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What's in a Name? Apparently, Quite a Lot!

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:59:26 +0100

I'm taking a short hiatus from square dancing in my second grade classes.They have already mastered squaring the set, circle right/left, dosido, partner swing, promenade, right and left grande, and more. Some parents from non-American cultures get distressed at the word dance, so what we're really doing here is-moving rhythmically in organized patterns, keeping a steady beat while listening to the directions from a caller chanting or singing over a traditional rural folk tune, that may have had it's origin in a Celtic country. This is just movement that has been going on since kindergarten (walking and moving to the beat of a musical selection). So, what's in a name? Apparently, quite a lot. In some cultures, dancing has connotations of unwholesome activities including seduction. OK, there is that reality in our culture also, and it does make for easy confusion with what we do in elementary school which is anything but seductive.
It wasn't too long ago in our own history, that square dancing was looked upon with disdain by many Americans, especially those in the rural areas. Square dancing was an activity not suitable for young folks. Those banjos, fiddles, mandolins and guitars were just too seductive. This was the thinking, true or not, that led, as you know, to play parties. Play parties were more or less square dances without the banjos and fiddles. The movements were mostly the same, but curses be on any folks performing these in a square or with instrumental music. Play parties-good. Square dances-evil.
I'm sure that at that time in history, play parties were more on the wholesome side, lots of adult chaperones and held in homes etc. It seems silly, looking back, that just a banjo and a square formation could change the nature of the same activity, but in their minds it was two different things. We are fortunate today that play parties came about. Without the play party, many of our folk tunes would be just tunes without words. Thankfully, play parties were singing events and the dancing couldn't happen without the singing.
I sometimes get disgusted and resentful (in my mind only, folks) with a parent who suddenly wants their child to stop participating in musical movement, the same movement we've already been doing, just because it now happens in a square and now has that word "dancing" in it. I tell myself to take a deep breath and remember that this parent may have a distorted definition and vision in his head of something that doesn't look anything like the movement the students are doing. A part of me wants to just tell the kids that we are going to be moving around from a square formation, but being from Texas, where the State Folk Dance is Square Dancing, I have to keep using the proper term. Fortunately, the next dance they will learn will be done in wholes lines and is called called a dance, but a Virginia Reel!

My New First Page and Blog Explanation

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:31:40 +0100

I've noticed that most of the other music education sites I visit are basically blogs. I intended my site to be more website like by having some static content that is useful at anytime. I still plan to keep it that way, but I'm joining the crowd a bit by moving my blog to the first page. In doing so, I had to copy my old posts, hence most of the posts that seemingly were done in February of 2012 were actually made before then. I've posted the originally blog post dates in the posts, for those who care about the original time line. Starting with this post, I'm back on track and am deleting the old blog section.
Just thought you might like to know.

Rubrics and Evaluation Ideas for Orff Teachers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:21:27 +0100

Originally Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster on Sunday, January 8, 2012

This blog is short and sweet, really sweet! As I told my Twitter followers, you will want to kiss my feet in gratitude after checking this out! ha. The folks who put these evaluation rubric ideas together are the ones who really get what Orff Approach teachers actually do in the classroom. You won't find much evaluation of music literacy, symbols, lines/spaces, etc. You will find things like creativity, movement, playing skills, singing skills etc being evaluated. If you're an Orff Approach teacher, you're getting your students engaged in actually creating music first, then teaching music literacy once they have need of it. Check out the best assessment rubrics for real Orff teachers right here:http://tinyurl.com/739plbc

A Thoughtless Question

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:19:13 +0100

Originally Posted on Tuesday, September 13, 2011

This was the tweet that initiated this post:

musically8 Allison Friedman: Prof. just asked me: How can music be related to the Science, Tech., Engineering, Math (STEM) focus our country has? any ideas

