Elementary Music/Music Technology Blog

As I utilize notation software in my classroom for my music class arrangements, orffestrations, recorder music, composition projects, etc., I was thrilled to see that Marc E. Schonbrun just wrote Mastering Sibelius 5 published by Course Technology. I had the pleasure of working with Marc at the recent NECC Conference where he presented Sibelius 5 and ProTools and I presented the Groovy Music Series. Marc is well-versed on the topic of music technology and he can explain it clearly.

I know many functions of Sibelius 5, however, as with any software, if you do not work with it often, it is difficult to recall every item. What was nice about Marc’s book is when I forgot how to perform a function, I could easily look it up in the index. When I went to the page number to find the item, Marc’s writing explains it clearly and logically. As I was teaching Technology for Music Teachers at Montclair last week, the participants were creating original compositions or arrangements of music using Sibelius 5. When there was an item that needed clarification, Marc’s book was a perfect resource. I could easily refer to it and quickly assist a participant in need.

If you use Sibelius, or especially if you just started using Sibelius, Mastering Sibelius 5 is the resource to have. It covers everything from A to Z (which in this case would be Accents to Zooming) and includes a companion CD so that you can learn by doing!

Continuing with my posts on how the nine national standards from The National Association for Music Education (MENC) can be enhanced by technology in the elementary general music classroom, today I approach standard #5.

Content Standard #5: Reading and notating music.

Achievement Standard:
5b. Students use a system (that is, syllables, numbers, or letters) to read simple pitch notation in the treble clef in major keys.

This lesson comes from my book: Technology Integration in the Elementary Music Classroom.

Can you spell these words?
(A Note Naming Game using the Classics for Kids Website)

Objective:
The objective of this lesson is to have the students spell the musical words on the Treble Clef Staff, using only the notes found on the lines and spaces of this staff. Therefore, this game does not involve notes on the ledger lines.

Materials/Equipment:
The materials required for this lesson are:
- A large staff
- Notes to place on the staff
- A computer
- The website: http://www.classicsforkids.com
- A TV, SMARTboard, or LCD projector so that the students can see the website

Duration:
20-30 minutes

Prior Knowledge and Skills:
The students need to know the note names on a Treble Clef Staff.

Procedure:

1. Review the Note Names of a Treble Clef Staff:
a. Take out a large staff (this could be a felt staff, a staff drawn on an easel, a staff used as a carpet, etc.)
b. Review lines and spaces
c. Review the note names on the staff with the method that you taught the students to identify and comprehend the note names on a Treble Clef Staff.
2. Play the Game:
a. Before you begin, please go over good sportsmanship. If you decide to play a game that divides the class into two teams, then it is very important to go over what good sportsmanship means. In my school, I have an excellent PE program, so when I speak about sportsmanship to the students, they have already experienced it in their PE classes and know how to practice it.
b. Connect your computer to a TV, SMARTboard, or LCD projector.
c. Launch the Classics for Kids website: (http://www.classicsforkids.com)
d. Click on “Games”.
e. Click on the “Note Name Game” (see Fig. 1).
f. The game will appear with the notes dancing from side-to-side on the staff. They dance from side-to-side until you place the correct letters beneath them.
g. Divide the class into two teams. I usually name my two teams after composers, such as Team Bach and Team Beethoven.

h. The first few words that appear on the screen are only one to three-letter words. As the students progress, the words have more letters.
i. Assign Team Bach to go first.
j. The goal is to drag the correct letter name to the space below each note to spell a word.
k. For a three-letter word, such as AGE (see Fig. 1), have three members of the Bach team go to the computer (or SMARTboard) and drag the letter to the corresponding note. When the student puts the correct letter under the note, he/she earns Team Bach a point. Therefore, for the word AGE, if all three students place the correct letters under the notes, then Team Bach has earned three points. If a student does not place the letter under the correct note, the computer gives you a sound to let you know that the letter was incorrect and the team does not earn a point. I will usually give each student two tries to earn the point.
l. The game will give you ten words to spell. Many times, the team that earns the most points is the one who had the words with the most letters. Therefore, at the end I give each student (on both teams) a reward of a musical pencil or a lollypop. It is up to you how you decide to reward them, or if you choose to reward them at all.

