Your Favorite

Would you please think about your favorite popular or other songs. Tell me the name of one song and the musicians who play and sing. What can you share about the style of the song and the instruments used? Does your favorite song have a special message? Is your favorite song an original or has it been recorded before? Tell me as much as you can about your favorite songs or song. (If you are uncomfortable writing on the blog send your response to: pbradfuhrer@gaggle.net)

Attention 5th to 8th graders

Please take notice of the link listed as "The Radio Hour." This web site will give you lots of information on musicians and musical styles. You can test your knowledge by taking some of the online tests and checking your speed and accuracy with kids all over the US. There are also online crossword puzzles that you can try. Check it out. Blog your thoughts on the site! Share with us which puzzle or composer caught your interest and why!

Parents and students

Please explore the possibilities in this blog with your children. Help them see the exciting things there for them to learn. Each of the links on the right hand side of the blog will take you to a different site which can open up a new learning environment. A few of the sites even have games or puzzles which are teaching new skills. Please make use of this site. Take time to share with others by telling us what you liked about one or two of the links. Use the comments to share!

A great site to learn about the orchestral instruments

I just found a really great site to explore and learn about the instruments of the orchestra. I really think you will enjoy looking at it. It has many instruments to look at and listen to as well as activities that you can do yourself. Click on the orchestral instrument link on the right side of the blog.
Please take some time to explore this site. Use the comment to share with us what instrument you liked and why.

Why Teach Music

Music is mathematical.
It is rhythmically based on the subdivisions of time into fractions
which must be done instantaneously, not worked out on paper.

Music is a foreign language.
Most of the terms are in Italian, German or French;
and the notation is certainly not English but a highly developed
kind of shorthand that uses symbols to represent ideas.
The semantics of music is the most complete and universal language.

Music is history.
Music usually reflects the environment and times of its creation,
often even the country and/ or racial feeling.

Music is physical education.
It requires fantastic coordination of fingers, hands, arms, lip, cheek and facial muscles,
in addition to extraordinary control of diaphragmatic, back, stomach, and chest muscles,
which respond instantly to the sound the ear hears and the mind interprets.

Music is all these things, but most of all, music is art.
It allows a human being to take all of these dry, technically boring
(but difficult) techniques and use them to create emotion.
That is one thing science cannot duplicate;
humanism, feeling, emotion, call it what you will.

That is why we teach music.
Not because we expect our students to major in music
Not because we expect them to play or sing all their life
Not so they can relax
Not so they can have fun.
But so they will be human
So they will recognize beauty
So they will be sensitive
So they will be closer to an infinite beyond this world
So they will have something to cling to
So they will have more love, more compassion, more gentleness, more good, in short, more life.
Of what value will it be to make a prosperous living unless you know how to live?
That is why we teach music.

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Here is a great site to learn about to day's news

Middle C

Take a look at this web site: http://www.music.vt.edu/musicdictionary/textm/MiddleC.html and see the many ways that "Middle C" can be notated. I'll bet you only thought that there was one way to notate "Middle C." Share with us the number of ways you have seen "Middle C" notated before looking at this web site.