Tracks for kids' improvsisations!

Improvisation is so important for developing kids' musical creativity and independent musicianship!  Here are some super fun YouTube backing tracks for kids to improvise melodies to.  

My students use recorders to improvise to these tracks, but they would also work with xylophones, voices, or ukuleles playing melodies.

Process:

• Start the track and demonstrate some of the improvisation for the students.
• Show them which notes they are allowed to use for the improv.
• "Trade 4's" with the students, where you improvise musical questions, and as a class they improvise musical answers
• Give students time to explore possibilities with their own instrument, improvising to the track.
• Allow volunteers to demonstrate their improvisations, having students clap after the solos as if it was a jazz performance, and flowing from one soloist into another.
• Add more pitches to what they are able to use in their improvisations, repeating the process. 

1. Guitar backing track in A-Aeolian, with Am and G as the main chords:

      Have students improvise rhythms first on A, then melodies with A and E since they're LA and MI

     Next A and G only

     Then A, G, and E

     Then A, G, B, and E. 

     Remind students that A is the resting tone so they could make some of their phrases end on A.

     If you're having your students improvise with ukuleles, they could play Am and G chords improvising strumming rhythms, or they could play melodically in the process described above.

2.  Slow rock E minor backing track

      

3. Fast rock E minor backing track:

     Kids improvise with E, G, A, and B first.

     Then let them add D and F# if they know how to play them on recorder.

Shake the Papaya Down: Visual, Chord root rhythm writing worksheet, and Garage Band projects

Lyrics and chord roots visual

Shake the Papaya Down lyrics and chord roots visual: you can download the free and editable Microsoft Word is here.

Shake the Papaya Down chord root rhythm worksheet: you can download the PDF for free here.

This is a great song for upper elementary because it has 3 partner songs, and the chord roots have I IV V I. You can have students sing the chord roots, label them as tonic, subdominant, and dominant, improvise rhythms over the chord roots, and even improvise with the chord tones.  After my 4th graders did their chord root rhythm composition, they worked with partners on a Garage Band project where they picked an instrument to play the chords, and they recorded themselves singing the partner  songs and chord root ostinato they composed.

Christmas circle game: tonal creativity focus

I do this with the song "Santa Claus is Comin' to Town," as a way to take a song from my school's holiday sing-along and make an MLT classroom activity out of it. You could also substitute any Christmas song for it.  Here's the game:

• All students sit in the circle and keep the beat to the song.  Choose 1 kid to be the first Santa.  Santa creates a major tonal pattern (at Aural/Oral or Verbal Association, whichever level your students are at), and all students repeat that pattern after Santa.

• Then everyone except Santa closes their eyes, and Santa chooses one of two very small toys to hold in their hand.  This could be any 2 items small enough to fit in a child's hand; I use two tiny polar bears, one with red on the bottom and one with green.  One of the toys represents "Naughty" and the other represents "Nice."  (With the 2 toys I use, the red polar bear is naughty and the green one is nice.)

• Santa hides the toy they picked in their hand, and the teacher hides the toy Santa DIDN'T pick in the teacher's own hand.

• Then Santa walks around the inside of the circle to the beat of the song as all students sing.  Santa can even move as if they're carrying a heavy bag of toys, adding heavy movement exploration to the activity.  At the end of the song, whoever Santa lands in front of guesses whether Santa has the Naughty toy or the Nice toy in their hand.  If they are right, they get to be the next Santa. If they are wrong, the same kid gets to be Santa again. After they guess, whether they're right or wrong, they share their own tonal pattern for the class to repeat!

• If the guesser was wrong, all kids close their eyes again and the same Santa gets to either change which toy they have or keep the same one.  If the guesser was correct, the guesser is the new Santa and picks the toy as all kids close their eyes!  

7 Habits songs: Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

Habit 7 version 1: song

This is a 4-chord song written to sound like a pop song to fit the theme of having fun and renewing yourself, which defines Sharpen the Saw. :)

A cute rhythm creativity, chant composition activity. Great for Orff teachers too because the kids compose 4-measure chants listing their favorite things to do when they Sharpen the Saw. 

Student creativity for the song:  Students create their own chants listing 4 things they do to sharpen the saw.  Perform as a rondo: in the A section everyone sings the song, in the B/C/D/etc. sections each small group performs their 4-macrobeat chant twice.

Noteflight notation for version 1 of the song can be found here.

