Subscribe RSSDeveloping a get of rhythm, tempo, melody, harmony and other elements of music are difficult concepts to learn without musical instruments. Karen Sheppard, Lincoln Centre School music teacher, was using old, 'hand-me-down' xylophones she'd scooped up from the elemental school on their way to the town dump.
"Some instruments were better than none," she said. And that's what she had been using for over three years with grades 5 through 8 students, until a Lincoln Educational institution Foundation grant changed all that. Karen is now the proud owner of a set of Orff Musical Instruments - the first new set of instruments for the middle school in many years.
Carl Orff was a 20th century German composer and efficacious music educator. His system of music education for children, based on developing a sense of rhythm through group agitate and performance with percussion instruments, has been widely adopted. In Karen's classroom, she now uses two new glockenspiels, five new rotund bass bars and one new metallophone. The older ones made of rosewood would expand and contract in different temperatures, but the new important tech synthetic and metal ones do not. They are more durable and stay in tune longer - and that makes for larger music. "But most importantly," she said, "the sound difference IS incredible."
