Class Composition - Day 9 - Making Music

Day 9 - Between Day 8 and today, I transcribed the melodies the decided on on Tuesday. I put them in order on a Finale document and printed it out for them - sort of a "bare bones" version of the song. No harmonies, no chords, just their melodies. I did try to unify the melodies into a key to make the transition easier, but besides that, I tried to be as true to what they sang as possible. To be honest, I wish I had from Thursday to Tuesday to do this part instead of Tuesday to Thursday...but it's done and it's over. It was just a lot of work in a condensed time frame. 

In class today, we went phrase by phrase and talked about elements we liked or wanted to change. We made some really good progress today. Some classes even got to talking about chords and major vs. minor. In all but one of my classes we were able to do a (really rough) sing through of the song. It was really cool to hear! They're really buying in to their songs. 

Most of the discussions today were extremely positive and productive. I had just a couple students who got their feelings hurt when their suggestion wasn't accepted by the class, but that was the minority today. Usually they just accepted the class decision and were able to move on. As in the past several exercises, they made some choices that I wouldn't have made, but we went with it because the class voted on it. 

Before Tuesday, I'll make some changes and work on starting a piano part for each piece. We're making music, y'all!