Sometimes music involves memorizing facts – but who says you have to do that sitting down? I get tired of lecture-style teaching pretty quickly (and the kids tire even more quickly), so I LOVE when I can find a way to imbed information into songs and activities, so it’s not so boring. Like Mary Poppins says – “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun.”
So I created a song to help my students learn about SATB voicing – soprano, alto, tenor and bass. Another plus to putting fact memorization into a song is that you can touch on some other content too. I used this song to review a cross-over bordun with my students, as well as using correct singing voices, and singing with multiple parts.
Here is the song:
Here’s a brief description of how I teach it: First we learn the main melody. Then there is a very simple bass part and a cross-over bordun. This, put all together, creates the A section. The B section is made up of 4 separate parts. First, we sing about the bass on low C, then we sing about the tenor on E, then we sing about the alto on G and finally we add the soprano on high C. So you end up with a nice C major chord when you put all four parts together.
You can do the B section to ways. You can build in all four parts all in one B section, or you can return to the A section after each part (first time sing about bass, second time sing about the tenor, etc) and then add them all together at the end. It just depends how much time you have in your class period and which version you prefer. I like to do it the first way.
Here are some other activities you might be interested in:
Halloween Activity for Exploring Head and Chest Voice
Teaching About Voice Types With Kindergarten – Sing, Speak, Whisper, Shout
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