Two questions. Who is Australia’s most erudite lyricist? And how can you embed the General Capabilities in secondary music lessons? Aussie Song Lyric Readability In answer to the first (but no spoliers here, let me tell you) you’ll need to read all the way to the bottom of How complex are Aussie song lyrics? Analysis shows
Tags: Analysis, Australia, Australian Curriculum, General Capabilities, Lyrics, musicMusic Theory
Music Scale Posters featured on TES
My set of free Music Scale Charts was featured on TES, just in time for back-to-school. Each pages features a different key signature, with additional sharps and flats being highlighted and named. Looks great when displayed as the circle of fifths! You can download it at TES or below.
A-Z Musical Instruments Poster Pack
I’ve been looking for a set of A-Z musical instrument posters for our music room. But most sets seem to skimp on the difficult instruments (quick- name an instrument beginning with I, N, Q or Y!) and many are just line drawings. So I’ve created my own with all letters represented including I for Igil,
Tags: musical instruments, PostersFree Music Resources
Matthew Hindson, Composer. Deputy Dean at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Curator, Australian Music Program has a number of useful free music resources on his blog. Free Manuscript Paper: Five different styles including a compact 18 stave version. Free Music Fonts: There are 14 different fonts including a recorder fingering font, a guitar strings font,
Rainbow Tone Rows
My Year 6 music class experimented with serialism and tone-rows but using a diatonic scale (A B C D E F G) rather than a chromatic one (ie with all the semitones). I used the phrase ‘Rainbow Tone Row’ to link in with out use of BoomWhackers. Although this does somewhat negate serialsims goal of
Tags: curriculum, music theory, serialism, vocabularyMusic Alphabet Cards
“Music Mind Games” (Michiko Yurko, Warner Bros Publications) is an outstanding resource for any music educator, especially so if you’re planning on teaching any aspect of music theory. With its emphasis on cooperative learning, hands-on games and ‘joyful learning’ the simple, focused and fun games can be used to teach everything from the basic music alphabet
Printable Paper
Printable Paper is a top resource for teachers – and students – with a huge range (1300+ and counting) of paper templates, graph paper, lined paper and music paper. It’s all free, it’s all organised beautifully (just don’t click on the occasional ‘Start Download’ ad links) and there’s no registration needed. Try these pages: Graph
Erols Singers Studio
As a music teacher, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit that my singing voice is most definitely not up to scratch. In fact ‘scratch’ is probably a fair assessment of the tonal range and pitch qualities! I’ve tried a few iPad apps in the hope they might – at the very least – provide me
Finale Songbook
Woo hoo! There’s now an official Finale music notation app – Finale Songbook – and for a (free) first go, it’s not bad – not bad at all. Now I’ve used the Finale notation program ever since it was available on Windows, and I have all the disks to prove it! Back in the day,
Tags: Finale, notation, SongbookMusic Essentials – Arranging
Arranging is one of two creative secondary music titles I’ve written for Blake Education. It was written with Year 9-10 in mind, but could be readily adpated for younger students with more music experience. It’s fully photocopiable, so you can make your own arranging booklets or cherry-pick the material for inclusion in your own courses.
Tags: Blake Education, book, music, music theory