Video Lessons
Enjoy these three virtual mini-lessons created under a grant by the Arizona Commission on the Arts. Designed for students ages 10-13, enjoyable by all!
Exploring Music
'Exploring Music' is a fundamentals-focused lesson. We explore the language of music: note names, rhythm patterns, and tones of the major scale. The focus is on the relationship between notes, what they sound like, and even how they feel. I use my own piano keyboard to help visualize the sounds, and students are encouraged to vocalize right alongside me. We explore what songs already express key musical ideas, and students finish the lesson with a song, improvising notes and creating a melody from what we’ve learned.
Finding Your Voice
‘Finding Your Voice’ is all about inhabiting one’s own body in making music. We experience the physical mechanism of singing: stretching, breathing together, working the muscles of the face and mouth, exploring what changes we can make to our bodies to elicit change in the sounds of our voices. We play fun vocal warmups to help students experience the breadth of their vocal range, and learn some technical language, like ‘diaphragm’. Students will be encouraged to be strong, sing confidently, and fill the room with their voice.
Crafting Your Song
'Crafting Your Song’ is about exploring and creating musical and lyrical ideas, how to capture those ideas, and how to share them, giving the learners tools to play and grow with. We do word mapping; explore song form; discuss elements like repetition, storytelling and emotion; free write to a simple prompt; and write down melodic ideas using basic lines and shapes (not standard music notation). At the end of the lesson, the students will be invited to share their original work with a friend or caretaker.