Lady Manners School Orchestra performs THE RED DWARF SPACE SUITE

Lady Manners School Orchestra performs I BELIEVE IN FATHER CHRISTMAS

Lady Manners School Orchestra perform RIVERDANCE

xtranormal

My Year 8s are making short animated films "discussing" a variety of musicals using Xtranormal - a fantastic resource - give it a try!

389 years - the history of black America...

For Year 9s: History of the Blues

The History Of Jazz:Chapter Two The Blues - The top video clips of the week are here

The story of the Blues

LMS Orchestra perform JURASSIC PARK at the Royal Albert Hall (2005)...

LMS Orchestra perform POMP & CIRCUMSTANCE No.1 at the Royal Albert Hall (2005)...

New music by Mozart discovered....

Experts have identified some long lost music manuscripts as having been composed by MOZART: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts_and_culture/8165645.stm

Film about Holst found....

An old film about British composer GUSTAV HOLST has been found: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/gloucestershire/8165835.stm

YouTube Orchestra

YouTube Orchestra makes it debut.

Underground Map for Musicians

You can waste many a minute following a line and then trying to think who else could have been included on this Musicians' version of the London Tube Map!

Was thinking what a great revision tool a blank underground map would be.... and found THIS!

And here, just to waste a few moments, are a variety of other rather silly tube maps.

iPhone and iPod Touch apps

Here are some music apps I'd recommend to all of you who have iPhones and/or iPod Touches....

BLOOM (currently £2.39 via the iTunes store) - "Developed by ambient pioneer Brian Eno and musician/software designer Peter Chilvers, Bloom explores uncharted territory in the realm of applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Part instrument, part composition and part artwork, Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen. A generative music player takes over when Bloom is left idle, creating an infinite selection of compositions and their accompanying visualisations."

CLEARTUNE CHROMATIC TUNER (currently £2.39 via the iTunes store) - "Cleartune is a chromatic instrument tuner and pitch pipe that allows you to quickly and accurately tune up using the built-in mic in your iPhone" (if you have an iPod Touch you would need to add a microphone for this to work).

iDRUM - Ministry of Sound Trance Anthems (currently £3.49 via the iTunes store) - "Trance Anthems lets iPhone and iPod touch owners recreate their favourite Trance tracks of yesterday and today. Starting with professionally produced iDrum kits that emulate the greatest Trance anthems in clubbing history, users can customize the included beats any way they like or mix and match hundreds of original samples to make their own epic track"

KARAJAN BEGINNER - music & ear trainer (currently FREE via the iTunes store) - a free version of the Karajan theory and ear training application.

SHAZAM (currently FREE via the iTunes store) "With Shazam you can identify music tracks, buy them, and share the tags with friends. You can also learn more about artists; keep and grow your music collection and personalise your tags."

TEMPO (currently £0.59 via the iTunes store) - probably the best mobile metronome around!

WUNDERRADIO (currently £3.49 via the iTunes store) - an amazing radio tuner well worth the money.

Online Metronome

Click here for an online metronome - very useful!

Activities....

This page has all sorts of quizzes and tests to help you learn about a wide range of music theory and history.

The music is all around us..... all you have to do is listen....

Movie recommendation.....

Watched AUGUST RUSH (PG) this morning. Inspirational film about a musical prodigy looking for the parents he never met.

Loads of great music and even Robin Williams back on form.

Being shown on Sky this month.

Click here for the IMDb entry.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Spotify

If you haven't downloaded Spotify yet you really should.

Free, legal streamed music - huge amounts in so many different styles.... ideal for GCSE revision!

Click here to start.

What do you need to hand in for GCSE Music?

Watch this video to check!

If you liked this movie (or think you can do better - which really wouldn't take much effort) you could try making your own - maybe a different way to revise..... create a discussion about a topic that you're trying to learn about?

Here's the xtranormal website.

Sound Junction website

Take a look at the Sound Junction website.

Lots of activities to try.

My fave song of the moment....

Went to see Slumdog Millionaire on Friday - just an amazing film.

This is the song at the end (and not the rubbish version the Pussycat Dolls have released which totally wrecks the song - they can't even say the title properly!!):

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Elbow

My fave song of last year.... click here to listen

Orchestra will be performing this on April 30th at the summer concert. Tickets available after the Easter holiday.

Meat Loaf

And the LMS Orchestra will also be performing this Meat Loaf classic....

Viva la Vida

Lady Manners School Orchestra will be performing this on April 30th.....

Pachelbel Rant

Pachelbel's CANON in D is one of the most well-known of all Baroque compositions. It's chord progression has been used in many other pieces of music.... as this video show: