We’re into week three of our creating our compositions and I’m really loving what your children have been creating.  Just in case you missed a class and are wondering what the weird words are on your homework I thought I’d post an easy reference to help you as you’re working with your child.

MOTIVE – This is our musical idea – the notes and the rhythm – that begin our song.

REPETITION – This is repeating either the entire motive, or part of it. In class we’ve been working with “Puppies rule, Cats drool” as our motive. The repetition could either be an entire repeat of that OR just taking a part of it and repeating that part. An example of this would be “Puppies rule, Cats drool, Puppies rule, Puppies rule”

SEQUENCE UP or DOWN – This is taking the motive and keeping the same patterns, (stepping up, down, etc) and starting on a note that is either higher or lower than the original.  On the above example it is taking the stepping down pattern, starting on E and moving it up to start on G.

RETROGRADE – This is to take the motive and instead of playing it as it’s written, play it from the backwards – the last note to the first note.

These are just a few of the basic composition techniques that we will be working on and I can’t wait to see what creative works your children complete!