Unit 2: Creating Original Exercises using NoteFlight
Congratulations! You've made it to Unit 2! Here, you will:
- Open and create an account to use Noteflight;
- Identify a piece of music which your ensemble is struggling with; and
- Using Noteflight, you will create an original warm-up exercise to help your ensemble become even better musicians!
Getting Started with Noteflight:
- Click here and click on 'Sign up Free'.
- Next, I will guide you through the easy process of creating an account as well as a Noteflight composition with this video. Enjoy!
Select a rhythmic passage from your repertoire:
When selecting an excerpt to work on with your ensemble, consider:
- Who will benefit from this exercise?
- How much time do I want to dedicate to the rhythmic passage?
- Does this only apply to one small section or multiple sections of the ensemble?
If you answered yes to any of these, you should spend the time working on the rhythm. You might be surprised how helpful this could be to your ensemble players.
So, now that you're a Noteflight expert (or so we hope!), choose a passage from your most rhythmically challenging piece.
- Decide how many measures need to be worked on and create your exercise in Noteflight as show in the video.
- If the passage has many moving notes, simplify first. This will allow musicians to internalize the rhythm prior to adding more notes.
- How are your ensemble members going to rehearse this? On an electronic device? A Screen? Printed?
Create a Google, PowerPoint, or printout for playing:
Selected what repertoire you want your ensemble to work on? *check*
You have your NoteFlight skills and can create your own excerpt exercise? *Check*
From here:
- Print; or
- Display
The rhythmic passage which will be worked on. We will go through how to workshop these passages with your ensemble, but make sure whichever method you use, that the work is clear for the students so that there is no confusion. In the example below, I composed that short two-measure exercise in Noteflight and then took a screenshot and edited the image within Google Slides. This allowed for participation on the end of the ensemble, but also a teachable moment for ensemble members to work together to analyze music with difficult rhythms.
So, as seen above, these short practice excerpts can be easily placed into a document where ensemble members can engage in discussion about rhythms and use standard counting notation to really demonstrate their knowledge. Now, go on to Unit 3 where you will see how we create more exercises like these and how to incorporate those essential scales into a warm-up!
Unit 1: Standard Rhythm Counting basics
Unit 3:Analyzing Rhythms for Use in Scales and with Repertoire