Recorder assessment

You can't completely tell but we had crazy hair day at school. This video was easier for me to make cause i'm more familiar and comfortable with instrumental music, even if it is a recorder. :)

Instrument Family Examples

For my first video I chose an instrument from the woodwind family. The flute is in the woodwind family because you have blow across a surface, in this case the aperture, a hole in the mouthpiece. This video is interesting because the guy beatboxes the Inspector Gadget theme song while playing. I think it's a neat way to show how a musician can manipulate the sound his instrument makes.

This gentleman is playing a french horn. It is in the brass family. Brass instruments get their sound from buzzing your lips into a mouthpiece, then the air travels throughout the pipes and gets cut off in different areas when the keys are pressed down. This guy uses technology in a cool way and loops different recordings he makes to play all the parts to a popular song. 

String instruments like the violin produce sound by making the strings vibrate. This can be done by sliding a bow across the strings or plucking them. I would love to learn to play the violin. 

For the percussion family I used a video of the WVU Drumline. I was part of WVU Marching Band for four years and I couldn't think of a better example of percussion instruments all playing together. A percussion instrument's sound is created by hitting something. This could be drums, cymbals, xylophones, a cowbell, etc. 

Teaching a Song

Last week I had a horrible case of bronchitis. Excuse the bad singing. It's usually always pretty bad, but especially this week because I still haven't fully got my voice back. There's a song that I taught to my own class a few weeks ago called "Vowel Bingo." It's to the tune of "Bingo" and instead of saying B-I-N-G-O, you sing A-E-I-O-U. It's super cute and it was a great way for them to remember their vowels. Since I needed to reteach the song a different way so that they were saying the sound the vowels made, I killed two birds with one stone and used this as my song teaching blog as well. For my melodic contour map I made the shapes of the vowels with my hands so that they would remember which letter went with each sound. We are making the song part of their daily routine now during calendar in the morning. They like to sing and dance and I like it when they can remember which letters make which sounds!

Bad and good singing technique...Let's start with the bad.

 

Just a warning, you may want to turn your volume down slightly for this video. You'll see why in a minute. A few years ago my friend sent me this video of this girl singing a cover of Taylor Swift's song "Love Story." She had a bunch of these covers and she really didn't think she sounded bad. She needs a lot of vocal coaching, but I have no room to talk because I sound like a dying cat as well. 

The first thing wrong with her technique is that she looks to me like she is sitting down leaning against a wall when she should be sitting tall with her spine straight. Another issue I noticed was with her breathing. She doesn't look like she is taking a big enough breath, therefore she isn't supporting her voice like she needs to. It looks like she isn't opening her mouth enough for words to come out or to be enunciated. She's trying to imitate a pop singer like most young girls tend to do, but not keeping in mind proper singing technique when doing so. Taylor Swift sings with good technique and has done so for so long that she makes it look effortless. This girl's voice just sounds strained and painful. 

For the example of good singing technique I'm going to promote a friend of mine. When she was a teenager she was signed to a record label and thrown into a girl group. Sadly after 9/11, they decided to shelf the album and the girl group never got to hit it big. However, she still makes all these amazing cover videos and recorded an album a few years ago of original songs. Back to singing technique, even though she is playing the piano while singing you can see that she is sitting up straight. Her jaw is relaxed. Most importantly, she takes a deep enough breath to support her voice. You can hear and physically see the breath she takes. She has a lot of control over it and uses dynamics very well. When a line is about to crescendo or the pitch gets higher, she anticipates it and pushes it over.