- Level: Mid elementary
- Pages: 4 pages, 2 pages of music, cover included
- Style: Beautifully spooky
- Bonus: mp3 performance track
- Format: PDF instant download
These ghosts are unsettling, but quite beautiful. Gentle Ghosts takes the scariness from many ghostly pieces and instead makes them benign. Rather than a true “Halloween” sound, this piece is more reminiscent of a soundtrack from a space movie. There’s nothing wrong, but things feel slightly uncanny because they’re unfamiliar. Students will enjoy the creepily beautiful sounds that make this piece sound more difficult than it truly is.
Level of Gentle Ghosts
Gentle Ghosts is an elementary level piece. The smallest note value is a quarter note, and all accidentals are written in (two flats throughout the piece). This piece is a wonderful opportunity for students needing to work on phrasing: long phrases, various dynamic markings, and almost constant motion make this the perfect opportunity to work on these elements.
Multiple registers are explored through left hand over right hand playing. These jumps to different registers always use repeating patterns, making them attainable for students at this level. And students love how mature they look while playing left hand over right! The damper pedal is held throughout the entire piece, giving students a mature sound without adding more difficulty than they can comfortably handle at this level. Gentle Ghosts is written in C mixolydian with a flat 6.
Bonus
As with all ComposeCreate® music, Gentle Ghosts comes with the creative and fun cover. But we also include an mp3 recording of the composer playing the piece. This can help inspire and help students learn the piece quickly during the short Halloween season.
What is a studio license?
Gentle Ghosts comes with a studio license which licenses the purchasing teacher to print as many copies as needed for any student they directly teach. So it is like getting an unlimited supply of this Music Kids Love® for yourself and your students. The studio license is not a multi-teacher license, so it can only be used by one teacher. However, the music and bonus can be used by as many students as the purchasing teacher directly instructs on a regular basis.
You can see more elementary music with a studio license here!
monique –
A great piece for my student that is not so keen on playing loud. He’s very intrigued about the damper pedal being used continuously throughout. No doubt these Gentle Ghosts will eventually be swirling quickly around the studio. Beautiful piece
Sharon B. Girard, NCTM –
Perfect piece for students who love patterns, but don’t particularly care to play loudly. My beginner 9th grade student just loves this piece.
Colin Eccles –
This was the stand-out hit in my studio this season! Excellent piece to learn through pattern analysis and rote.
Briana –
I love this piece for my more introverted students. They want something ‘spooky’ for Halloween, but nothing too aggressive or jarring. I don’t always like pieces where the pedal is held down perpetually — sometimes that leads to ugly clashing notes, other times the composer is so afraid of dissonance that the piece never goes anywhere. This balances that dilemma perfectly; harmony changes slowly enough for the ‘old’ notes to clear, but quickly enough to give the piece direction.
Maybe you’re already aware of this, but my copy seems to be missing an 8va symbol near the end, at measure 36? (Judging by the recording.) Not a big deal; easy to mark in.
Sarah Kelly –
My 10-year-old grandson will love playing this piece in the Fall!
Kerri –
This is beautiful! I have one student who doesn’t want to stop playing it just because Halloween is over. So we’re working on renaming it for post-Halloween fun. Gentle waves? Gentle wind? She’ll come up with something she likes. LOL