On October 25th, 2006, I had the great honor of participating in the Award Night Ceremony of the 2006 Broward County Arts Teacher of the Year program. The reason I was there is because the winner of this year's award, Gretchen Weihe Fasulo, was a violin student of mine from her first "Twinkles" in pre-school through her middle school years.
Here are two streaming Quicktime 7 movies of our performance. Gretchen, along with former Arts Teacher of the Year winner, Jeanne Halberg (Jeanne and I were stand partners in a 16 piece disco band many years ago.) and I played two pieces. The first was a movement from a Telemann Violin Trio. The second was a piece I wrote in honor of the big night called, "Blues for Gretchen".
You can play "Blues for Gretchen" too! It has a low rhythm part, a mid rhythm part, and a solo/melody part. It can be played by each player sticking a particular part. Or, players could switch around parts for each time through. The files I've put here are for you to practice with. Each of the files (four in all) go through the 16 bars three times.
[: D / / / l / / / / l / / / / l / / / / l
l G / / / / l / / / / l D / / / l / / / / l
l A / / / l / / / / l G / / / l / / / / l
l A / / / l G / / / l D / / / l A / / / :] 3xs
Blues for Gretchen: pdf Sheet Music and MIDI file of sheet music...
The sheet music file, which can be printed, is not "exactly" like the sound files that I first made, but, close enough... The chords are all the same. It can be played exactly as written. But, is intended to be flexible with rhythmic and chord voicing variations...
The low rhythm part (click here) has a bouncing bow playing two-note chords. You'll hear them, I'm sure. Don't be scared. I know you can do it!
The mid rhythm (Click here) part has long sustained two-note chords and bluesy "Hamburger Hamburger" rhythms.
The "Melody/Solo" part (Click here) is basically just improvised...