Music Updates

Welcome to the Music Update Page!  I'm looking forward to working with your children this year.  Check back periodically for updates on what the students are learning in Music.

Contact me at larry@brookviewschool.org 

An update from Mr. Larry....

February 11, 2012

The Brookview students continue to explore new territory in their musical journey.

The Toddlers: 

• seem to have an affinity for Indian rock music
• are learning to strike a xylophone with a bouncing motion so that it resonates
• love experimenting with electronic keyboards

The Primary students:

• have completed their study of African music and are beginning their study of Asian music
• are listening to music from China and India, and talking about how it sounds the same or different than other music they have heard
• have been introduced to the Pentatonic scale, a 5-note scale that is prevalent in Asian music

 The Lower Elementary students:

• learned about duple and triple meter through movement and conducting
• have been introduced to the Green Boards, on which they can write music on a five-line staff
• explored the evolution of the Grand Staff (the traditional treble and bass staff on which piano music is written)
• learned to play Angklung, an instrument that is played extensively in Indonesian schools, during a visit from Stephanie Ng, an Ethnomusicologist who specializes in Asian Music 

The Upper Elementary students:

• sang programs of holiday music at The Whitcomb and Caretel, two senior citizen residences
• studied Indonesian history, culture, and music with Stephanie Ng, and also learned to play Angklung
• collaborated on compositions in which the same instrument is played by more than one person and presented their work to each other

There was one presentation that I did in all the Primary and Elementary classes.  It involved a very small music box—the kind with the little crank that plays a song, which in this case was “Here Comes the Sun.”  These boxes are a wonderful vehicle for teaching students about resonance, because when you crank them in mid air, the sound is barely audible, but when you rest the music box on a table, or a piano, or against a window, the sound is increased exponentially.  It was so interesting to observe the responses of each age group.  The Primary students were quite intellectual.   They were interested in the concreteness of the event, and wanted me to try every piece of wood, glass, and fabric in the classroom to test for the level of resonance.  The Lower Elementary students were fascinated, and were very interested in why this happens.  They were able to think more abstractly, wondering, if this instrument behaves this way, how might other instruments behave?  Finally, the Upper Elementary students were the most emotive, in a “Wow, awesome!” kind of way.   They were able to apply what they learned about resonance to the many instruments they used in the collaborative project mentioned above.  All in all, these presentations were an interesting illustration of why we use a spiraling curriculum in a Montessori education. 

Here’s to continued musical enrichment for your children!

Thanksgiving, 2011 

A great deal of enrichment and creativity has occurred at all age levels during the past couple of months in Brookview’s Music program.

The Toddlers:

•  Enjoy singing their favorite songs and are learning new songs every day.
• Walk and dance around the room in beat to music that is playing.  Through this activity they are introduced to different styles of music.
• Have experimented with drums and shakers, and are learning to pass their instruments to each other gently and politely.

 In the Primary program:

• We are gradually learning the Solfège syllables (Do, Re, Mi, etc.) and the hand signals that go along with them, and using this system to practice matching pitch and melodic patterns.
• Older students are using the Montessori Bells to practice putting notes in sequence, and have begun to write music on a one-line staff.
• Congruent with their study of African culture, we are listening to music from various regions of Africa and exploring African instruments.
• Classrooms combine every two weeks for community singing.

The Lower Elementary students:

• Have done an extensive study of Indian Music, and are familiar with the concept of a Raga (scale or pitch collection that implies a mood or time of day), a Drone (the sound that supports certain Classical styles of Indian music throughout a whole piece), and a Tala (the Rhythmic pattern that supports a piece). 
•  Are becoming familiar with music of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, in keeping with their cultural studies.
• Have been introduced to the Montessori Tone Bars and are using this material to write music on one and two-line staves. 
• Enjoy singing their favorite tunes, along with many from various parts of Asia, as part of a weekly sing-along.

The Upper Elementary students:

• Have done an in-depth study of Indian Music, in which they have become familiar with Classical, Folk, and Popular styles.  
• Enjoy watching clips from Bollywood musicals and other videos from the Middle East, China, and Japan.
• Have done group performances of improvised works composed in Indian Classical style.
• Write music on a five-line staff using the Green Boards and the Montessori Tone Bars.
• Have the option of doing studio time, which is one on one music time, in which the student pursues a musical activity of choice, be it learning a blues progression on the piano, exploring drums of various cultures, or using Garage Band to compose music on the computer.

Individualized musical instruction:

Private lessons are off to a great start.  25 Brookview students, ages 4-10, are signed up. Primary students have lessons during the school day and are introduced to the joy of using the piano, as well as various percussion instruments, to make music.  Elementary students have piano lessons after school with each child's method determined by the student's individual needs and interests.

