Music


For students asking for access to videos and lessons we use at school follow this link (or copy) into your browser and it will lead you to the Martian Maze Music Movement webpage.

https://sites.google.com/view/martian-maze-music-movement/home

 

Hi Folks!

For those who are new to school, I’m Mr Marsh, the music teacher. I’ve been teaching music at Axedale since the beginning of 2018 and I love it here. We have some amazingly talented students in our school, including a group of children that can play 4 (or more) instruments which is really mind blowing.

Children in grade P-2 will learn music skills such as beat and rhythm on percussion instruments as well as through dance, they’ll learn to sing and use their voice with confidence when performing and they’ll learn simple music notation as well as build their musical vocabulary. They’ll even begin to work on their ukulele and keyboard skills later in the year.

Once they hit grade 3, things get even more exciting! By the end of grade 6, each child will have learnt to play 5-6 different instruments to various levels. Each week the kids learn guitar, ukulele, bass, keyboard, vocals and drums through one-to-one lessons, group work, peer instructions and video clips filmed and recorded by myself and the music teacher at Epsom PS, Mr Mayes. These lessons are all tailored to a wide range of skill levels and use the children’s own song suggestions to inspire them.

This often leads to a number of students excelling in one or more instruments, and many of them join the school choir or the school band.

This year, in term 1, the school rock band will start rehearsing for an end of term performance, and to start it all off, auditions were held in the first few weeks! Children from grades 3-6 were asked in music lessons in the first week if they’d like to try out for the school band - and the response was terrific.

The band, called the ‘Super Stars’, is a group of students who work really hard to play a range of songs in a rock band. Similar to kids that try out for a cricket or netball team, these children often put in many hours of practise both at school and at home to achieve amazing results. The minimum requirement for a permanent spot in the band is to be able to play 2 or more instruments with confidence. The main reason for needing 2 instruments is to make sure that if you don’t get to play your preferred instrument, you have a backup instrument to play so you can still be part of the song. However, the benefits of being able to play more than one instrument are numerous and have resulted in me teaching some incredible groups of children over the years at a number of different school around Victoria.

However, if the children don’t get into the Super Stars, they can join the ‘Future Stars’ with no experience necessary at all! The Future Stars don’t need any skills on an instrument (or minimal skills) – they just need determination and a willingness to listen and practise. The Future Stars, which begins later in the term, will aim to improve their skills on their preferred instrument as well as build their skills on a second instrument. This will be done by video, teacher and peer lessons (from the Super Stars in fact!) at lunch time every second Monday. As the Future Stars band grows, there is less need for auditions as these children normally progress from the Future Stars to the Super Stars naturally. If you have any questions or want more details about the music program, the Super Stars or the Future Stars, please email me on kaine.marsh@education.vic.gov.au

The music culture at Axedale is growing every year as those people that have attended our concerts would testify, so it’s great to see this program expanding each year. Good luck kids!

Keep singin’, strummin’, and swingin’ those hips!!

Kaine Marsh