From sheet music of arrangements and original compositions to music education resources for string players and composers, this blog is a collection of resources for musicians, teachers, and students alike.
Tim Rohwer's Arrangements and Compositions on YouTube
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Yay!! New content on my blog! There is now a list of compositions, one containing a link to the 1st movement of my string quartet on YouTube. (Hey, look at that, there's even a link in this post).
I recently took another job as an orchestra teacher. Seeing how much people have liked the harmonic exercise minor version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" from a few years back, and knowing that my beginning orchestra would have a limited playing range, I decided to take the minor version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and orchestrate it for a beginning orchestra and a more advanced orchestra. To do this, I placed the main melody in an "A" part for Violin, Viola, and Cello. I then added harmony parts, Violin Part B, Viola and Violin Part C, Cello D, and Bass E. To have this become a more "official" piece, I expanded out the structure of the piece so that it would be an ABA structure for the section. Beyond that, I added two other movements using children's songs as the overall theme for a suite of songs, which I have called "Scary Bedtime Songs." The first movement is Scary Mary, the 2nd is Zombie John (taking inspiration from Gus...
As a precursor to an upcoming discussion on harmonies (or a "postlude," if you will pardon the musical pun), I wanted to rewrite "Mary Had a Little Lamb" again with the same melody but different harmonies, placed in such a way to put it in a minor instead of a major key. This wasn't too hard, as there are only three notes (4 notes in some versions) in the whole song. Here's the minor version of "Mary Had a Little Lamb:" While this is the same exact melody, a change in the harmonies can give the song a different feel, in this case quite sinister and very dark. Since the melody used only DO, RE, and MI in the original key, I turned these into ME, FA, and SOL for the minor version. I've utilized a similar technique for my Piano Sonata to help change the feel of different movements but to connect them together. The first movement is in A minor and starts out in the melody with a B-flat grace note going to the tonic, A. The second move...
I've been talking to my students for a while about my pyramid of learning skills and wanted to share some of the insights I've gleaned as to how people learn how to do stuff, more particularly as it applies to the arts. These are kind of the rambling thoughts I've had on the subject, and might be a little scattered still a the moment as I am still developing the ideas that are here. As I got finished teaching a few students one day, I realized that their pattern of learning followed a certain path, and that that same path was the same for me as I was beginning to learn how to play, and it has continued since then down that same path. With these insights, I started to formulate a model for how people not only learn how to play music, but how they learn to a number of different skills. What I came up with was this: Learning a new skill first involves the basic technique of how to do it. For musicians, this involves the functions of holding an instrument and m...
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