Habit 7 version 2: duple chant

Habit 7's chant notation is on Noteflight here.

Habit 7 version 3: longer song

In this version as well, students create 4-macrobeat chants listing what they do to sharpen the saw.
Noteflight notation for version 3 of the song is found here.

Frozen outtakes: Mixolydian round!

"Spring Pageant" from Frozen's outtakes is a GREAT Mixolydian round for kids!  See the first minute of the video above.  In my 2nd grade classes this year, we used just the first stanza (ending at the first "Spring's good and winter's bad"). We also sang it in E major to fit the students' voices better than the original C major.


Here's what my students did with this song:

• listened to the original recording, imagining the characters from Frozen singing it
• created macrobeat movements as if we were different Frozen characters (your students will have zillions of ideas for this!)
• used rhythm sticks on the beat pretending they were Frozen characters: make your rhythm stick Olaf plodding through the snow, Cristoff reining in the reindeer on the beat, Elsa creating snow....
• sang "Brr" on the resting tone as an ostinato; the kids on the ostinato and me on the melody
• sang "Ding-dong" on scale degrees 5-1 as an ostinato, as well as other tonic ostinati using the words "ding-dong" or "ding-ding-dong"
• split the class in half, with half the class singing an ostinato and half the class singing the melody
• sang the song in a round with them going first and me going second, then reverse
• sang the song in a round, just the students without me (in 2 parts; for 2nd grade I was very impressed!!)
• played ostinati on Orff instruments with the song
• the students composed their own 4-beat ostinati on Orff instruments using tonic pitches

Wake Up! Locrian song + rhythmic improv

Songs used: Slow Locrian song from Experimental Songs and Chants without Words and Wake Up! chant from Music Play

My kindergarteners LOVED this activity this year and would always beg for us to keep going longer!! 

Musical concepts covered in this lesson:

• exposure to Locrian tonality, duple meter, and triple meter
• vocal exploration (they looooove the tongue trill at the end of the song
• AB/AAB form
• 2 meters and 2 tempi, duple and triple + fast and slow
• piano and forte
• flow with pulsations
• rhythmic improvisation

Lesson:

• Tell the students to lean their heads onto their hands and close their eyes, pretending to sleep. Sing the slow part of the song, gently rocking back and forth on macrobeats. At the fast part of the song, use exaggerated facial expressions and large flicking movements on macrobeats (flow with pulsations) to "wake up." Pretend to stretch from high to low as you do the tongue trill at the end.

• After the song is over, pick one student who was keeping the beat well to come into the middle. As you sing the song again, their job is to audiate their own rhythm pattern in triple meter. Give examples. They lie in the middle of the circle and pretend to sleep, then wake up, then chant their rhythm pattern on "BA." 

• That student looks for someone who is really trying their best (or listening well, or keeping the beat well, or moving with flow well, etc.) to be the next improviser. This incentive really motivates all the students to try their best, knowing they may get a turn soon!

Variations/Extensions:

• Use a cat puppet and a mouse puppet. Tell the students during the song, one of them will move up and down to the macrobeat, and the other to the microbeat. For example, move the cat during the fast section to the eighth notes (microbeat), and move the mouse during the slow section to the dotted quarter notes (macrobeat).     You can also use the two animals to show two different dynamic levels during the two parts of the song.  Which animal was singing piano, and which one was singing forte?

• Have the student in the middle improvise rhythms in a Q&A rhythm "conversation" with you. Making sure the triple meter tempo you chanted the song isn't TOO fast, you chant one pattern, and they chant something different back to you.

***What Do You Do With a Drowsy Sailor?***
 This activity can also be done with the song "Drunken Sailor," replacing the word "drunken" with "drowsy." I did Drowsy Sailor with 3rd and 4th graders, who loved it and would choose it on music choice day when they had the option between different activities!

For Drowsy Sailor, students stand in the circle, moving the macrobeat in their heels and tapping the microbeat on their shoulders. On the words, "Way, hey, and up," students do a move that they as a class created (my students like moving one arm up and accenting the word "up").

One person is lying in the middle of the circle, and starts to wake up at the words "Way, hey, and up." After the song is over, they improvise a rhythm in duple meter using syllables, such as DU-DE DU, DU-DE DU.

Valentine game and minor song!

Song used: Valentine, Valentine, I'm searching for a Valentine (Jump Right In! book, Grade 1)

Materials:  small foam or paper hearts (2-6 of them)

Students sit in a circle with their eyes closed. First the teacher walks around the circle behind the kids, and hands out one heart each to 2-6 kids (depending on how many kids you want singing the pattern in between times through the song).

