Holiday Song Accompaniments!

This past Christmas, some children in our class made beautiful hand-bound books full of original percussion accompaniments (repetitive ostinati to be played while the songs are sung), which they composed to accompany famous holiday songs.

Children working with rhythm cards to compose their accompaniments.

To make the cover, the children wrapped a piece of cardboard in holiday gift wrap. Then they bound the books using special sticky book-binding tape.

Below, you can see how the children wrote their miniature scores. They started by drawing the instruments on the left. The accompaniment on the right, “Gungle Bell” was written for tambourine, hand drum, and bongo drum. Each line next to the instrument is a percussion staff line. The music is read from left to right. The notes that line up vertically are played at the same time. That funny sign on the right is a repeat symbol.

Notice the colorful decorations. The photos that follow show only a few sample pages. The books ended up being actually quite thick and chock full of holiday songs.

On the pages below, Tracy wrote her scores backwards. The repeat sign should be on the right and the instruments on the left. It’s still cute, though. Since these photos were taken, we’ve fixed the scores so the symbols are written the right way around.

Remind the children to leave room for drawings and illustrations in their music!

It’s worth noting that although Tracy used a very limited amount of rhythmic elements for her accompaniments—ta, ti-ti, and sh— when the children played these accompaniments while we sang Christmas songs, they sounded really nice.

This is just one example of how beautiful complexity arises from simple building blocks.