Middle School Orchestra Practice List

The Middle School Orchestra Needs to Practice More, Here is the List:

Memorize America the Beautiful. We will be playing it before some basketball games in the gym. Probably twice through, with Brian playing harmony the second time.

Amazing Grace with vibrato. Remember to practice the technique with your shakers I gave you. Don't lose them, put them back in your case.

Bach Minuet.

Rosin Eating Zombies from Outer Space. We will try to tackle the whole song next week.

I've Got Rhythm. We need to play this with more of an emphasis on the one two nature of this song, and a little faster. It is in cut time with emphasis on 1 and 3 if we play it in fast 4.

We are still playing C and G and D scales, so you should memorize these from your 2 octave scale sheet.

Beginning Class 4th Lesson

We reviewed tuning with tuners, and singing the song Good, Days, Are, Everywhere for violins, to help us with proper tuning pitches. Violas and Cello sing Come, Go, Dance, Away. I rechecked everyones bow holds also, because we started by bowing page 5, which had been homework. Then for the first time we put 3 fingers down on the D string while we were bowing, using about 1/3 of bow. I went around and checked everyone to make sure they were holding their fingers down firm enought to get good bowed tone. Be sure and play on the tips of the fingers (not pressing them flat), keeping the elbow out in front of the violin, and the thumb of fingering hand should not be sticking up. This will need to be worked on for a while.

My Thursday class will not be meeting for 2 weeks, due to conferences. But you can come and get tuned if you come a bit before 5PM to Seltice on Tuesday. This missing class will be made up Monday, Nov. 23 (Thanksgiving week).

Homework is plucking (pizzacato) pages 7-9, and 10 & 11. You need to bow pages 6, 7, 10. If you are in Thursday class you can bow all the pages you did pizzacato, since you will have more time. Tuesday's class can do this too if they want to move ahead.

If you are putting fingering numbers by the notes, try to erase the open string notes and the 3's (4's for cello), leaving only the markings 1's and 2's for violins (1's and 3's for cello). If you don't need any markings that is GREAT!

Adult Class Learns to Sight Read Rhythms and G string notes

I talked a little about tuning and why tuners are useful. Our ears differ slightly from day to day, so when playing in groups, having a perfect A that vibrates at 440 cycles per minute is a good standard, and means everyone in the orchestra is in tune with each other. You can use a piano for this if you are playing with piano this is essential. Other things that work are the CD's tuning pitches, tuning fork, pitch pipe, or a tuner. Singing the song Good, Days, Are, Everywhere may help for the violins. And for the violas and cellos, Come, Go, Dance, Away. Everyone seems to find their best method, and the tuners gradually teach the ear when your string is flat or sharp. The concert master stood and played our perfect A. We made sure ours matched, then rechecked our other strings. I showed the orchestra how to check double strings for for pitch and yes you can check 4th finger notes against next open string that is higher pitch. The string rings in a clearer tone when it is in tune.

We then started by playing the D scale in half notes (2 beats), half notes alternating sections of the orchestra to sound chords, quarter notes with two shorter eighth notes at tip or frog, we slurred the notes two notes to a bow up the scale, and finally sixteenth notes at frog and then at tip just up the scale.

We reviewed Dreidel with short bows in middle of bow, and Mozart's Melody memorized with long followed by two short bows at tip or frog. Everyone passed the test so we are moving on from this song.

Next we learned to clap rhythms on songs 70, 71, 76 which we then bowed. This was teaching sight reading quarter and eighth note beats. Sometimes it also helps to pizzacato the song first and then bow it. We will review this next week, and it is homework. If you need numbers written in, try to leave out open strings which you should know, and 3's for violin and viola, and 4 for cello. That means you can write in 1's and 2's. If you want you can pick a different combination, but basically you shouldn't be writing D1, just 1 (you can tell it is on the D string by where it is located on the staff, and the same with the A string, don't write A1). I will continue to quiz you on notes, so gradually you will learn the names, but number systems really help at first!

We bowed song 86, Ode to Joy and that continues as homework. You will find that you are gradually memorizing this song.

We learned the top line A of song 89, which is easy to memorize. It only has F#, G, E. and D notes in it with long and short bow strokes. Practice it slowly first, and you will find you can play this by ear. Gradually we will speed this up and add a simple harmony.

We also learned song 91 part A and B the first line, a song we had learned before in the beginning of the book, Lightly Row. We alternated the parts of the orchestra playing either part A or B. It sounded great! Learn part A and B of second line too for homework. I am thinking I gave you a lot to learn, so we will probably review all this next week. Don't be too hard on yourself, but try and practice every day. Mostly it just takes time, so be patient with yourself. You can pizzacato all songs first before you bow them. That often helps. Going slowly with rhythms also helps.

We learned the notes on the G string on page 26, bowing quarter and half notes.
For homework you can pizzacato songs 101 and 102, Baa,Baa Black Sheep and This Old Man, songs you know. If you really get ambitious you can bow them, but mostly these pages are designed for learning the fingerings for G string notes. Again try to learn where the open string is, write in 1 and 2 fingerings for violin and viola and leave off the 3's unless you need it. Cello leaves out open string, writing in 1 and 3, and leaves off 4's. You can always tell you are on the G string because you are below open D.

Lastly we worked on The First Nowell and got to the third line of the melody where the repeat sign is marked. Remember to retake your bow, down bow in the third measure first half note, so the half note has enough bow (otherwise you'd have to do two up bows). We also learned to play the harmony a little using a G4 fingering instead of open D, and playing the C# (new note on G string, that is played with the third finger stretched right next to the 4th finger). Everyone should try this, but we may assign the harmony only as people feel more and more comfortable with the melody. It sounded great when we put it all together though!

Wow, we are sure accomplishing a lot! I enjoy writing this blog. I hope some more people are following this than are listed on my home page. Print it out!