When the song is over, the teacher is back in his/her seat, and students open their eyes to look behind themselves and see if they got a heart. If they got a heart, they echo a minor tonic pattern in D minor after you (MI-DO-LA works great with this song since it's in the melody).

The students who just echoed patterns pass their hearts to new students as the rest of the class closes their eyes, getting back to their seats by the time the song is over. And the game continues!




Alternatives:

• Students could listen to the music for how many times they hear MI-DO-LA in the melody.
• Students could look at the notation of the music for where they see MI-DO-LA in the notation.
• Students could create a minor tonic pattern or minor melody instead of echoing after the teacher.

***Easter alternative of this song***:

I've also heard this song used with the words "Hiding eggs" at the beginning; however, I can't remember the rest of the words. But it could be used as an Easter activity too with revised words!

Whether the Weather round + rhythm creativity FREE DOWNLOADS

I love "Whether the Weather" because you can do SO many things with this song. This year, my 2nd graders used this song to...

• experience and move to triple meter
• sing a tonic ostinato + the song for the first time
• sing in a round for the first time
• play Orff instruments with the song (using the notes D and A in various patterns and borduns)
• create, individually, their own short patterns using D and A on the instruments
• create, in groups, their own ostinati chants using weather words and the cards below
• perform the song and their ostinati in a rondo form

My AWESOME mentor teacher even used this song in a concert with singing and Orff instruments. So many possibilities.... :)

Here is the song:

Using the rhythm cards below, the class first read the rhythms using DU-DA-DI syllables and then saying the words in rhythm.

Then students broke into their small groups (4-5 students per group) and I handed each group a set of cards, with 2 of each of the cards below.

The groups created their own arrangement of 4 of the cards to create a 4-measure chant: for example, "Rain, Tornado, Hurricane, Rain."  Groups practiced their own chant in rhythm on its own, and as an ostinato chanting it as the rest of the class sang the song.

For the grand finale, the whole class performed a Weather Rondo!  The form went like this:

• A section: All students sing "Whether the Weather" 
• B section: Group 1 perform their 4-measure chant 
• A section: All students sing "Whether the Weather"
• C section: Group 2 perform their 4-measure chant
• A section: All students sing "Whether the Weather"
• etc.!

Images of the rhythm cards used in the activity (download the cards at the bottom of this post!):

And, last but not least, the lyrics with pictures:

Download the weather rhythm cards for free here.
Download the lyrics (with pictures) to "Whether the Weather" here.
Download the sheet music to "Whether the Weather" on Noteflight here.

Dory the Dorian song :)

Lesson plan idea:

 Sing the song while sitting and moving with flow.  Tell the class we're going to pretend to be Dory the fish, and show them one hand moving like a fish, still moving with continuous flow but with obvious squiggles in the air from that hand.  

Chant triple meter patterns (Verbal Association or Aural/Oral) to individuals between repetitions of the song.  If you have a marine animal toy, have the student say their pattern to that animal! (My students love saying patterns to my big inflatable dolphin. ;)

Each time through the song, change what kind of underwater animal the class is pretending to be--dolphins, stingrays, turtles, whales, minnows, etc. Get student ideas for this - they LOVE giving ideas!   
If the animal is larger, like a whale, the teacher can use both arms and a wider amount of space for the flow.
If the animal is smaller, like a minnow, the teacher can have them just flow with a pinky.  

The teacher could also suggest to be stingrays flowing in low space, or dolphins flowing in high space, not expecting the children necessarily to contribute to ideas for the animals but only using the ideas as a guide for variation in the movement the teacher models.

My favorite ideas from the kids: shark and plankton! Make the movement and dynamics small if the animal is small, and big if the animal is big! J

§  Curricular rationale: continuous flow, body awareness, high and low space, exposure to Dorian, rhythm patterns in usual triple 



***Rhythm Creativity Alternative!***

Using the dolphin or other stuffed marine animal, have rhythm conversations with the students!   Ask the kids to put a finger on their nose if they want a turn.  When the teacher comes up to them, they should chant something DIFFERENT than what the "dolphin" just chanted. :)

To show the students to audiate before they chant, the teacher shows the dolphin whispering in his/her ear. The teacher then chants the pattern the dolphin "whispered" to him/her.