And the beat goes on! Finding a way to connect during the isolation imposed by the Coronavirus pandemic can be challenging. This activity from the Amani Project offers a way to stay close during a time of physical distancing....

The backbone of Latin American music is the beat! Young musicians work on blending Afro-Latin rhythms and beat patterns before incorporating the major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, and blues scales in their own compositions.

To demonstrate their skills with traditional and computer-assisted notation, young musicians notate and perform the first eight measures of Friedrich von Schiller's theme to "Ode to Joy."

Here's a collection of unit plans for middle school musicians. Topics include the mbira, opera, rhythm and culture, music in Africa, music in the movies, music theory and notation, blues and jazz, and the ocarina. Definitely worth a look.

Gustav Holst's The Planets provide young musicians an opportunity to examine how composers can create a suite: a collection of smaller pieces grouped to explore a single topic. After listening to "Jupiter," they examine "Mars" in...

Melody, solo, melody. After a discussion of the structure of a jazz tune and of improvisation as it relates to jazz, young musicians listen to a jazz CD and then, using 2-track stereo digital audio software, place and label markers in an...