Musical Scraps From Nature
This is a set of pieces aimed at the beginner, or very near beginner, to spark imaginative and musical playing with the aid of pictures. Children love pictures! Each page depicts a full page colour photograph of a subject found in nature, and the music, ranging from two to four lines per piece, is super imposed on the photo, in fairly large print music. Each line is separate, the idea being that beginners often tend to either panic, of “feel the sense of boredom” on seeing a long piece o complete, so breaking it up makes it feel much more manageable. Many of the lines or material within them is repeated.
Simple techniques lie behind many of the pieces: and above all, ‘LISTENING’.
Each piece has a page where the teacher can read about the technique that is hopefully being developed within the piece, while there is a simple little one verse poem, further enhancing the atmosphere of each piece….and the beauty of this, is that in order to creat that special feeling for each one, a simple technique has to be attempted! Now, they see why their teacher told them to play this way or that.. so they can be the bird, or the butterfly!
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Description
The Story Behind Musical Scraps From Nature…
Musical Scraps From Nature has its origins in a lovely little story of creative joy being restored to music. I had been teaching a little girl who had been with a previous teacher, and had come to me, as she was really not enjoying the lessons with her previous teacher… I soon saw why: she was an extremely creative child, and she was bored! She was also confused and struggling with notation. After a little while of her trying some of my other pupils’ favourite books, it was clear we needed a lot more to ‘get her spark’ back’. She loved the lessons, but her mum was considering stopping them, as she was still not enjoying her playing… so, I decided to read a very simple piece for her, that was split clearly into manageable chunks, whilst not simply being a one line piece.
Keeping creativity at the fore…
As she was creative, I decided to place the music on a photo, so the inspiration was right there, all the time, for her to see. It was a transformation! She had success, loved the piece, and the picture, and them came to the lesson having composed a sunset piece herself! I wrote a few more, but sadly, her mother decided that other things were more important, and she had to give up. I subsequently used some of them with others, although at that time, had very few beginners. Those who did play them really enjoyed them. Since then, I have added more, and Musical Scraps From Nature is the result.
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