Hi everyone! Look below for the review for your orchestra.
Beginning Orchestra
This week, we reviewed our open strings and how to tell what strings to play on The Salamander Samba. We learned how to play from A to B on the Salamander Samba and then played it with the piano part. If you’d like to practice with the video, you can follow this link.
We then learned how to hold our bows and did some bow exercises. Watch the video below for an explanation of the bow hold:
We quickly went over the beginning of On A Swing, which is also all open strings! You should be able to write in the notes in this piece the same way we did for The Salamander Samba. The difference of this one is that it uses bows instead of pizzicato. Check it out!
Intermediate Orchestra
- Abandoned Funhouse — we went through the parts from the beginning until 25. Please practice until measure 53 at least, but if you can do the whole thing that would be great!
- Momentous — We played the G major scale to prepare us for playing on the G string in Momentous. If you don’t know how to play any of your lower notes, check your scale sheet! We played through measure 9. Please practice until at least 17, but further if you can!
- Icicles — For this piece, we want to bounce the bow a bit and let it ring with the staccatos. We worked on getting the right sound for that and then played through to measure 33.
- Guldfaxe — We didn’t get to this piece this week, but I want to start with it next week. Please practice at least until measure 19 this week.
Advanced Orchestra
- Turbulence — This is already sounding great! Violins, we decided that for the divisi sections we are going to split it up by last name. If you last name starts with A-H, you will play the top part. If your last name starts with I-Z, you will play the bottom part. We practiced through measure 25, and then sightread through 48-ish.
- Bones — This piece has a lot of low 1’s, high 3’s, extensions, etc! Watch out for those and let me know if you have any questions. We practiced through measure 19 and then sightread through 24.
- Appalachian Sunrise — We started by playing a C major scale, because I am nervous about us remembering all of those F naturals and C naturals. 2nd violins and violas, we reviewed your rhythm that starts at measure 5 — just think of it as “short-long” at the beginning, and you should have the right feel. We practiced through measure 21 and then sightread until 37.
- Momentous — We played from the beginning but it kind of fell apart around measure 17. Please try to practice through measure 37 at least.