Looking for ideas on how to best use Noteflight Learn with your students for distance learning? This webinar demonstrates 10 tips with lesson ideas, so you can get started with your students right away. We have outlined the tips and most of the lesson ideas below, but watch the entire webinar to get the see the demonstrations and hear all the ideas!
Tip 1: Use an existing composition exercise in the Content Library
- Complete the assignment as is
- Change the key major to minor, minor to major and invite students to reflect on the difference. Do this with relative and parallel major/minors
- Have students make their own variation
- Invite students to compose with the term/info you just reviewed - so they are applying the information
- Delete the last 4 measures of the phrase and compose your own answer
- Add additional composition techniques - add a drone, add retrograde, inversion, inversion retrograde, diminution or augmentation
- Create a SoundCheck Score for performance assessment.
Tip 2: Making composition assignments from a melody in the content library
- Have students play it
- Make a transposition exercise and identify how this is different from the original (theoretically and/or by timbre)
- Compose a variation on the theme
- Add new textures - additional staves - heterophony, monophony, etc.
- Delete half the melody and invite the students to compose
- Harmonize it
- Sync a video of the performance
- Create a B Section and open it up for notated solos, improvisations, cadenzas, percussion breaks, etc
Tip 3: Make the notation editor a learning lesson
- Have students edit a piece with an element from 3 (or more) palettes
- Have them learn the menu items by the elements of music
- Have students research a musical element they have never heard of
- Orchestrate content by changing the part
- Have different instruments play different parts - the tuba gets the melody and the flute gets the bass line
- Rhythmic devices: copy 8 measures of the piece and create diminution or augmentation of a section
- Provide the counts below each measure and invite the students to create the rhythm above it - they can use their own notes/note divisions and rests, but the notation should be beat inclusive to demonstrate beat awareness and placement
- Invite students to copy 8 measures and then create a slight variation to this with added ornaments, trills, etc.
Tip 4: Recording audio
- Record a pop song
- Record a duet or trio with yourself
- Make a dictation assignment
- Send a friend a bass line and invite them to compose their melody to it
- Add melody - every 8 measures pass the score on to someone else or invite students to write lyrics as they pass a single melody on and record it.
- Invite students to practice instrument intonation. Notate any scale on the doc, two times, one after another. Invite students to play and record over the first scale. Ask the students to self assess their intonation and provide feedback on their intonation with each given pitch and determine what they need to do for each pitch on their instrument. Have the students record it over the second scale and track improvements or further needs.
- Create a SoundCheck Score for performance assessment.
Tip 5: Adapting existing content to make assignments
- Remove the melody of a piano piece so students can compose with the bassline
- Take out the alto and tenor of a choral piece for students to compose between a bassline and melody
- Think about how wonderful and beautiful and amazing Anne Fennell is!! LOL
- Change the articulation and dynamics to compare and contrast on the expressive elements
- Invite students to write the rhythm counts underneath each measure to create a rhythm study
- Invite students to create a percussion part to a piece
Tip 6: Give a composition prompt and format the assignment
- Provide guiding pitches (everything from 1-2 pitches for elementary to expanded, depending on developmental abilities)
- Provide guiding rhythms
- Give measures to copy and paste
- Give a messy score that students can “clean up” by formatting
- Take a known melody (Twinkle, Twinkle, or the main melody from a piece they are studying and place it out of order) invite students to copy and paste measures and place them in order
Tip 7: Use colors
- Have students color the melody in a full score
- Have students color each note name with the corresponding classroom color
- Know your students who are color blind and need support
- Color code pitches on a xylophone - upload picture - and color code notes of a scale under the melody
- Create music with only a single pitch with a color that is different from every other note. This single pitch might be the one that needs the most work with intonation. Each time they play the piece, every time they come across that pitch/color - the student stops and tunes the pitch to a digital tuner app
Tip 8: Make rhythms with 2 voices
- Compose a drum rhythm pattern
- Record along with the drum rhythm
- Invite students to record a rap over the pattern (teach cypering for rap)
- Create a percussion duet
- Record 1 measure of a one-measure rhythm ‘question’ and leave the next measure blank - students record their ‘answer’ to the phrase. Increase or decrease the count amount: 2 count question/2 count answer, 4, 8, etc.
- Create a melody with a rhythmic accompaniment.
Tip 9: Sync a video
- Synch the video of a pop song to its score
- Synch a blank score to a video and compose to it
- Upload a video of a famous soloist performing a piece you have and play intine with it
- Find a video that aligns with a piece that you have in your library. Record your voice or instrument over the video while the music is playing
- Listen to a soloist perform, record your version of the soloist, phrase by phrase
Tip 10: Sharing and copying
- Have students compose by playing the telephone game
- Make a copy of a previous assignment and add a new element (measures, sections, etc.)
- Have older students make assignments for younger ones
- Invite students to create worksheets that help them learn music theory
- Notate a public domain melody that your students know and invite them to create their own variations on the staff below and share with others to play and perform
- Practice textures for composition and/or IB and AP Music Theory (heterophony, monophony, homophony) using a melody
Bonus: Use Noteflight Resources for hundreds of lessons and support!