Friday 24 January 2014

Congratulations and Moving Ahead!

Things to Remember:
-Junior Select Students bring your Consent and Waiver and $15 to Junior Select Band on Thursday afternoon

Congratulations!
Congratulations to all Jazz Band students on a job very well done at Balfour on Wednesday night!

Grade 6 Band
This week in Grade 6 band we finished up the second chapter in our book.   We reviewed accents and we learned or for some students reviewed a new note.   This note is low note.   Students who had not experimented with the lower registers of their instruments were quite surprised with the extended range of their instrument and how different it felt to play low.

We continued to work on our sheet music.   We learned about musical form this week.  We learned what ABA form was in music and how this can help us with our practicing.   Students quickly saw how similar measures 1-27 and 43 to the end in Courtly Dance and Procession.  We also saw how different measures 27-43 were.  We concentrated our efforts on the "B" section (measures 27-43) this week.   Some students began writing compositions in ABA form.   In Gentle Winds, we have begun the actual piece.   At the bottom of this piece of music there are "musical jumpstarts."  We have concentrated on these until we had a feel for 3/4 time.

This week some students began figuring the notes out for the James Bond Theme.   Students who did not get the notes for James Bond this week will get it next week.  We again circled in books what to practice.   Most students have the first three lines on Page 18 circled.

Grade 7 Band
We continued working on dotted rhythms this week.  We have been encouraging students to try practicing with a metronome or to try the metronome app.    We have been encouraging students to subdivide.  We are finding many students want to rush through longer notes.

We continue to work on tone by playing long tones at various dynamic levels and practicing crescendoing on each tone.    Students have also been encouraged to make sure they have fingering charts with them as we work our way through some new notes in some of our sheet music.

We concentrated on beginning to 27 of Prelude and Celebration and measures 20-end of Cathedral.   We also began a little bit of work on the aleatoric section of Pandora.   This is a section of music that is not written in measures, but rather by seconds.   Students are asked to practice m1-27 of Prelude and 20-end of Cathedral.  

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