Earlier this week, I had an eight-year-old student bring this into her lesson – her first composition. At our last lesson, I asked her to try making up a few of her own songs that used some of the same musical elements she had recently learned (quarter notes, half notes, legato playing, and changing registers).
“Shooting Stars” is a piece for right and left hand in 5/4 time (how cool is that?!), spanning four octaves. There are repeated rhythm patterns as well as tonal patterns and the ascending tetrachord in each pattern combined with the shifts in register really exemplifies the title. Notice the “key” in the top left hand corner that indicates hand position (modeled from our lesson book, The Music Tree). Up to this point, the songs in the book have only included black keys; I love the initiative it took to create a new piece on the white keys!
I’m so proud!
