Saturday 8 September 2012

Welcome Back, Buchananites!

It's back to school time! Yay! I am so happy to see all of you again! I am looking forward to a fun school year with you!

Here's what's up so far!

Grades 4 & 5 (Rooms 13, 17 & 19) are starting the year with the song "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye. We began by watching a cover of the song by the group Walk of the Earth, where each member plays one part on the guitar.
From left to right:
Player 1: Uses the guitar as a percussion instrument
Player 2: Plays the ostinato (a repeating pattern) which is actually just IIV to I chords
Player 3: Plays the guitar melody
Player 4: Plays the off-beat chords (on beats 2 & 4)
Player 5: Plays accent chords


Then we watched another version of the song: Gotye saw that so many people were doing covers of his song that he made a compilation video of a whole bunch of YouTube videos from around the world!




Next week we will be learning to play this song on the Orff Instruments:

From: http://musescore.com/user/24296/scores/49627


Grades 1/2/3 are learning the Tritsch Tratsch Polka by Johann Strauss. We have coupled it with Deborah Ziolkoski's story and movement about the ringmaster and tightrope walker from Fun With Composers. We are learning about ABA form in music (same/different/same), and a little bit about the life of composer Johann Strauss.

Here is a recording of it - ask your child to show you the story and movement!


Did you know that the Tritsch Tratsch Polka is also used in the video game Mario & Sonic at the London 2012 Olympic Games? It can be found in the Synchronized Swimming section!





Pretty cool, huh?

6 comments:

  1. Hi there!

    I love this easy version of the Gotye tune. Any chance you would consider sharing the rest of the arrangement with me? I would GREATLY appreciate it! I love what you do - this is a fantastic blog! If possible, could you email me the arrangement at kristiwalkey@gmail.com?

    Thanks so much!

    Kristi

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  2. Hello!

    I love this version too! Would you mind sharing this with me at gmostrander@coe.edu?

    Thank you!

    Gina

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  3. Hi there,
    That is actually all there is of the arrangement - I had just found it on the internet somewhere. We just kind of added our own ideas as the kids came up with them!
    Thanks,
    Ashley

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  4. Did you have the kids sing the song? If so, did you have any problems with them singing the line "all the times you screwed me over" or did you change it? Thanks for sharing this, my kids are starting to learn it on orff and are SO excited!

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  5. Hi there,
    We didn't actually sing the lyrics along with it - we just did the Orff section provided, so the lyrics didn't come into play. But I'm sure you could change the word if you're singing it! :)

    ReplyDelete