Morning singers:

The Brookview choir, which currently has about 15 students, meets once each week to learn new music, sing in harmony, work on breath support, and practice projection.  Their repertoire is largely comprised of Asian and African music, concurrent with Brookview's school-wide three-year rotating continent cycle.

June 15, 2011

The Toddler Classes are always joyful to work with because of their excitement and warmth.  It’s interesting to find out what kinds of songs strike their fancy.  They loved the last song we learned, which was Too-ay Too-ay, an African Song that is actually made of nonsense syllables combined from various African languages.  We have also done rhythmic imitation through clapping and investigated the different ways percussion instruments make noise. Their curiosity and absorbency never cease to amaze me.

The Primary students have learned a great deal about the elements of music, including rhythm, melody, and timbre.  They have been introduced to what notes look like, and how we put them together to form songs and instrumental pieces.  The Primary teachers have also introduced the students to the Montessori Bells, with some of the older students moving very quickly through the initial lessons and moving on to more advanced material.  During the last week of school, on Spanish Immersion day, the children learned a new version of the Brookview Song with Spanish lyrics,.  They sounded great and were very enthusiastic. 

The Lower Elementary also experienced the Montessori Bells during the last six weeks of school.  They experimented with pitch matching, pitch grading (putting the notes in order from low to high), and with pitch memory, which involves retaining the sound of a bell they played on one side of the room, and comparing it to another on the other side of the room.  The Bells also enabled us to have some sophisticated discussions about melodic systems and how the 12 notes in the Western scale are a combination of the major scale and the pentatonic scale, which is more prevalent in Eastern cultures.

The Upper Elementary students learned to write music down accurately, that is, they learned to put melody and rhythm that existed in their heads down on paper (or on the wipe board, as it were).  They also experienced the world of Garage Band on the Mac, which is a very user-friendly program that millions of people use to create music.  Their song Fraction Rock is a great tune with an international flair and a hip-hop sensibility.

After their extended unit on musical notation, Shakespeare was the dominant theme for the Upper Elementary.  They experimented with writing music that could exist underneath their production of The Tempest and in the process, learned a great deal about the way music and sound interact in theatre and film.  Their performance on the last day of school became a part of Brookview history.  It was a production that truly integrated all aspects of the arts—acting and projection, music, sound, scenery, and lighting, and a deep understanding of the play itself.

It was a privilege to work with the Brookview students this year and I look forward to more musical adventures as we study Africa and Asia in the coming year.

Brookview Choir

Congratulations to the Brookview Choir for an enriching year of singing and a superb performance right before Memorial Day weekend.  All year, we gathered on Tuesday mornings from 7:30 until 8:00 AM.  Aside from learning various warm-ups and pieces of music, the students practiced projection, singing in tune, breath support, and singing in counterpoint and two-part harmony.  At their performance in the Great Room, the children sang a round entitled Let Us Sing Together, an old English folk song called Come, Follow, and medley of American popular and folk songs.  Their parents and peers were delighted with the performance, as was I.   

Professional Development

During May and June, I had the pleasure of working with one of the musical greats of the Montessori world, Sanford Jones.  You can check out his biographical information at http://www.youthoperaintl.com/aboutus.html.

After meeting Sanford and seeing him do a presentation with his wife, Judy Jones, at the International Montessori Council conference last November, I knew that in order to further my own knowledge of Montessori education, I needed to spend some time with him.  Sanford kindly invited me to shadow him for an Opera Week, during which he and his wife, a professional dancer and choreographer, visit a school and put on one of Sanford’s 13 original operas.  In early May, I took him up on his offer and spent a week at Countryside Montessori in Northbrook, IL.

This was a remarkable experience.  Firstly, I learned some wonderful techniques for teaching children to sing in tune, and in a focused manner.  Second, I saw how a fairly sophisticated production could be rehearsed and performed by 40 Elementary students in the span of a week.  Third, I observed Sanford Jones, a Montessorian who has studied with Maria’s son, Mario Montessori, and some other legendary trainers, and hopefully absorbed some of the indescribable energy with which he encourages children to do their best.  Finally, I had a chance to observe many classrooms at this fine Montessori school, and to see how they integrate music into their curriculum.

