Have you checked out About.com online? It has lots of “neighborhoods” featuring information about all sorts of interests, and one of them is music education. Started in 1996, About.com has been run since 2005 by the New York Times company.

The music education site presents information and resources on music theory, history of music, profiles of musicians and composers, online music games, and lesson plans. Every week a newletter is emailed to those who sign up, with links to their articles about specific topics within each of these areas–spotlights on certain performers or composers from various musical genres, lesson plans, a free music resource of the week involving songs, links and downloads; timely series built around, for example, Women’s History Month, Jazz Appreciation Month, and Black History Month. There are ideas about practicing, buying instruments, history timelines, etc.

Apart from the music education site, the larger site, about.com also has “neighborhoods” devoted specifically to folk music, classical, guitar, top 40/pop music, and children’s music. You can also sign up to receive weekly emails with highlights and links for any of these topics.

Since 1968, I have always played “Blackbird” as a warmup on the guitar. I teach guitar students this song as an introduction to Finger Picking. The students learn to use the thumb on the bass strings and the 1st and 2nd fingers for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd strings. The song also teaches the student to slide up the neck and back down.
“Blackbird” was written by Paul McCartney, who was inspired to write the song as a reaction to racial tensions escalating in the U.S. during the spring of 1968. In England, girls were referred to as “Birds”. During later McCartney concerts, Paul sings the song with a background video playing of a black woman standing in a field of flowers, with her arms stretched upwards towards the sky.

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This is the third and final installment of the “Essentials for the Classical Vocal Library” series. This seems to be a catch all of topics, moving from style and reference resources to performance preparation and finally career development. This installment is particularly useful for the teacher who has budding students interested in doing more serious auditioning and making a go of the music world. Some resources are not books, in particular the career resources, which are online databases for audition searches. If you have used any of these references and have found them helpful, please blog about your experience with them. If you have found another reference equally if not more helpful in any one arena, please list the title below. Thanks for following the series- if you are interested in a series of other singing topics, please list that below as well.
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When teaching a student or a class a particular musical piece, I share the history of the song with them. This induces more interest for the student. I will occasionally write a blog about the history of a particular song that I use with the students.

The first song I would like to discuss is “Let It Be”, recorded by the Beatles. I teach this song on the piano, guitar and bass guitar, and all of my students love learning the song.

Paul McCartney, who wrote the song, sings the vocal, backing vocal, and plays piano and the maracas. John Lennon plays bass, while George Harrison sings backing vocals while playing lead guitar. And, of course, Ringo Starr plays the drums. Other instruments used in the song are an organ and electric piano played by Billy Preston, and two trumpets, two trombones, a tenor sax and cellos played by uncredited musicians.

During the summer of 1968, the Beatle sessions had become hostile. McCartney was worried about the band’s future and threw everything into keeping the group alive. One night he had a dream in which his deceased mom, Mary, appeared to him and told him not to get so depressed about things. She told him to just :Let it be”. This dream quickly became a song.

For some time Lennon thought Mother Mary was the Virgin Mary, and wanted to add a giggle to the song. When Paul said “No”, Lennon went into the studio one night before the song was to be cut, and added a little phrase to the beginning of Let It Be, “Now we’d like to sing ‘All The Angels Come’”. Paul was not happy.

Students know this song, and are instructed to play the song smoothly with a flowing progression. The bass lines consist of many runs from one chord to another. The piano also progresses smoothly from one chord to another (chords from C down to G use C, G/b, F/A and G). Thus, this song teaches students flowing techniques and sequence. Let It Be!

February is my favorite month to teach, and it’s just around the corner. The reason is because February is Black History Month. This is when I focus primarily on Folk music, Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll. If you are interested in devoting the month to Black music history, here’s a list of resources to pull from. They will make your classes more interesting and you might learn a thing or two as well (as I did).
DVDs:

Ken Burn’s: Jazz

This amazing 10-part series covers everything a classroom music teacher needs to teach the history of African-American music. Starting from the early days of slavery and the creation of the “Spiritual”, it takes the viewer all the way up to the Jazz created in the 60’s. I especially love the disc about Swing, because my students get so into the dancing.

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The pentatonic scale is a five note scale, using intervals I, II, III, V and VI. There are several rumors on the origin of the scale. The one I am attached to is the scale was found several centuries ago in Asia from the black notes on the piano.

The scale is used by rock and blues musicians to play lead guitar. One famous lead guitarist that uses this scale is Eric Clapton. Other instruments, such as the Flute, also play the scale to an accompaniment.
What is unique about this scale is the notes in the scale can be played with the chords of the same major key or relative minor key. This inspires the student to be creative in choosing the notes in the scale to play with an accompanist. Students actually go into a trance playing the pentatonic scale while I am playing the chords in the same key.

I also found that the song, “Amazing Graze”, only uses the notes in pentatonic scale for the melody. Students that are familiar with the song are giving an assignment to figure what notes in the scale are used to play the melody. This is great ear training for the student.

Do you use the pentatonic scale, or know something of it’s history? Let me know your thoughts on this amazing scale.

Happy New Year!

Did you know that the usual melody for that “Auld Lang Syne” song you may have sung a few nights back was not the original melody for the song?

If you’d like to hear the song as originally intended by Robert Burns over 200 years ago, click here to open a new window–go to the bottom of the page to the last song and listen to a sample of Auld Lang Syne using the original melody, on one of the Burns CDs from Linn Records (Their series contains the first and only recording of all 323 of Burns’s songs, performed by over 100 of the best contemporary musicians in Scotland.)

Burns collected the song, which was already old at the time, and added some of his own words to it, to make it the song we know now. The melody we’re used to singing was apparently selected by (more…)