If you have heard the Composition for Kids lecture, you have heard about the Theme and Variations challenge that I have suggested to “encourage creativity.” This last month, I challenged the students in my studio to create their own variation of Jingle Bells. You can read the details of the project and how to do one yourself in this previous post.
My students have finally completed their Jingle Bells variations, and I am happy to report that even the students who have never been interested in composition before now participated in this challenge! Some students took off with this idea and knew exactly what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. But with most students, I employed a procedure to help them get started which I have detailed under the video.
Jingle Bells Variations Video
Though the video is long, I thought it important to keep everyone’s variation together for a true Theme and Variations form. In future posts, I will be commenting on how I coached these students and how I might further coach them provided we had the time. The performances aren’t perfect, but encouraging creativity that was most important. There are 10 Jingle Bells variations and the student represent a variety of levels from beginning to late intermediate. Enjoy!
Jingle Bells Variations
Here is how I helped some of the students develop their variation:
1. Pick a mood. You can see the list of moods here.
2. I asked them what kind of things you could do on the piano to create that mood. I would ask them questions about:
- Location of melody (fragile sounds were obviously higher, dark sounds were lower)
- Tempo
- Modality
- Harmony (Many students chose to use harmonies that were in pieces they were currently studying. This was a wonderful sign that their vocabulary of possible sounds expands with the repertoire that they study.)
- Meter (Several had really enjoyed previous waltzes they had studied, so we experimented with how to change Jingle Bells to a 3 beat meter.)
- Texture (though I didn’t name it, we talked about lonely sounds, unison sounds, chords, ostinatos, etc.)
3. After they had a list of possibilities, I sent them home to create their Jingle Bells variation. With some students, we were able to tweek the variation in subsequent lessons. With others, we “accepted” their variation because of a lack of time to tweek.
Love the project! What fun variations the students came up with. Everyone was fantastic!
Thanks Jennifer! It was one of the most fun things the students have done this year. I think everyone was fairly pleased with their own creativity…which is one goal I had.
This was fun to watch with our kids. We enjoyed each variation. Thanks for sharing!
(Nicole and Luke’s Alaskan cousins)
AMAZING! Really beautiful. Congratulations to all of the players/arrangers/composers. Nicely done!
Wow! These are terrific! I’m an adult beginner, and I took it upon myself to try your exercise. I didn’t come up with anything nearly as creative. You and your students deserve a big round of applause.
Hi Michelle,
I’m so glad you tried it yourself. The trick is to ask yourself “how” you want it to sound (pick an adjective) and then “how” you make those sounds on the piano. You may need someone to give you some ideas, so don’t hesitate to send me an email with your adjective and we can brainstorm together. A lot of times, you can borrow bass patterns or fun little intros from the music you are currently studying.
Thanks for the kind words about the students’ creativity. I know they appreciate it!
What I love is that each of the students has made a unique contribution to the project, whether their performance was polished or still a little rough around the edges – nothing was pre-fabricated at all, and you can see how much the students learned from exploring the possibilities from the kinds of choices they made……
Thanks for putting the video together! Very inspirational!