When one thinks of Orff Schulwerk, two major instrument groups come to mind: xylophones and recorders! Both are “instrumental” in teaching with this method! Here are some tools worth checking out!

 This work is one of my favorites! I enjoyed researching it and was quite amused at the subject matter I uncovered! Click on the NPR story at the end of the article for the fun details! A secular oratorio written in 1937 Based on a manuscript of medieval poems Intended to be staged with dance Part of […]

Coming up on July 10th is Carl Orff’s birthday; he would have been 120 years old! In celebration of his life, I wanted to highlight the great work he did and how it pertains to the challenges of today! I did a little digging and found a speech he made at the opening of the […]

Some time ago, I had the pleasure of meeting a wonderful local composer! Nick Demos, who is a professor of composition at GA State University, sat down with me and let me in on his composition process. Not only was it fascinating, but so inspiring! Here are his ideas for developing your aural imagination through immersion so that […]

I belong to a Toastmasters club in Alpharetta, GA. If you have never heard of it, it is something you might want to check out! It is a club where people go to improve their public speaking skills. A couple of weeks ago, a question was asked to a participant that resonated with me and the […]

In this month of advocacy, we want to get the word out. Your parents and administrators need to know what you are doing and why it is valuable to educating the whole child. Social media has become the perfect outlet to do this: posting takes little time and reaches almost all. An added benefit is […]

It is hard to believe, but “Music In Our Schools Month” is already here! This month is all about advocacy ~ so let’s take some time to show the community what we do! Here are 3 last minute concert ideas that you can easily execute without a lot of work! You can highlight all of […]

Music class is not the usual place for students to work in small groups. We don’t see them very often or for a long period of time, so we cram in as much as we can in the time we have. Usually, the fewer the transitions, the better! So why bother trying it out? Having […]

Confidence comes from doing what you thought was not possible….or so the woman on my workout video says who also screams at me that I can indeed stay in a plank position for 45 more seconds as I am yelping in pain. When I am in said pain, I can’t imagine being confident about anything! All […]

After we sang their compositions a couple of times, I asked the students if they liked the order of their measures. One first grade boy mentioned that he wanted the measure with the gray to be last, so we switched the last measure with whole note measure. We sang it through to see if we […]