Join the Costello family of Amber Waves on a tour through a bluegrass band. See and hear how each instrument fits into the group and join them as they play instrument "breaks". Sing, clap, and stomp along with some of the music from the days of Laura Ingalls, when family, friends, and community were the primary influences of music in the lives of children.
Above is the description for our latest addition to Costello Family Music. Next Friday we will present this program for an assembly of children at an elementary school, with the addition of some music from America's colonial period for the 4th and 5th grade students. In June we will be presenting it again for the families at the 12th Annual Rocky Mountain GospelGrass.
It doesn't end there! God willing, it is our goal to create a family program through DVD and an accompanying book, around the theme of creating music within a family. Two DVDs are planned at the moment.
The first will focus on young children, with ideas on inviting music into everyday life through things found around the house. The DVD will model techniques, provide ideas, and examples to give parents or grandparents confidence on working with young children in a natural musical environment. The accompanying book will offer further ideas on musical themes.
Our second DVD will focus on creating music in a family with older children, ready for the challenges of accompanying folk instruments. The Costello kids will walk through individual instruments, demonstrating one, two, then three of the most basic chords on each, and how it fits into the band. Then using examples from the Little House on the Prairie series, they will invite children and parents to "jam" along with them slowly. The accompanying book will provide ideas on the purchase of instruments, finding teachers, including children at different ages and levels, chords and lyrics, self-teaching methods available, and playing opportunities in the area.
The time frame has not been worked out, but the hope is to gather resources for the accompanying books, then formally record the DVDs in August. Depending on how long video editing takes, we hope to make the programs available by January of 2012!
Happy Pickin'!
I wish you had a recording of the music of Little House. I would buy that right away. I am reading the books aloud and the kids always want to know what the songs sound like. I have no idea!
ReplyDeleteThis is a nice resource for that! http://www.amazon.com/Happy-Land-Musical-Tributes-Ingalls/dp/B000J3FHBK/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1301628590&sr=8-3
ReplyDeleteIt's not complete, of course, but it has several of the songs. You can get an accompanying book too.
Many more can be found here: http://www.liwfrontiergirl.com/fiddle.html