Digital Musicking

Choral Potpourri/Choral Ethics: Auditions is a blog article by Marie Grass Amenta about a man who began his career as a demanding and emotionless choir director. His interpersonal skills were non-existant with his choir. After self-reflection he soon discovers this is not really who he is. A young girl who auditioned for his choir was seen crying afterwards and he decided he can't pretend to be someone he isn't. That experience was a life-changing moment after which he left his current position and went to a community chorus and is now in a more relaxed, enjoyable environment for all.

Best Practices for Children's Choir is a podcast with Matthew Parker discussing his best practices when working with a children's choir. The discussion content ranges from choosing music to engaging in warm-ups. Matthew also shares his favorite octavos, composers/arrangers, warm-ups, and tips when choosing music. This is very useful information and a great resource to use when working with your elementary and/or middle school choir.

Podcast and synopsis of best practices for children's choir. I want to reference this if the world works my way and places me in an elementary school next year.

This is an online music curriculum that can be supplemental or can span the entire year using only Quaver. $$$

Rhythm Syllable Systems - What to use and why! is a blog in which David Row takes a look at the various rhythm syllable counting systems in use today. He gives a thorough explanation of each one as well as providing links for further information about a particular system. He also discusses that none of these systems give instruction or guidance about what to do with rests. Overall, he states that the choice is yours for which system to use with your students.

I use this video to teach tempo with my 1st graders. It also helps them work on prepositions and classroom teachers will appreciate the help!

I use Music K8 videos to help enhance learning of several music concepts. They are fun to watch too!

This video discusses sound and vibration using music as a source. I use this with my first graders when we start discussing sound.

Resource for finding technology tools in music education and more.

This website has information on Orff-Schulwerk workshops, certification courses, as well as access to resources and video demonstrations with a membership. This is a great website for general music teachers, as well as any secondary teacher wishing to incorporate movement and improvisation into their classroom. I highly recommend all general music teachers get involved in their local Orff chapter.

Getting students to improvise is sometimes a very tricky task--lending itself as one of the most difficult challenges we face as teachers; however, author Steve Treseler provides a concise list of 10 steps, or strategies, for approaching the aforementioned topic with students, which includes but is not limited to building community through improvised games, choosing a piece that remains in one key center, and teaching all students the melody. By following these 10 easy steps, Treseler is convinced that students will receive the support they need to perform with confidence.

What better way to involve students--regardless of musical talent and ability--in the music-making experience than to integrate technology into our everyday classroom instruction? Blogger Ethan Hein provides his audience with seven sample lessons that use music technology as the means through which to teach music-specific content; among the examples he provides are assignments for making music with loops, MIDI, and found sound. By adapting any of these lessons for use in our own classrooms, Hein is convinced that we can engage and involve all students in the music-making experience.

This is an excellent, short article about the history of the blues that my fifth graders read during our blues unit.

If you teach any sea chanteys, you might be able to find some information as well as an authentic recording of them at this website by the Hyde Street Chantey Singers. (I've found that Firefox works best for this website, for some reason.) I use this site when we learn "John Kanaka" in fifth grade.

This is a VERY old website, but if you teach square dancing (we do "Camptown Races" in fourth grade), this is the resource for you! You can click around to find detailed names and instructions for probably any square dance move you can think of, and each one also includes an animated GIF showing what each move should look like. This was a great resource for me as a non-dancer!

This site is FANTASTIC, and I hope it never goes away! It's got each instrument's preeminent part from Britten's "Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra" and I use it as review as well as for a summative listening assessment where students have to identify the instrument that's playing.

This is a great Prezi I happened to find as I was looking for resources to teach "Sansa Kroma" to my third graders. If you use that song in your setting, it's worth checking out!

This is a great website called wheeldecide.com. It's one of the only "spinner" websites I've been able to find, and it works perfectly for when you've got some extra time with your younger elementary students. I just load up the songs and games they know, and I let one of the students spin the wheel and we sing and/or play whatever song/game comes up. They love it!

I know this isn't a "website", per se, but I need to share Dudamel conducting the fourth movement of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" since I just bookmarked the listening map. This is such a wonderful performance, and it demonstrates how crucial the conductor is in coercing a certain sound from the performers!

Carnegie Hall made an animated and interactive listening map for all four movements of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" and it's wonderful! I use this with my sixth graders during our music history unit!

This site has a listening map while Symphony No. 9 is playing. It helps tell a story while also showing themes and what instruments are playing.

These videos are great to hear the sound of the instruments.