Orange Roots Lesson 4

Unband the rest of the orange rhythm flashcards this week!

We started working on chord inversions this week. Use the red stickers in the back of your child's songbook to help them easily jump from inversion to inversion. Starting on Middle C, put 6 red stickers on your keyboard at home as shown on Lesson 4. of your student manual. The stickers should be placed on middle C, middle E, middle G and treble C (the C above middle C), treble E and treble G. Please, please make sure your child is using the correct fingers listed in the book.

F Major Scale--RH fingerings (never use finger 5: it gets to take a break):

Cockles and Mussels hands together help, including a broken chord variation:

We learned the difference between eighth notes (beetles) and sixteenth notes (caterpillars) this week. "A caterpillar looks like 2 beetles it seems, but look at the stem, it has 2 beams" Counting is also different. With eighth notes we count 1 & 2 &... For sixteenth notes we count 1 ee & a 2 ee & a.

Inversions/Mixed Paint

We actually HAVE played our yellow and blue chords in inversions--we just didn't realize it. We are now ready to take a root position chord and 'invert' it. This just means re-arranging the pieces. The chord is still CEG, but C moves to the top, then the E moves to the top, then the G and you are in root position again. We will play Old Paint in a new 'Mixed' up way to help us hear that it's still a red chord no matter matter if it is in root position, 1st inversion or 2nd inversion. No matter what the shape or order is, it just has to retain the same 'pieces' (in this case C-E-G) for it to be a red (C) chord.

New World Symphony

Our Let's Play Music students have created harmony in many different ways in 1st and 2nd year. Now in 3rd year we have the unique opportunity to play as an ensemble in class to produce harmony and a much fuller sound than they can accomplish playing by themselves. By listening to the CD, the children are provided the opportunity to model and to audiate the music in their heads as they practice.

Our Bugs are So Fun! (new verse)

A few of our songs from our purple CD have upgraded to our orange CD--with some new lyrics! The new verse in 'Our Bugs are So Fun!' will help us to learn to count those tricky 'beamed' rhythms that include eighth notes and sixteenths notes! If counting in this new way seems tricky, check out the theory page below.

Our Bugs are So Fun Theory Page.pdf

Download PDF • 546KB

Check out this young group of musicians experiencing the value of playing as an ensemble. Your student will recognize this piece as our very own Largo from New World Symphony by Antonin Dvorak.

#orangeroots #letsplaymusic #weeklyfollowup