Candy Building Bricks

Rhythmic Building Bricks or Blocks are often used as compositional tools in elementary music classrooms.

Developed by Carl Orff's fellow teacher, Gunild Keetman, these simple 2-beat patterns use quarter notes, quarter rests, and paired eighth notes (and sometimes a half note). These are elemental rhythms most commonly found in children's rhymes, fingerplays, and simple songs and can be combined to create more complex rhythmic patterns.

Rhythmic building bricks break down composition into small, manageable units, enabling students to create their own pieces from simple patterns. This approach reduces the intimidation of composing and encourages creativity through structure. By experimenting with different combinations of rhythmic bricks, students explore concepts like repetition and arrangement, fostering creative ownership of their musical output. The use of repeated patterns helps students internalize how repetition contributes to musicality and familiarity. Additionally, rhythmic bricks allow for differentiation, as teachers can adapt pattern length, rhythmic complexity, and instrumentation to meet diverse learning needs.

Specific Learning Goals

• Rhythm:  Building bricks should follow natural speech (the way a word is spoken). 
• Repetition: Musical themes often repeat.
• Form Exploration: Try various elemental forms of aabb, abab, abba, aaab, and abac. 

I Get It, Now What? 

Rhythmic Building Bricks/Blocks are often thematic and should always use natural speech (which is why names don't work well as there are too many accents and pickups that don't fit the elemental quarter notes and eighth notes). 

Small groups of students are given 4 building bricks (this will create an 8-beat rhythm). The rhythms should be ones already learned. They practice arranging them, speaking them, adding body percussion and perhaps transferring these to non-pitched percussion. They may be used as a contrasting section to a short speech piece or song. 

These candy building bricks/blocks are perfect for fall and winter holidays and include some variations including sixteenth notes! Please note this will force a copy.

Goings On

Hi everyone! Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving last week - we stayed in our pajamas all day, watched the Thanksgiving Parade, played games and watched movies! It was so fun and relaxing and my family loved it - I did, too!
Week before that I was in Salt Lake City at the National American Orff Schulwerk Association's (AOSA) Conference which was amazing!  Truly love these peeps and the creativity and collegiality is very special and heart-warming. I attended some incredible sessions and loved reconnecting with folks I took Levels courses with and those who I have taught at Chapter workshops and State Conferences. This is also the one time of the year I see my editor face to face - Brent Holl of Beatin' Path Publications is a friend and amazing musician! Working on a new book can be stressful - and the editing process is difficult and full of discussions about which way to present material and what to leave out and what to include but Brent makes it easy!

One of my favorite finds at conference were the new musical sit spots!  There are several packs but I can see using this one the most frequently. For a quick assessment, lay them out on the floor and as students come in direct each student to stand on a specific note - Josiah, stand on a quarter note, etc.

Outside the conference center there were these amazing signs- so fun

and meaningful! 

We were also invited to attend a free open rehearsal of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Singing with this group would completely ruin anyone for singing with a small choir ever again. Full orchestra and seating for 90,000 in the hall. AMAZING!

This morning on my fb site - @o for tuna orff I posted a video with a cup game to Trepak from Nutcracker. Click on the picture to go to the video. There is also a book/song/activity to use for Hanukkah season as well called "Shabbat Shalom".

Enjoy! Happy Holidays!

Music for Hannukkah

I love this time of year- I love Christmas music and I love snow.. well... snow that GOES- which is one of the reasons I left Maine for NC! I like it here for a ocuple days then gone! I have a huge holiday concert with my kiddos at school with 300 kids! Whoopee! I have a very dear music teacher friend who is Jewish and I'm always asking for advice on Hannukkah music. I have never performed "Oh Dreidl" nor do I wish to.. it's just one of those things.. not my favorite! I try to perform a Hebrew folk song with the children singing in Hebrew every year instead of performing a "Hannukkah" song that has been manufactured/manipulated for this very special holiday. I also believe my students benefit from learning "Bim Bom" or "Shalom Chaverim" or "Hasuka MaYafa". Other favorites are "Hine Ma Tov", "Dodi Li", "Burn Little Candle" among others. I also love to teach some Hebrew dances and the kids love them! Try Haida! Enjoy this video!