Tim Rohwer: Composer

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...

I recently started teaching an orchestra class, and I put together an arrangement of Vivaldi's Spring (1st Movement) from The Four Seasons.  It was very successful, and the kids in the class did a great job with it.  I decided to get it recorded, and so recorded myself performing each of the parts, mixed them all together and got the following result: Spring 1st Movement for Beginning String Orchestra This is also one of my first forays into recording.  I did some recording with a friend in college and for a music technology class, but going through the whole process myself was a good experience. Soon, I am hoping to edit the parts and make this arrangement available for purchase, as well as some  others that I have been doing for my class.

I've spent some time updating the education section of my blog, and will soon be putting up a lot of different resources, some for my private students, but generally free to use for the public.  Here's the link to this updated new section:   Educational Materials . I had a new student start taking lessons a little bit ago, and she was a little bit older and more able to use technology, and I thought about putting up some scales and other things that she could download and use so she wouldn't need to go out and buy a scale book or other things.  I realized that this could be a useful resource to put up for all of my students and for other teachers and their students also.  I started changing and moving things around on my blog to get the new pages set up, and I now I have the beginnings of my education section. Some things that will be included: -A section on each page for free resources that I have created for use with my students -Other extremely use...