Category: Music literacy
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It’s May and so, in the listening component of lessons this week, I decided to utilize The Imperial March. Yesterday, I had 3 different students say it was “joyful”, “exciting” and “cheerful”. Which got my brain spinning, as a music nerd and Star Wars nerd would do. I went to the score to do…
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Listening to music. How do you do it? New video up on the Harmanny Music Education channel on YouTube! It’s not just about putting music on, it’s about critically analyzing what you’re hearing and what it does to you. Craig is currently filling time for summer lessons, so if you’re interested…
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Back in the 80’s when I was taking piano lessons, the most advanced part of my lessons were the color drawings in my method books. Now, there are so many tools that help in learning. Today, I’m going to share a great resource that has helped my students. Flashnote Derby is an app that helps…
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There are lots and lots of benefits as to why children should take music lessons. Here are just a few. Music builds coordination When it comes to piano, or really any musical instrument, it’s building hand-eye coordination, using the dominant and non-dominant hand, and in the case of the piano, can have different motions for…
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The Four Seasons, by Vivaldi, are exquisitely written and the Spring theme is one of the more famous melodies out there. But why did Vivaldi write it? The Four Seasons is a concerto, one of over 500 written by Vivaldi, who was born in 1678 and died in 1741. The thing about this concerto, though,…
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I came across this video and was amazing. Larnell Lewis is a drummer who plays with the jazz band Snarky Puppy, one of my favorite jazz groups! The whole point of the video is that he listens to the song once, and tries to drum along with it. Watch and see what happens. I tell…
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Music has a form and a structure to it. Many songs that we hear on the radio, no matter what the style, is typically a verse/chorus/bridge structure. You may have multiple verses, and multiple repeats of the chorus, but it can be easily be broken down into smaller chunks. This video breaks down the Cantina…