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Scary Bedtime Songs: Scary Mary, Zombie John, and Slinking Spiders

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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...
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Harmony Postlude: Mary Had a Little Lamb in Minor

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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...
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The Patience Threshold

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For those who are not as familiar with violin repertoire, there is a book of etudes for beginners written by Franz Wohlfahrt.  These are quite famous in the string world, although some students might consider them infamous.  I had been resistant to use them when I first started teaching since most students I assigned them to wouldn't practice them anyways.  I have recently started to be more insistent that they spend time with them, to the point where we may spend half a lesson on just a Wohlfahrt etude.  A colleague of mine who teaches piano has a similar set of etudes that he uses, and which many students may peg in the "infamous" category:  the Hanon book (etudes by Charles-Louise Hanon). As I mentioned in the discussion on acquiring new skills and my Skill Acquisition Hierarchy , technique - the "how you do it" of any skill - is the foundation you build upon before you can become a true artist or even just get better at anything.  Since this is the c...
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