Evaluation:
As the students each take a turn, you can sit in the back of the classroom and evaluate each student individually for naming notes and if you choose, you can evaluate each student for sportsmanship.

Follow-up:
This lesson can be followed-up with more note naming games like “Musical Hangman” – a game where the words used only have the seven letters on the musical alphabet – or creating compositions with the notes of a Treble Clef Staff.
From Burns, A. Technology Integration in the Elementary Music Classroom. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2008.

As I continue with posting about lesson plans that utilize elementary music software as an enhancement tool, I thought that I would share with you a few ideas and a couple of lesson plans that I wrote using Music Ace.

Music Ace, produced by Harmonic Vision, is an excellent piece of software for elementary students. I first used Music Ace 1 back in 1998 when I downloaded the demo version and tried it out. All of the sudden, 30 minutes had passed. I was enthralled. I then installed the demo in my school’s computer lab and had my 5th grade general music class try out lesson one, “Introduction to Staff,” which covered lines and spaces of the staff, high and low pitches, and treble and bass clefs. The students loved using the demo and I realized that this was a wonderful way to assess and reinforce musical concepts that were being taught in my music class.

Music Ace first appeared as Music Ace 1 and Music Ace 2. There are 24 lessons in each that cover musical concepts such as rhythms, pitch, note names, keyboard skills, music staff (treble, bass, and alto), and ear training. A few years ago, Harmonic Vision combined the two programs to form Music Ace Maestro. Music Ace Maestro has all 48 lessons in progressive order. Some of the highlights of the Music Ace Series are:

1. Self-paced lessons: If you purchase a network license for your computer lab and the computers in the students’ classrooms, each student can utilize the lessons at his/her pace at his/her computer.
2. Progress Chart: You can keep track of each student’s progress. This is extremely helpful for when you need to assess each student for progress reports. If a parent has questions about his/her child’s grade in music class, you can simply pull out the child’s progress chart from Music Ace and use it to validate the child’s progress report.
3. Music Ace Maestro Manager: This allows you to input student databases and archive student databases so that you can have them for the years that you teach your students.
4. The lessons reinforce, enhance, and/or assess musical concepts that you have been teaching in music class.
5. Games: The games in Music Ace excite and motivate your students to learn.
6. Doodle Pad: A fun way to compose music using a variety of instruments. In addition, the Juke Box portion of Doodle Pad plays many songs that the students can listen to and/or edit.
7. Price: Reasonably priced for MAC or PC. As quoted from Harmonic Vision’s website: “A single stand-alone version of Music Ace Maestro has a suggested retail price of $127.95. The pricing strategy for Music Ace Maestro is to multiply a comparable Music Ace product by 1.6. For example, a Music Ace Maestro Network 30 sells for $1,918 which is 1.6 X $1,199 (the cost of a Music Ace Network 30).”

Lesson 1: I have used Music Ace in various ways. I have used it with Kindergarten to reinforce basic musical concepts, with my laptop connected to a TV and each student coming up to the computer to take a turn. We used Music Ace 1 lesson 1 so that the students could place notes on lines and spaces on the treble clef staff. The students thoroughly enjoyed this activity and were very successful at it. I was able to assess if they understood which note was placed on the line and which note was placed in the space. You can see this lesson by clicking on the following link: kindergarten_music_ace.pdf It was originally published by SoundTree. If you go to SoundTree “teaching resources”, you can see many more lessons that integrate technology for the elementary, middle school, high school, or college-age level.

Lesson 2: This lesson is included in Technology Integration in the Elementary Music Classroom. It is titled “Playing with Pitch” and it utilizes Music Ace 1 lesson 3, or Maestro lesson 4, to assess the students’ abilities to identify if the pitch goes higher, lower, or stays the same. To see this lesson, please click on the following link: playing-with-pitch.pdf

Question: I’ve discussed Sibelius’s Groovy Series and Harmonic Vision’s Music Ace Series. I would love to hear from you. Have you used these two products in your classroom?

As I blog on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays of each week, I thought that this week’s theme would be software (and lessons) for the elementary general music classroom. There are numerous products out there that elementary students can use in a variety of classroom settings, whether you teach “a la cart”, have one computer in the classroom, or can access a computer lab.