Before answering such a question I have to ask, what is the Prof really asking? Is he so uneducated not to know the relationship of Music, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics? How can even the dimmest bulb wearing the moniker, Professor, not have bumped into music's relationship to even one of the above? I am aghast and dismayed that any institution of learning would produce such an ignoramus.
Ok. I must be gracious to even the weakest of minds and for the time being, assume that he/she is thirsting to know that music has a solid relationship to all of the above. Consider the simple flute, some say it is over 4,000 years old. One such Chinese flute uncovered a few years ago was engineered and crafted from an aquatic bird's leg. The instrument was still playable and played a distinct scale, not some random tweets.( a little Twitter humor, sorry.) Guess there was no science or engineering here? The piano, and hundreds of other "common" instruments, did not exist until the technology for building them arrived. It takes physics to understand why a mandolin does not sound like a guitar. The both have strings and are made of wood. Frequency, vibration of strings and columns of air, the effects of using different types of wood and their correct combinations, the formulations of varnishes, determining the effects of high tension strings stretched across a precisely placed bridge of a certain height..then being able to duplicate that instrument again and again with similar results. Has he never heard the word Stradivarius? Has he never seen and heard an African Marimba?
Most of today's pop music could not have existed 40 years ago. The Beatles could not have created Sgt. Peppers without the limited technology of their day and of course, The Beatles could not have performed it live.
Today, however, Paul McCartney can perform the music live, with it sounding practically the same as the recorded version, sans George, John and Ringo, and of course, could sing with the absent Beatles via digital recordings that would sound as good or better than the live Paul.
Does he not know that 3rd graders can produce a musical recording at a school computer (and now, even on a phone), that sound engineers 30 years ago, could not produce with hundreds of thousands of dollars and giant rooms full of equipment?

Enough of this discourse. Any 3rd grader could give him links like the following, that deal with music, math, science, tech etc. http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/music/

The real question: What is his/her motive behind this thoughtless question? Does he want us to justify the worthiness of music in a person's education? We can do it and the justification is easy to find, just type and click? Does he consider music a subject for only the lame minded? Ok. So, Franklin, Jefferson, Bach.....etc were on the level of clams because of their interest and musical creativity?

The better question, Professor, is "How do the sciences, math, technology, engineering, history, civics, geography, psychology, art, religion and a myriad of other human knowledge and activity, NOT, relate to music?

I'm done.

Help for Non-Skippers

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:14:34 +0100

Originally Posted by the Orffsite Webmaster on Monday, September 12, 2011

Here is a suggestion for helping students who have problems with skipping. This comes from one of the elementary PE teachers at my school.:

We teach them step, hop then alternate/the leg that is up will take the next step and the other foot will do the little bitty ant hop, step, hop. We do it in slow motion then try to do it at normal speed if they are getting it. It is a developmental stage with opposition, so it is harder for their non dominant side which is usually not as coordinated, and it is harder for those that are not "ready" but tell them to keep practicing, they eventually will get it.It also helps if you hold their hand.

What Should Your "Real" Lesson Plan Look Like?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:11:47 +0100

Originally Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster on Monday, August 8, 2011

Got lesson plans? Of course you have them. Do you actually have daily, detailed and specific plans for every grade level, every class? I doubt it. I'm a believer that daily lesson plans should be for teachers and not for administrators or even subs. Some administrators, not mine, insist that lesson plans be so detailed that a visiting teacher could walk in and teach your class by following your written plans. This is insanity. I have never met a master music teacher who writes or follows such detailed plans in the process of teaching. This does not mean that I don't have detailed lesson plans, complete with objectives and processes, on my hard drive or in a notebook. There was a time that I needed such a plan. In my real lesson plans, I may need to write down the name of a gathering activity or song, but I don't need to write out specific directions on how to conduct that activity. If I'm teaching a folk song, that will eventually be sung and accompanied by Orff Instruments and movement, all I need is my score. I don't need to write out how I will teach it. I know already that I will begin any lesson with speech and/or movement. I know that I will teach the rhythms first, add body percussion, teach the melody, put body percussion on instruments, and teach the ostinati and barred instrument parts of the orchestration. I don't write all that out!
Here's a quote from Diane Lange: "A trained Orff teacher can look at a piece of music, write an accompaniment, logically teach the instrument parts to every student, and ask the students to perform the piece at the conclusion of its instruction."

