New Music Coming After Break

In all our ensembles, I have been seeking music that works well with the mix of instruments and ability levels.  I will have new books for all students after break.  Parents need not purchase these books, but students will be asked to return  the books at the end of the year.  If a student likes a book, you may, of course, purchase it.

4th and 5th Grade students will receive Basic Fiddler's Philarmonic.  The book has tunes in 3-5 versions, so students of all ability levels can find something to play.

A)  Simplified tune with note names printed.
B)  More advanced version of the tune.
C) Back-up part (violins) or bass line (cellos and basses).
D) Guitar chords to help students improvise easy parts (open strings) or challenge themselves with improvisiation.
E)  Lyrics for all the songs so that students can use their vocal skills to help them play.

Many tunes students will recognize; we will sing them.  I will encourage advanced students to improvise or play harder parts.  5th grade in particular has enjoyed the fiddle tune we've played already--it uses our basses to the best advantage to have them play a bass line.  I think 4th graders will be relieved to have more varied degrees of challenge.

Classes will continue to be separate, but I have hopes of 4th and 5th grades performing together in the future.


6th to 8th grade  While I still seek a longer, recognizable orchestral work to finish the year, after the break we will also have a new book, Fiddler's Philharmonic Encore, similar to our fiddle tunes book last year.  This also allows students to play at many different levels of difficulty, and this genre of music seems an effective way to integrate our guitar players with the rest of the orchestra.  We will continue to work on and polish songs from More Strings Extraordinaire but will likely take a break from Jazz Philharmonic--there was a great deal to learn from those songs, but the challenges were too great for our rhythm section (more advanced jazz chords and syncopated rhythms), and a number of our melody players felt similarly lost.  My intention is to work on improvisation for advanced players with the fiddle tunes of our new book.