrangements in our senior Orff class.  Here is one of our favourite pieces.  It is a work in progress, we are just starting to get all our parts together :)

Music Mapping: Bees

In this session children drew pictures of bees to map the melodic shape of a song we had learned about bees.  When the notes of the song went up the children drew bees going higher in the air, when the song went down they drew the bees flying lower.  At the end we could sing the song and follow the bee music map the children had created themselves.

The completed bee music map, with repeat signs and two different endings.  First time the song goes up and at the end the song goes down.

Action Song: Copy Cat

Children taking turns leading this song.

Singing, Music and Movement: The Owl in the Magical Forest

Owl and Clock Singing Game: Improvising owl flying music while puppets dance around.

Flying the owl puppet around the magical forest.  Each tree has its own magical sound that plays when the owl flies to it.

A very magical and expressively played woodblock!