Dear Students,

What do you think strings, lessons, and orchestra will be like next year? Do you feel prepared? Write your comments to this blog post and I will respond to help you.

Good luck,
+Strick+

Dear Students,

Below are the judges' comments from our performance at Fantastic Festivals. Follow along with your music and listen to their comments. (I have also included the judges' scoring sheets below the recordings.)

Do you agree with what they said? How did we sound?

See you at school and good luck next year at AMS,
+Strick+

P.S. If you understand all the fancy terms the judges used then you are WELL-PREPARED for music at AMS.

Dear Students,

Here is the orchestra April Fools joke I promised you.

See you at school,

+Strick+

Yo Students,

Check out how playing violin has helped this man. Do you recognize the song at 1:15? Watch this video then feel free to comment on anything you find interesting.

See you at school,
+Strick+

P.S. There are many other successful musicians with disabilities.

Dear Students,

By now you should be familiar with solfege syllables in several different key signatures. As we start to include letter names, I would like you to play a game.

Post your high score to the comments section to see if you can beat your friends.

Good luck! See you at school,
+Strick+

Dear Students,

Thank you for participating in our discussion about audience etiquette. It is my job to educate you about PERFORMING professionally. It is our job to educate the audience about BEHAVING professionally during a performance.

Please share your thoughts and suggestions for proper audience etiquette. Grammar and spelling count!

Thanks in advance!

See you at school,
+Strick+

Dear Students,

This dude is Johan Pachelbel. He wrote the famous Canon in D which you have probably heard played at weddings. It is a great song that all string players should learn.

It CAN get boring though (especially for cellists). Below are 2 videos that musicians have created to make performing the piece more interesting.

What are your thoughts on this videos?

See you at school,
+Strick+

P.S. IN high school, my friends and I used to refer to the piece as the "Taco Bell Canon"

Dear Students,

Our winter concert is approaching quickly. Below are 2 videos of our most challenging songs. Please comment APPROPRIATELY based on...

What specific things can we improve?

See you at school,

+Strick+

P.S. We have shown LOTS of improvement recently!

Dear Students,

How did the captions compare to this version? Why were our captions better or worse? Were the captions creative? Would you like to try this activity again?

See you at school,
+Strick+

P.S. Congrats to all who participated for their creative captions.

Dear Students,

I have listened to many of your ideas about how we can decide on a seating chart for OUR orchestra. Remember that everything we do is in the best interest of our group. Below are some ideas I heard from you and some of my own ideas.

• Election to determine a principal player and assistant principal in each section
• Students will choose either 1.) their stand partner or 2.) their seat
• Shortest people in the front, tallest in the back
• Random assignment of seats
• Let Mr. Strick choose everything

Please comment on what ideas you think are BEST FOR THE ORCHESTRA.
See you at school,

+Strick+