It was such an inspiring week, that I decided to return to Countryside Montessori in mid-June for MTIPS—the Montessori Training Institute for Professional Studies.  I attended a two-day workshop in Primary Music and a two-day workshop in Elementary Music.  The workshops centered on the Montessori Bells and the Tone Bars.  I saw how efficiently these Montessori materials can be used to guide students through musical learning, including singing, composing, listening, ear training, and performance.  We now have three sets of Bells at Brookview, and I have ordered a set of Tone Bars for the Elementary students, which should arrive at the end of the summer.  When used properly, the Bells and Tone Bars have a monumental effect on a child’s musical ability and the development of that child’s “ability to use and appreciate the arts,” which is part of Brookview’s Vision statement.

February 27,2011 

The Brookview students are a wonderfully musical bunch.  Walking through the school, you can hear them playing piano and percussion instruments, singing their favorite songs, and listening to classical, folk, and popular music from around the world.

The Toddlers have been enjoying an exploration of sounds that are high and low.  They have witnessed this concept in action on the guitar, the piano, the electronic keyboard, and on the recorder, and now they understand the variety of pitches that they can sing with their own voices.  I love how they are so pleased with whatever surprise instrument I bring in, and on another level, have a healthy expectation of new and different materials and concepts.  They are a living example of what Dr. Montessori called The Absorbent Mind.

In the Primary classes, we have been learning syllables with which to sing rhythms, such as Ta for quarter notes, Tee, for eighth notes, and the words Half note for half notes.  They have learned to imitate rhythms with me as the leader, or with each of them taking turns as the leader. The rhythmic work is also a vehicle for learning and playing many different percussion instruments, such as the Tambourine, the Cowbell, and the Triangle.  In the process the students absorb that instruments differ in their attack (the first micro-second of sound that we hear) and their decay (the amount of time it takes for the sound to disappear). They have also learned the difference between music that is random and music that is organized.  In one experiment, I played a steady beat on a button bell (like the ones that sit on a counter in a store for the customer to ring for service) while they improvised a melody on a glockenspiel.  The steady beat enabled them to create order in the music they were playing.

The Lower Elementary students have completed their study of North American music with a survey of music of African American culture.  We listened to music that slaves would sing on the plantation, some of which enabled them to communicate messages to each other without their masters knowing.  In addition, the students were exposed to gospel music, the blues, and the hambone, which is a dance that involves using one’s hands, arms, legs, and cheeks as percussion instruments.  As part of the second semester’s cultural studies, we are beginning to listen to music of Central and South America and the Caribbean.  The students learned about the Samba and Bossa Nova from Brazil, watched a video of a Puerto Rican Quattro player (a small guitar), and listened to panpipe music from the Andes mountains.  After some preliminary exercises that involved rhythmic games with drum sticks, we are now working with Latin American percussion instruments such as the Cabasa, the Guiro, and the Vibraslap.  The students sit in a circle and learn Latin American rhythms by creating beats additively, with each student entering the pattern one by one.  By exchanging instruments every few minutes, each student gets to play everything, and at the same time, practices the grace and courtesy of sharing and the proper handling of the instruments.

We have a brand new set of Montessori Bells for the Primary and Lower Elementary students to use, and some classes have already started presentations on this material.  The Bells are a classic Montessori work that helps the children with listening skills and teaches them to match pitch and grade sounds, that is, to put them in order from low to high.  They do this solely by using their ears, because the bells are all the same size. 

The Upper Elementary students have been learning to play the recorder.  They learned the C scale and can play not only the time-honored recorder standard “Hot Cross Buns,” but also “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Happy Birthday.”  We have a goal to learn “Hedwig’s Theme” from the Harry Potter movies.  The playing of the recorder is an avenue toward developing facility in writing music and learning the skills necessary to notate music on manuscript paper.  After some experimentation with creating music on an instrument of their choice (such as Glockenspiel, Xylophone, Guitar, Piano, or Recorder), it became clear that while several of the students are adept at writing melodies, all of the students can benefit from some work in writing rhythms. 

The method is as follows: Each student has a pair of Rhythm Sticks, which are like drumsticks that are very light and don’t have a tip.  They pick a number from 1-8.  While a leader keeps a steady beat of 8 counts, each student taps their sticks together on the beat they picked.  We then pick a second number, and a third and a fourth, all the while increasing the tempo.  The beats on which each student is playing are notated in a table on the wipe board.  The students then learn how to think of these 8 counts as 8 eighth notes, and to translate the information in the table into music manuscript. In subsequent weeks, we will work on using a base pattern of 16 beats (thus adding sixteenth notes), and 12 beats, which will create the triplet rhythms prevalent in many kinds of folk music and in rock and roll shuffles, like “Blueberry Hill.”

As always, it is a privilege to work with your children, and I am appreciative of that opportunity.