The Sibelius Groovy Series is a wonderful way for even your youngest students to begin creating music. There are 3 programs in the Groovy Series: Shapes (for ages 5-7), Jungle (for ages 7-9), and City (for ages 9-11). These ages do vary because you can easily use Shapes with grades K-3, Jungle with grades 2-5, and City with Grades 5-8. Each version assists the teacher with presenting, making conscious, and practicing the musical concepts of sound, rhythm, and pitch. Each version has two basic modes: Explore and Create. The explore mode presents a variety of concepts such as beat, high and low, dynamics, meter, and more, in a visual and aural way. The create mode allows the students to use the skills that were experienced, learned, and practiced in the explore mode to create a song. The create mode also includes all of the basic musical elements required to create a song: melody, rhythm, chords, arpeggios, bass, tempo, dynamics, instruments, and bonuses. The bonuses include unique sound effects that compliment the style of the music. For example, in Groovy Jungle, the bonuses are animal sounds from the rain forest.

I have used Groovy Shapes with my students in grades Kindergarten and One and Jungle with students in Grade Two. We have used it with one computer connected to a TV or SmartBoard (an interactive whiteboard), in five groups with access to five computers, or in the computer lab. We have also used Groovy to reinforce musical concepts that have been taught in class.

Lesson 1: When my first graders were studying the concepts of dynamics, mainly forte (loud) and piano (soft), we first sang songs using forte and piano. Then we moved to orchestral excerpts that were both forte and piano. Finally, we played a musical game such as “Hot and Cold,” however it was titled “Forte and Piano,” where one student would hide an instrument in the music room and another child had to find it. When the child was close to the instrument, the students would say “forte” loudly. When the student was far away from the instrument, the students would whisper “piano.” After we played the game, I would reinforce the concept of forte and piano by having the students perform the Groovy Shape lesson titled “dynamics” together. This could be done with one computer connected to a SmartBoard or a TV and having each student take a turn, or in a computer lab where each child works at his/her own pace at his/her own computer. Once we completed the lesson, I had the students go to the create mode in Groovy Shapes and add dynamics to a song that I created for them. This lesson was done with 5 computers and the students were split into 5 pre-assigned groups.

Lesson 2: Another lesson that we have completed in Kindergarten music class was to create a song in a specified form. My kindergartners learned about Vivaldi’s Spring, Movement 1 by listening to the music, moving to the form of music, ABACADAEA, and drawing to pictures that represented the form–we used trees for the A Section, and other Spring objects like birds, river, thunder storm, and sun for the B, C, D, and E Sections. Afterwards, we created a song using Groovy Shapes with the same form as Vivaldi’s Spring: ABACADAEA. I created the A Section and the students created the B, C, D, and E sections. We performed this lesson as a group with one computer connected to a TV.

Lesson 3: Finally, if you have Sibelius 5, you can use the Groovy Music Mark-up plug-in to create songs in Sibelius and turn them into Jungle or City melodies, rhythms, bass lines, etc. I have utilized this plug-in when I want to take a traditional folk melody like “Lucy Locket” and turn each phrase into a Jungle butterfly. One I have completed this, I then rearrange the phrases and have the students in K-4 rearrange them back to their proper order. It is a great way to assess your students.

Resources:
If you would like to hear examples of my Kindergartners’ works with the form of ABACADAEA, or my 1st graders’ works with dynamics, please just click on the links below.

Grade 1: 1C 1S 1M

Kindergarten: KK KM KC

To see the lesson about Vivaldi’s Spring, just click here: form_fun.pdf. This comes from my book of lesson plans that enhances the elementary music classroom curriculum with technology: Technology Integration in the Elementary Music Classroom, published by Hal Leonard in coordination with TI:ME.

To learn how to use the Groovy Music Mark-up plug-in, just go to Sibelius Groovy Music and scroll down to the “downloads” section. There you will find a pdf file titled “Groovy Hints & Tips for teachers“. This pdf file shows you how to use the plug-in along with how to use many other short cuts and tips in Groovy.

Groovy is for MAC and PC and has a website for you to share all of your students’ works with other students in the US and England.