This statement would lead me to believe that a musical score would be the foundation of an Orff based lesson and the most important item to have in a lesson plan book. This takes me back to my days of secondary choral music teaching. My lesson plan, in those days, consisted of a couple of notes, maybe use xyz warm-ups, sight-read x, and three or four pieces of music I wanted to teach. The details would be on my score. I had notes and markings all over it.

My lesson plan will not look like your lesson plan. Your lesson plan probably should not look like mine. It is absurd for me or an administrator, to insist that your lesson plan should fit neatly into a certain template. I don't need detailed information in my plan. Life is too short for me to write out everything I plan to do in every class, for every day. I am a teacher and not a textbook writer. If you need this, knock yourself out! It's your plan!

The Orff Approach is an approach to teaching. I have to keep correcting those who ignorantly call it a "method".
There are processes that are common to the Approach, but nothing dictates a specific method or order that has to be followed. It should, however, be elemental. It should be an approach that uses what children do naturally, speaking, singing, moving, playing, and improvising. These elements should be in your plan, whether written out or not.

More #Orff Tweeters, Please!

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:09:36 +0100

Originally Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster on Saturday, July 23, 2011

I've written previously about building your own Personal Learning Network (PLN) using Twitter. The news is getting out. It is a valuable resource for elementary music teachers and music teachers in general. Unfortunately, the word hasn't seemed to have spread across the land of Orff-Schulwerk . So far I've discovered only about ten folks who Tweet anything related to Orff process, instruments, lesson plans, books, use of technology or philosophy. I know they are out there and will eventually find their way to Twitter. Please help me get the word out. I also want to repeat that once you begin sharing on Twitter, remember to use the hashtag, #Orff, in your posts. That will make it easy for folks to search Twitter for Orff related postings. I am concluding my blog with a few Twitter posts from people in my Personal Learning Network. I hope this gives you an idea of how useful Twitter can be. Follow me on Twitter. My Twitter name is #OrffSiteDotCom

MissRobin81 Robin Giebelhausen

Teaching my concept lesson today. I havent been this nervous to teach since undergrad....#orff #levelstraining

ContentLiteracy Rhonda Lane Phillips

@PFPiedPiper Huge thank yous to your #orff chapter for promoting literacy with the young ones! That's awesome!

PFPiedPiper Eric L. Young

I love the smell of arranging in the morning. #orff #musiced

brentholl Brent Holl

Day 3 of VCU level 2 in the can. What a great group of students.

FacultyofMusic Faculty of Music

See our #Orff Certification program in action! on.fb.me/oSzDUQ

MakeMeMusical Susan Seale

Make me Musical !: Do you hide your creative ideas?makememusical.blogspot.com/2011/07/do-you…

OrffSitedotCom Jerry Bradley

@MakeMeMusical Great article on art as inspiration in #Orff in current The Orff Echo, called What Kids Really Love! The "Echo" pub. by AOSA

thomasjwest Thomas West

Strengthen Your Pitch Matching Skills With Theta Music's Vocal Matchhttp://bit.ly/n8Zmor

pisanojm Joseph Pisano Ph.D.

Just finished a demo video 4 our #ipad #music app: http://youtu.be/OB92ni4__rU Will be embedding it @ mustech.net later 2night. #musedchat

MusicTeachnTech Gabrielle Deschamps

New blog post: ASME Conference, Day Three (That’s right, I’m back!) #asme2011 #edchat http://wp.me/p1wQc8-lU

teaching_music Brian W

Practitioner Blog: Worthy Tech Tools for the Music Educator (Keith Ozsvath -@band_techie) http://dlvr.it/bwM0W #mpln

MrAhrens David Ahrens

"Maestro" #Android app allows fairly intuitive music notation. 1 staff only. #sketches? Do you have a better one? #musedchat #mpln

Wrightstufmusic Samuel

A History of Modern Music: the timeline gu.com/p/2ptct/tw via @guardian

scott_watson Scott Watson

Related to #standardizedtesting, & value of creativity (music!) in learning, please watchhttp://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U this (Ken Robinson)!

