I’m getting ahead of myself, but my 2nd point at the KMTA Conference lecture Composition for Kids was “Relate Theory To Composition.” I’m going to be talking about this in a later post, but I thought the KMTA members might benefit from another example of this kind of teaching.
This morning, I had a student who played the Spanish Dance from Hal Leonard Lessons Level 4. If you know this piece, you know the LH uses this pattern:
It seemed to be a theme for the lesson and since it’s such a beautiful bass pattern, I asked her if she would reharmonize Mary Had a Little Lamb using that bass pattern. We tried it out and found that sometimes she had to repeate the GDG pattern and sometimes she had to repeat the GDF# pattern, but in all the whole piece could be played with that accompaniment. She and I both agreed that it was a beautiful improvement to Mary Had a Little Lamb harmonized by primary chords!
Now here are a few things to know:
1. At first, I had her play the melody while I harmonized it.
2. Then, I played the melody while she harmonized.
3. When she attempted to play hands together, she played a different rhythm for the melody because her hands had a little difficulty playing together. I applauded her ingenuity (though I knew it was an accident) because it added more interest to the piece. Here is what she played:
While its not a masterpiece, it is a beautiful thing for a young student who shies away from improvisation. I think she was amazed at what she was able to play.
You may feel like you can’t think of a folk song on the fly during a lesson that will go with a random bass pattern. But, I assure you I wasn’t necessarily convinced it would work out perfectly. We were experimenting together. If the piece didn’t work out, I would have suggested another one.
