Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

This assignment was initially a challenge for me in the autobiographical portion. The thing I often use when talking about myself is music, but seeing as traditional musical notation was out I had to go to the next best thing: the fact that I want to be an elementary school teacher. My composition is basically a picture book with a sound setting. This is something I could easily adjust and use for my elementary students. I love coming up with different musical activities for my classroom. I love music and I think it is vitally important to everybody especially children.

My piece begins by everyone channeling their inner first grader and all of us singing our ABC’s together. (It is crucial that everyone know their ABC’s for my piece.) The book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. I will be reading the story and every student in class has a part. Everyone will receive a copy of the “score.” My non-traditional notation is color. There are 14 instrument parts that correspond with letters or groups of letters of the alphabet. When we come to a letter, the person assigned to it will play their instrument. The instruments are ordinary objects you could find in any elementary school classroom. Individual instrument parts are highlighted in pink. When a word is highlighted in blue every instrument is played at the same time. There will also be about 4 people doing a chant underneath my reading. The chant and its rhythm go like this:


The chant goes on throughout the piece and occurs under any line highlighted yellow. There will be a line of just chant by itself after the ABC’s and before I being the story. The chant will pause at the end of each line to allow me to turn pages. I will then cue the class on each line by taking a big breath before I begin reading. If a phrase is highlighted orange, it will be spoken aloud by everyone in class. The piece is rather slow, about 60 or so, to allow everyone to play their part easily. This is what my notation is going to look like: (it's okay that you can't read it, everyone will get copies in class.)