Giveaways!

No, I'm not hosting a giveaway (yet.) But there are quite a few going on right now, and I thought I'd compile a list! Go enter!

Anya @ Notes of Joy is giving away a set of Bea's Keys.

The Teaching Studio is giving away the picture book A Winter Concert

MckMama is giving away an iPad (no, she's not a music teacher, but the iPad is worthy of posting. Believe me.)

I think I'm missing one or two, but I can't for the life of me remember where or what they are. If you know of them, please leave a comment and let us know!

LEGO Bricks and Music Lessons?!

Have you heard about the Lego Smart Creativity Contest? I just heard about it today from a homeschool discussion board, and (though I never thought about using LEGO products in my lessons before) I think I foresee them making an appearance at upcoming lessons. I mean, how cool does this idea (taken straight from the website) look:

LEGO My Music- Rythm Study

LEGO Smart Creativity Contest Entry (SEPTEMBER WINNER!)

By Paula Augustine, Home school mom and private music instructor

Steps: 1. Give each group of 2-3 students a LEGO Smart Kit. 2. Give them 3-5 minutes to work together and line up their bricks into a rhythm composition. 3. Let each group share their rhythm composition and explain what each brick 'symbol' meant. They will need to work together to decide how to organize the bricks into length is to be played and be able to play it together when finished. I had one group use some colors as rests! Another group used dotted rhythm patterns.

Lesson Learned: The students learned to work together, work creatively, and how use symbols to communicate with the class.

Anybody else interested in entering the 2010 contest? Just visit their website here to pre-register. (The first 10,000 get a free mini LEGO kit!) I think my students and I will definitely be able to come up with some creative activities... and knowing how creative some of y'all are, I have no doubts that your ideas will be equally as great!

Leave a comment if you decide to participate, too!

Fun Freebies in February

Laura, over at The Piano Studio posted a blog entry to let us know about a fun famous musicians wall chart that's free for download. I saved it and printed it out, and look forward to using it with my composer studies. (More on that another day!)

Debra of NotebookingPages.Com has some awesome Valentines Day lined pages and cards, as well as some neat artist and composer notebooking pages. I'm storing my Valentines pages for next year - I've got some cute ideas (think: making a book or wall of things students love about music lessons, composers they love or pieces of music they love) but I don't have quite enough time to carry them out this year!

Amazon.com is offering I Love the 80s, Vol. 1 (1880s) as well as The Orange Mountain Music Philip Glass Sampler Vol.I and Eternal Baroque. I love growing my iTunes library, especially with free samplers!

And finally, the last freebie comes from me. Nothing too exciting, just some piano key flashcards that I remembered while searching through my teaching files this morning. I figured I might as well share in case somebody could use them.

Enjoy!

Check This Out! - Musopen

I came across Musopen a while back while compiling my "Listening Room" project. It is full public domain downloads of classical music, that can be used for various projects. From the website:

Musopen is an online music library of copyright free (public domain) music. We want to give the world access to music without the legal hassles so common today. There is a great deal of music that has expired copyrights, but almost no recordings of this music is in the public domain. We aim to record or obtain recordings that have no copyrights so that our visitors may listen, re-use, or in any way enjoy music. Put simply, our mission is to set music free.

Public domain works are not protected by U.S. copyright law and are free to be used, copied, performed and distributed by anyone for any purpose, even if sold for profit.

I've been finding various ways to use this website in my lessons. One of my students is using My First Piano Adventures, and really enjoys learning about all of the composers! She told me that she listens to the corresponding CDs every night while she goes to sleep, and she was very disappointed to find out that Book C didn't have a CD with it. So, what did I do? As we've been studying the various composers, we've been going to Musopen and creating a CD of their works! Problem solved!

I hope that some of you find this resource as useful as I do... It was just too cool not to share!

The Listening Room Project

One of the things I have been stressing recently in my camps, classes and lessons is a love and appreciation for classical music. You would be surprised (I know I was) at the way my students sit riveted listening to and watching performances of classical music. I started working a week or so ago on a project for my students - a "Listening Room" on my studio website. I have scoured the internet, searching for good music for them to enjoy, without having ot pay tons of money.

I put this list of links to different orchestras, ensembles and performers that make recordings of their concerts available free of charge. Please feel free to share this list with your students and blog readers! All I ask is that you link back to my blog, and if you know of any other sources, pleases share them with us in the comments section!

Click HERE to visit the Listening Room!

Check This Out! - iTunes

While browsing iTunes the other day, I went to take a look at what is offered in iTunes U and came across some great free recordings of classical music, done by Columbia University. If you want to listen and download for yourself, just search for "Columbia University Orchestra" in the iTunes Store. It should bring up several recordings... click "See All" in the box labeled iTunes U for the free downloads! If you have trouble finding it, let me know and I will post some links, because you really don't want to miss out on these!

While you're there, you might also try searching for "Classics For Kids" to learn about composers, or search for "Little Kids Rock" for free guitar lesson or drum lesson videos (again selecting whatever is in the iTunes U box).

Enjoy!

Check This Out! - Amazon.com

I am completely addicted to iTunes. I purchase so much music that I'm afraid it may have killed my last computer. However, now that iTunes is straying from their $0.99 downloads and it's becoming increasingly harder for me to find what I want, I'm having to find other outlets! Today, while searching for a piece of music I couldn't seem to find anywhere, I remembered to try the digital downloads at amazon.com.

One word: Wow.

I think from this point forward I will probably be buying ALL of my music at Amazon. Go check it out for yourself! They have an amazing amount of (100% legal) FREE music, as well as a ton of inexpensive classical music. It's a great way to build your music library!

Case in point:

Scroll down to "Classical" on this page, then click $4.99 and under. FABULOUS deals!

Then, try searching "Classical," and sort the results by price. There's even a ton of FREE stuff! You may have to click around, but I was able to download several free jazz samplers, as well as some music from around the world this afternoon!

Enjoy!