Here's a Cool Online Recording Program

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:06:12 +0100

Originally Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster on Thursday, July 14, 2011

The recording software online is getting better and better with things like soundation.com and Soundcloud. Here is a real awesome site that is sort of an extreme Band-in-a-box program, but is online and free. It's at ujam.com
I think your students will go crazy over this thing.
What you do is sing or play a melody with a metronome click track and when you are finished, the program generates a chord structure for you melody, typically in a verse chorus form. You can then audition and pick out a style that you think best fits your song. One way to use this program in an Orff like manner would be for students to create two vocal ostinati and sing or play them into the program. If they are short, 4 measures or so, as probably most will be, I recommend them using an AABB form at least for best results. I have just begun to play with the ujam.com program and have two examples for you. One is a thing that has two ostinati, called Listen to Somebody Else, and the other is just an old fiddle tune I played on my mandolin, called Soldier's Joy. I like the chords the program generated for that old melody.
Here's the link to my stuff. Listen to the tunes and then have a blast playing with the program!

My UJam.com tunes.

Don't Forget to Use "The Volumes"

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 01:03:05 +0100

Originally Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster on Thursday, June 9, 2011

The Music for Children Volumes contain lots of pieces that could only be played successfully by a select ensemble. Many of the pieces were written for older children and young adults. The Volumes aren't intended to be used as a sequential methods books, but many of the pieces can be used as written, even in a classroom. Remember also that it is ok to modify these arrangements for your particular situation to fit the age, skill level and instrumentation available. Here are two fine examples I found on YouTube. (p.s. There are more bad examples of "Orff" than good ones on YouTube.)

Some of the "Volume" pieces can be performed in a classroom as written, example Vol. 4, pg 46, #21 - 3. http://youtu.be/imFaszyxJuM

Here's a modified piece. The melody was simplified & she used a simplified version of only 1 ostinato. http://youtu.be/uZKCe68e13g #orff

I posted these examples on Twitter. If you're not using Twitter as a professional learning network, I encourage you to get on, follow some good teachers, and share your thoughts also. My Twitter name is naturally, #OrffSiteDotCom

What is the Most Important Thing to Teach in Elementary Music?

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 00:59:56 +0100

Originally Posted by The Orffsite Webmaster on Wednesday, June 8, 2011

First, an analogy: Mother and Child

I think the progression is to have the baby first experience and develop a relationship with “mother”. After the baby has heard the word mama, in context (not the goal, but close), and tries it out, It doesn’t quite come out as mother, or even as mama, but mumu is a good start. The mistake would be to drop the relationship and concentrate on getting the baby to pronounce the word mother perfectly and not only that, be able to spell it and contrast it with the word father. Labeling mom as mom is important, however.
I’m an Orff, and most Orff’s believe in experiencing it first, and then labeling it. With just two classes a week, I have a choice to either spend most of the time involved in real music experience(and get a bit of the labeling) or spend my time labeling things with which they have little experience. My District has a music assessment test that deals primarily with music reading, symbols, solfege, and a bit of listening. My school probably ranks in the bottom third of the pack, but that test doesn’t cover what my kids can do, such as, sing a wide variety of songs in tune, sing canons, speak and play 3, 4 and more ostinati pattern simultaneously, improvise intelligently on percussion instruments, move expressively to music etc. Once they hit band or orchestra in the 6th grade, they’re reading music everyday. They learn the reading quickly. I’ve never had a director say “Don’t you teach music reading?” I do hear about what musical students are in my school and how quickly they learn to play well.
Most of my career has been in secondary choral music and not in elementary. I found I could easily teach students to sing and sight read choral music, if they had experienced music by singing and playing it. I’ll take experience over reading and labeling, but if I could discover a way to do it all in two 45 minute classes a week, it would be ideal.
I guess I’m wishy washy and agree a bit with both sides, sort of like the scene from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

Pete: Wait a minute. Who elected you leader of this outfit?

Ulysses: Well Pete, I figured it should be the one with the capacity for abstract thought.
But if that ain’t the consensus view, then ___, let’s put it to a vote.

Pete: Suits me. I’m voting for yours truly.
Ulysses: Well I’m voting for yours truly too.

Delmar: …..Okay… I’m with you fellas.