Hey! Today I got a shorter post, but it is a specific post. You see it in the title. It's all about LEARNING HOW TO HOLD A STICK. Every time I get a new student that hasn't played percussion before, we spend a fair amount of time in lessons dealing with holding sticks. It seems like it would be a simple concept to explain, but I've found that it can often take a while for students to truly understand the idea of a fulcrum and keeping the other fingers on the stick . I know what your thinking, who is using a word like Fulcrum with a middle school or elementary school student? Well... Honestly, I am. Always in passing, but I use it to not hinder their furthur education. Back in. Percussion is an extremely accesible instrument. For one, you don't even need an implement. Just go out and play any object and you've suddenly became a percussionist. But in order to progress, we need to use sticks, and to use sticks we need to know how to hold them. to avo...
Hey all, I wanted to take a moment to talk about something I do that I think is fairly unique and how it can be applied beyond my specific instance. As a quick refresher, I teach a class called Beethoven's Buddies Clementi's Colorful Chimes Class (BB Chimes). In this class, kids play hand chimes that typically look like this. However, mine look like this What are those colors for you ask? Well I use the colors to help students recognize their note in relation to that color. For further example. My "scores" look something like this. There are a couple things to notice beyond just the colors, so lets get those out of the way. First is the fact that the time signature is notated as a number over a quarter note instead of another number. This means of notation is common enough that we don't need to spend too much time on it. Next is the use of numbers inside of the colored Quarter Notes. The numbers directly correspond with the octave numbers ...