I was wondering why the choir teacher at The Cathedral & John Connon School wanted me to bring my clarinet today. \u00a0With Founders’ Day coming up this weekend for him and his choir singing 4 pieces, I knew it would be difficult to try my lesson plan on 50+ kids.<\/p>\n
I videoed the rehearsal and then he had me get up and introduce the clarinet. \u00a0I gave myself 10 minutes or less to do this because time was ticking and the parents are good at keeping it for you.<\/p>\n
This was not videoed because some of the choir kids did not have their permissions to be videotaped for whatever reason and they sat behind my camera for the entire rehearsal. \u00a0I had them sit with their friends while I did the presentation.<\/p>\n
I played the “Rhapsody in Blue” excerpt, the range of the clarinet, a little bit of Mozart “Clarinet Concerto” from memory. \u00a0Then the questions came. \u00a0Questions I would never expect from about 7-10 year olds.<\/p>\n
1. \u00a0Do your lips buzz when you play? \u00a0I had them experiment with their thumbs as mouthpieces. \u00a0Then I explained to them that the reed buzzes which buzzes your lips. \u00a0I had them do the lip buzzes that brass players do.<\/p>\n
2. \u00a0What is your ligature made out of? \u00a0(It is a real gold plated reverse Bonade…great for “Rhapsody in Blue”)<\/p>\n
3. \u00a0How fast can you play? \u00a0(This is standard from all people.)<\/p>\n
4. \u00a0Where does the air go when you blow into the horn? \u00a0I turned a quarter turn for a facial profile and played. \u00a0I showed the the slit between the reed and the mouthpiece and it seriously blew their minds. \u00a0How can so little air produce a big sound? \u00a0So we experimented singing. \u00a0It is not a little air, it is just controlled.<\/p>\n
5. \u00a0Based on the question above, what is your loudest note? \u00a0We explored high pitches and low pitches with the human voice (this was done on the side).<\/p>\n
There were other questions but I was surprised about the scientific inquiry. \u00a0These are not the normal questions I used to get years ago when I did things like this.<\/p>\n
That was my practice run. \u00a0Wish me luck tomorrow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was wondering why the choir teacher at The Cathedral & John Connon School wanted me to bring my clarinet today. \u00a0With Founders’ Day coming up this weekend for him and his choir singing 4 pieces, I knew it would be difficult to try my lesson plan on 50+ kids. I videoed the rehearsal and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62,"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.melissachalmer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}