April 14, 2020: Week 5, Volume 2

Current Assignment(s)

Students should be working on the Remote Learning Assignment for the week of April 13 (due Monday, 4/20).
​Details can be found in Google Classroom. Practice Resources can be found here.

Updates

Remote Learning assignments this week are based on singers' chorus section - click on your child's class to read an update:
 --  B block  --  E block  --  G block  --

​Click here for an update about the Virginia Trip (sent 4/3/2020)

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This Day in Music

According to the "National Day Calendar" (learn more here), April 14 is (among other things):

• National Dolphin Day
• National Gardening Day 
• National Pecan Day**
• National Reach as High as You Can Day
• Look up at the Sky Day

(*Ms. Simmonds' disclaimer: you may only celebrate National Pecan Day if you pronounce pecan correctly. It is not a PEE-can. It is a puh-CAHN. You will not change my mind. This has been a public service announcement; thank you for your time.)

There are also some interesting pieces of music history that happened on April 14:

April 14, 1759: George Frederic Handel dies at age 74 (we learned about him yesterday, and the premiere of his famous work, Messiah). 

 

​April 14, 1960: Bye Bye Birdie opens on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre. It would transfer to the 54th Street Theatre and then the Shubert Theatre before closing on October 7, 1961, after 607 performances. Click here to learn more. 

April 14, 2000: Heavy-metal band Metallica files a lawsuit against music sharing phenomenon Napster. Metallica vs. Napster, Inc. was the first case that involved an artist suing a peer-to-peer file sharing software company, and it would eventually lead the movement against file-sharing programs. The band not only requested that their entire catalog be removed from the site, but also that the nearly 330,000 uses that had downloaded their music be removed from Napster altogether. Despite resulting in criticism from many of their fans, the band has no regrets. Read more here.  

April 14, 2018: Beyoncé is the first black woman to headline the Coachella Music Festival. Her performance on this day became the most-watched performance ever on YouTube. 

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Featured Resource: EarSketch

EarSketch helps you learn coding through music. Use sounds from the EarSketch library or your own sounds, along with Python or JavaScript code, to produce studio quality music. EarSketch is completely free to use and is entirely web-based, so there's nothing to download or install. Get started here.

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