Music practical exame

Karin, the music teacher, invited us to show something from Portugual in the practical examination.

We chose to show Fado one of the main types of Portuguese music and Amália Rodrigues one of the main Fado singuers from the old times, and Malhão, a typical dance of northern Portugal. 

It was really fun, the dance is a bit difficult but they learned easily and we had a great time!

                                         

Fado "Casa da Mariquinhas" - Amália Rodrigues

Fado "Nem às paredes confesso" - Amália Rodrigues

"Malhão Malhão" 

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Music workshop 2

In music the most important things are the pulse , time and rhythm , which are what define music.
We started by making a warm , standing in a circle with movement and music warmed every part of the body. The heating is very important because without it, we can have some injury.

In this class we played some instruments.

Karin gave us some instruments, each chose one and then we experienced them . We saw the sound of each and how they sounded together.

With this exercise we worked the ear, the coordination when working together , time , following directions (in this case of Karin ) , mathematics to add and remove tools , knowledge of different sounds and instruments , the sounds if they were weak or strong and concentration.

We also talked that if we close our eyes , the other senses become more acute , so they are more worked and it is also very important that children do.

We sang with instruments and Karin drove like a orchestral conductor . We can do this with the kids and then let them try and be the conductors .

In the collection of instruments is important that there is a story or a song to ask the children to put the instruments in the right place , so it is easier to collect them and it is easier for the children to leave the instruments .

We also made a set of sounds, we were divided into groups , each group representing one animal and there was one person in the center that was the witch. Each animal had a sound and when you hear this sound you had to walk around the witch until the witch wake up and then try not to be caught.

This work sounds can also work the strong and the weak, slow and fast.

The acoustics , the ear , the body , the existence - I - the musical tension - Witch music - and mathematics are elements that can be worked through these games.

At the end we played djembe and guitar .

 

 

 

We learned the different drums and some chords.

You can try different instruments is very important and children like to know them and be able to play .

Monday, February 22, 2016

Music workshop 1

Today was the first day of the music workshop .

It started in a very funny way , before we enter we had to take off our shoes!  And the way how we treat the teachers is very informal we just need to call them by name . The music teacher is Karin.

In the first part of the class we talked about some musical concepts . The teacher began by talking about Eurythmics and said " to learn music first we need to experiment with the body ."

The Eurythmics theory was created by Rudolf Steiner together with his wife Marie Steiner- Von Sivers , and in this theory music is treated as a language.
The Eurythmics is a body and musical language , is a form of art and is used in pedagogy at the Waldorf method (also created by Rudolf Steiner ) as a pedagogical Eurythmics .

We did some warm-up exercises related to the theory.

We started with a heating in a circle a very active exercise in which we had to try to step on someone with caring, and we could not step on the person who was on our left or right. We could not leave the hands of anyone and that made it more difficult both to get other people and to escape.

The exercises were appearing in the course of the class.

We talked about pulse, time and rhythm, essences and aspects that make the music and very important to understand to work Eurythmics because with the body we can work all these points.

First we work the pulse as the "home".

The pulse is the basic unit that marks the time of a song. Is a succession of constant pulsations marking a certain time in equal parts.

We started to mark the pulse in the legs to the sound of some songs, feeling the beat. Much of the exercises were done in circle because that is a way of having more contact with each other and have better communication.

When we were more confident in marking the pulse we experimented with a sandbag and we had to mark the pulse throwing the bag to our colleagues from the side and with maces we had to play them and without missing the pulse or leaving the mark  we needed to pass to the person by our side.

The time was the second point to be spoken and the teacher treated him as the "rooms".
This is characterized as a serie of pulses that make up a song . Time, as the pulse that composes it, always has the same value in a certain composition.

We can find songs with bars of 2, 4, 8 or 3 times.

We heard some music and tried , each in his own way , to find the time of the songs. And we did an exercise with a tennis ball to mark the downbeat.

The rhythm we treated as " furniture " . The rhythm is a repetition of musical intervals present in a musical composition and can be strong or weak , long or short , regular or irregular .

We started to work a story of a moose walking in the woods and his steps changed according to the situation . At first walked in average step - corresponding to ¼ note - heard something and slowed down a bit - ½ note - felt danger and started running - 1/8 note - got tired and went back to slow down - note.

We also had an exercise in groups with cardboards that represented the note and its parts. And each group had to make a musical composition with these cardboards and try to play .

Cardboards

In the second part of the class we worked the voice.

The voice is produced by the vocal cords but is through our facial and body structure that our voice can be distinguished from the other voices.

We made a vocal exploration through different musical tones - more serious and acute.

And joining voice with Eurythmics we worked the sound with movement. Songs with gestures such as " aram sam sam ", human frames with motion and sound and the use of sounds from the daily day to make music, or games like memory through sound ( having a sound and try to figure out similar ).

At the end we used scarves as an extension of the body , blindly form of movement and dance and very appealing because the movements made ​​with the scarf can expression movements that we can not do with our body or we don't feel confortable to do. 

All this work helps children in coordination, cooperation, team spirit, waiting for their turn , mathematics , knowledge of the space around them and is very important in the knowledge of us, our body and our limits and capacities.

Friday, January 22, 2016