orchestra
Easy Technology Hacks to Liven Up Rehearsal Kristen Flak-Solom, WMEA State Chair, Orchestra
I’ve been on a mis- sion to make or- chestra more fun this year, particu- larly in the fourth through sixth grade classes. I noticed students needed more review on new concepts, and
playing our songs over and over again was getting boring. In this article, I share some of the successful activities I’ve used in the last few months that involve technology. For these ideas, you simply need access to the internet and a projector.
Note Reading Games
Lightning Pitches – Jacob Mashak and Jessica Amir created a resource called Lightning Pitches for Orchestra. It contains flashcards you can project on the board and is organized by major scales. Each flashcard shows the note in treble, alto and bass clef! I’ve used these flashcards for class review, but you can also make it a game by having students earn points for correct note iden- tification or having pairs race to see who can play the note correctly first.
Note Lottery – This idea was created by my colleague Nancy Kurr and students loved it! Pick three to five pitches to focus on. Go to
https://wheelofnames.com/ to design a spinner and enter the pitches you want to use. On a sheet of staff paper, have students draw four notes using the given pitches. This is their lottery ticket. Next, use the spinner to select the order of notes. If the student’s notes are in the same order as the spinner’s, the student wins!
Spinners are useful for many purposes in rehearsal. You could focus on method book exercises or skills to review. Recently, I put emotion words on a spinner such as happy, surprised, and angry, and students created a short soundscape to match the mood.
Online Flashcards – If your students have access to devices,
musictheory.net
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has many online exercises for students to practice note identification, key signature identification, and more. I have half the class silently work on a
musictheory.net exercise while I run a sectional with the other half. You can create settings for the exercises to only show specific notes. This resource has links with preset settings for each string. Just click the string you want to focus on and go!
Noteflight or
Flat.io – When reviewing G string notes, I had sixth graders create a short four-measure composition. They could use any rhythms we recently covered in our rhythm unit and write in 2/4, 3/4 or 4/4 time. I collected all the papers and went to Noteflight to write them out for all instruments. I then printed the music for each section. In class, we played two compositions a day as our rhythm and note reading warmup. First, students clapped the rhythm, then they said the note names out loud, next they pizzed the notes, and finally they used the bow. By the time we got through all the compositions, students were pros at G string notes!
Rhythm Review
Rhythm Randomizer – The Rhythm Ran- domizer randomly creates different rhythm combinations to project on the board. Use the settings to narrow down what specific rhythm values you want to focus on. When- ever students are learning a new rhythm, I will use this website as a warmup. When introducing the rhythm, I will clap/play the rhythm and students will echo back. As students become more comfortable with the new concept, I will have them play it against a backing track or I will count off and they have to clap/play it back without my help.
It is also fun to play the following game with The Rhythm Randomizer. Split stu- dents into two teams. A student from Team 1 has to play/clap the rhythm on the board. If they get it correct, their team earns a point. If they get it wrong, Team 2 gets an opportunity to perform the rhythm and steal
“…playing our songs over and over again was getting boring.”
the point. The team with the most points at the end wins.
Rhythm Bingo – Bingo Baker allows you to create free Bingo cards. I created rhythm patterns in Google Slides, snipped and saved the patterns as images, and then up- loaded the images into Bingo Baker. You can print off cards or play online. Student volunteers performed each rhythmic card as an additional check of knowledge.
YouTube Resources
Beginner Play Along Tracks – Check out Zachry Orchestra’s YouTube channel for a ton of beginner play along tracks. There are videos for various levels of difficulty, but some of my favorites are the ones just focusing on the D string notes. Students get to play a harmony backup to various pop songs. New videos are added regularly!
Drones and Tracks – This Cello Drones YouTube playlist is a helpful resource to improve intonation during rehearsal. It is also fun to add a rock or hip hop backing track as a metronome. The rock drum tracks by FrogBot Beats work particularly well with almost all genres of music.
I hope these ideas inspire you to try some- thing new in your next rehearsal! Do you have more ideas to share? Feel free to share them on the Wisconsin Orchestra Teacher Network Facebook page.
Kristen Flak-Solom is a grades 4-8 orchestra teacher in the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District.
Email:
kflak-solom@mcpasd.k12.wi.us April 2024
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