Thanksgiving, 2010

It's always a pleasure to tell you about musical life at Brookview:

The Toddlers continue to amaze me with the speed of their growth.  I receive the sweetest welcome when I come in the room and they have begun to recognize the various instruments I bring, such as the Keyboard, the Guitar, and the Drum.  They particularly enjoy following directions, such as when to shake the maracas and when to stop, and enjoy taking turns being the one who says, “Stop!”

The Primary students have learned some old American folk songs.  We talked about Stephen Foster—in one class I had a little trouble explaining why they didn’t have to be sad that he was not alive anymore.  We learned Oh Susannah and I’ve been Working on the Railroad and discussed how songs have certain parts that repeat and certain parts that change.  In addition, sometimes we know who composed a song and sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes it’s just a melody that was passed down from generation to generation. 

The Lower Elementary class has been enjoying an introduction to the world of Jazz.  We warmed up by exploring Latin American percussion, which we will be returning to in the second semester.  For the past couple of weeks, we have been learning about improvisation through Scat singing.  We experimented with putting nonsense syllables to improvised melodies, and now, we have learned several specific Scat rhythms.  Ask your child about Doo-bah dood-li-yah doo bop! or fa Doot-in’ doo-eeee doo-bee doo-bop!  Along the way, Scat singing also builds confidence and exposes the children to concepts like rhythmic momentum and terminology such as syncopation and anacrusis.

The Upper Elementary students completed their unit on exploring their own musical tastes and those of their family and friends.   Recently, they spent a couple of weeks singing and preparing a Halloween program that they performed at the Whitcomb Hotel to a wonderful reception.  We have also been expanding our musical vocabulary to build the life skill of speaking and writing intelligently about music.  It’s interesting that when one tries to talk about music, it’s challenging to go beyond “I like it,” or “It sounds happy.”  Saying something “has a good beat” is just the first step.  The goal is to get from there to “This piece is extremely Romantic in  style and is also quite cinematic.”  The 9-12 class just loves good words!

We received a wonderful visitor on Tues. November 15^th.  L.J. Slavin, an expert in Bluegrass and Mountain Music, spent the day at Brookview, exposing the children to the banjo, jaw harp, mandolin, mountain dulcimer, limberjack, autoharp, and some amazing fiddle playing..  He performed two different concert programs (one for Primary and one for Elementary), and each class had the chance to meet with L.J. to ask questions and view his instruments up close.  The children experienced a true slice of Appalachian Culture as part of our studies of the Americas.

One final note, Piano lessons are in full swing at Brookview.  Twenty-eight students have signed up, and they are having a great time.   In keeping with Montessori philosophy, I follow the child.  Some love to play Star Wars, some Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, some like to work out of a lesson book, some prefer to improvise, and some like taking a break to play some percussion and dance around the room.  In lessons and in the classroom, it’s a joy to work with the children and to witness their ever-expanding musical minds. 

October 7, 2010

The year is off to a wonderful start in music.

Twice each week, the Toddlers are enjoying singing their favorite songs.  We also have quite a few new instruments for them to play including maracas, castanets, and shaker eggs.  They are learning to pass the instruments politely.

The Primary students, who also have music two mornings each week, have been working with the concept of the echo.  They have experimented with imitating rhythms and melodies, both with their voices and on percussion instruments.  In addition, the students have learned two new Native American songs and examined a Native American flute.

The Lower Elementary students have been putting music underneath spoken poetry and stories, and have enjoyed an activity in which half of the class played percussion instruments and half were dancing and acting.  This type of activity takes place during their Tuesday afternoon music time, when the class is divided into three different groups, each meeting for a half hour.  On Tuesday morning, I stop by the Lower El classroom and those students who are available are welcome to join me for a quick music lesson.  One day, they looked for words with which to describe the different kinds of music I was playing on the piano, and another day we all sat around the piano and selected songs out of the book The Best Rock Songs Ever to sing in our Thursday afternoon sing-along.  The half hour we spend singing on Thursday afternoon is a time for the students to experience music of the cultures that they are studying.  We began the year singing Native American songs and have now launched into rock ‘n roll.

Finally, the Upper Elementary students have began the year with a unit entitled Exploring Our Musical Selves.  Each student created a Hear History, in which they remembered the music they enjoyed during years past, and also drew a Musical Family Tree, in which they expressed the influence of their families and friends on their own musical tastes.  In addition, the students have listened to various styles of music from the Americas and explored the descriptive vocabulary we use to describe classical, popular, and folk music from around the world.

I look forward to continued musical enrichment in the months to come. 

Larry Schanker, Ph.D.