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Arranging "The Camel Song" as a mixed bag...

For this assessment, I chose to arrange "The Camel Song" by Clara Chung, known as Clara C. Clara C is a YouTube artists who rose to fame in 2010. The Camel Song came out as her second music video on YouTube that recorded 668,840 views.

I chose this piece because although this is categorized as a pop song, it has its distinct style that consists of elements from country music. With the swinging, rhythmical melody with clapping sounds behind, it gives a feeling of being at a garden of a house party. Luckily enough, this song was set in C major, which would provide students best experience in performing with less risks to make mistakes (Philpott, 2001).

The most challenging part of arranging this piece was the melody notation. In contrast to what the actual sound is, the rhythmic notation seemed to be complicated. This was because I began by notating it in 6/8, which I thought was fair bcause of the way the song was structured. However, since even the con studets struggled playing through them, I augmented the note values and changed the time signature to 3/4. As a result, though the conducting became a lot more faster for a 3/4, the notation looked much simpler and easier to read and perform. The rhythms, which would likely to be the most difficult of all for students to learn, can be mastered through easy steps of call and response and the use of body percussions, using Orff pedagogy.

One of the characteristics of this piece is that it doesn't involve drums or percussions that posses low beats. It keeps a very light texture with shakers and clappings, so I had to create some thick layers of sound at least in the chorus part, which worked out well with the usage of brass instruments. I've substituted the melody line with a woodwind instruments. If a singer is present and could sing the melody, instruments have a improvise over the melody during the chorus and the bridge.

Unlike other songs, I arranged the most characteristic ending part as a lengthy improvisation part that could be played as long they can. This improvisation section does not have a distinctive ending; After the rest, the improvisation section begins with a drone-like piano part that has a completely different atmosphere to the song. The teacher, or the students may cut it short if they are not ready for improv, and can play as long as they want.

To fulfill the mixed bag requirements, I called each parts with their role, not with their instrument names. For instance, I called the Bb Clarinet part as Melody in Bb, Violin part as sub melody. This will alow flexibility to studnets' choice of instrument. In my arrangement, each part sticks to the part they are playing, but as it is in the original recording, each part could be shuffled around between students within a single performance of the song (e.g. Violin plays submelody 1 in the first half, then plays harmony 1 in the second half). In any convinience, the teacher can choose to skip some parts of the piece and shorten it.

This piece can be taught in the following sequence using the Orff pedagogy.

I will first teach the rhythms of the clapping part by using body percussion and have the rhythm internalized. This will help students learn the rhythms of the melody because the clapping part creates the basis of the melody.

I will then teach the bass rhythms, and have it combined with the clapping part. Once these rhythms are internalized, mastering the whole piece would not be difficult.

The melody part would not be a difficulty opposed to how it's written, once the students have a listen to the recording.

REFERENCE

Board of Studies NSW. (2003). Music Years 7-10 Syllubus. Board of Studies NSW.

Philpott, C. (editor) (2001). Learning to Teach Music in the Secondary School. A Companion to School Experience. London: Routledge/Palmer.

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