Music Basics

Last Tuesday we had a music class for mutual because many of our young women haven't had any formal music training. I wanted to help them understand the church hymns better, so I made a copy of "Soy un hijo de Dios" (in English, "I am a child of God"). I made an accompanying worksheet by cutting out various music symbols from the song and taping them onto a separate piece of paper. I then numbered each symbol and had them look for each symbol on their copy of the song (see the link below). It was a fun activity, and it helped them actually notice what the different symbols were.

We discussed what the various symbols mean and then transitioned into some basics of directing music. I found it really helpful to first define what a measure is and point it out within the song that we were already using as an example. This helped to explain that 4/4 and 3/4 indicate how many beats are in each measure. My favorite part of this mutual was that the young women had an "ah-ha" moment at this point. They finally started to understand the purpose of conducting the music and the meaning of the patterns used to do it.

http://melissaeggertsen.googlepages.com/MusicWorksheet.pdf

NOTE: The website http://www.enchantedlearning.com/music/ is also a good place to find some basic music worksheets.