Welcome, Welcome

Post date: Jan 24, 2013 6:40:16 PM

This is a song that 3rd graders have been singing since the beginning of the year. Just recently, we learned how to sing the chord roots that go with the song. We have learned this song in both major and minor tonalities. Both 3B classes are showing major tonality in their videos, and 3A is showing minor tonality in their video.

We learned about how all songs have chords, and a chord is made up of three or more notes played or sung at the same time. We already learned about the notes in Major Tonic (DO-MI-SO), Major Dominant (SO-FA-RE-TI), Minor Tonic (LA-DO-MI) and Minor Dominant (MI-RE-TI-SI) in 2nd grade, so now we are discovering that when all of these notes are played or sung at the same time, it creates a Major/Minor Tonic Chord or a Major/Minor Dominant Chord. Within each chord is one note called the "chord root", which is the most important note in the chord. In these videos, we are singing the chord roots (DO and SO for major and LA and MI for minor) and we are also naming the chord function by singing "tonic" or "dominant" on the chord root pitches. At the end, you can see how the students sing the chord roots and the melody all by themselves by splitting the class in half to sing in two parts (which we learned is called "harmony").