Music Explorers, vol. IV

Last night was my inaugural music project as a team leader. I was mostly excited but slightly nervous. I think the biggest thing I've learned, in the last 2 sessions I've spent with kids this age (6-12), is that it's really always an exercise in improvisation. My co-team leader and I had a pretty set plan because our last session was cancelled. We were going to attempt to teach the kids a little bit about rhythm and notation.

The focus game we tried to play basically crashed and burned. Then, we helped them make little shakers with which they would keep the 4/4 rhythm we introduced. (Note to self: Keep children away from dried beans or anything that they can make noise with. Especially kazoos.) Finally, my co-leader started in on the content of the session, introducing whole notes, half notes, and quarter notes, as a start. From the looks and sounds of them, they weren't interested and weren't retaining anything. But, of course, when we had them create their own 4-beat measures and play them by themselves, nearly all of them got it. We were astounded. I introduced the concept of syncopation but decided delving into it too much might just bore/confuse them further.

All in all, it was a pretty successful night, barring our fairly reserved volunteers (only 4 of them) and the fact that we had too many kids for me to give them the Juicy Juice I bought. (16 juice boxes for 17 kids=no one gets any.) By the end of the night, I was pretty exhausted and decided to drink 4 lychee martinis.

Now I'm hungover.