Dear Parents and Students,

I truly miss my students and being in the classroom. During these uncertain times, I'm continually thankful that you are all at home and hopefully safe during this pandemic. I have created this music page to help compile some fun resources for students to continue learning music. This website is also accessible on mobile devices. Music has always been an important part of my life and I truly believe that it has a way of uplifting people in a time of crisis. Please enjoy these education resources and continue to keep your children engaged in making music.

Sincerely,

Mr. Bennett

This last steel band video of the day is special. These are the students of the Otis Mason Steel Band performing during the February Book Fair.

Steel Band was originally a male dominated art form, as it was invented by a young boys that were banging on things in a junk yard. For a while, the instrument had a bad reputation, because street gangs of boys used to fight each other over whose band was the best. Many parents would not allow girls to be associated with the boys that played the instrument. The government of Trinidad and Tobago began to regulate musical competitions in their country to minimize street violence. Slowly over the next few years women began to be involved with the steel pan as the instrument began to become accepted. Now their are women that play, tune and even build steel pans.

Watch the Seattle Woman's Steel Pan Project perform the songs "Pan Woman and "Which Way Out".

This is the Steel Band Version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Watch how all of the steel band instruments work together to bring this performance to life. Do you recognize the tune?

Steel bands have a way of recreating popular music with steel drums. This is a clip of a small steel band playing a cover of the Jason Mraz tune "I'm Yours". This steel band uses an electric bass guitar, drums set, tenor pan and a double second pan.

This is a piece for Steel Orchestra, called "The Year For Love". This is the piece of music that won the 2018 Trinidad and Tobago Carnival Panorama. See if you can find Mr. Bennett in this Performance.

Each day of Star Wars Week May the 4th- May 8th had a different listening example for each day. Check out these Orchestra listening examples.

My friend Mr. Anderson did a special demonstration video for Otis Mason, on the Brazilian Capoeira instruments. This is a unique look at the musical instruments used in the Brazilian Martial Art.

Check out the Ukulele Page for information on how to play the Ukulele.

Do you want to make your own drum beats? Groove Pizza is a virtual drum machine that uses shapes to generate beats. The circular plane is the "Virtual Pizza". When you add shapes to the pizza it adds the number of beats corresponding with the number of sides of the shape. There is a great tutorial on the website on how to use it. You can record your beats as an audio file and more.

The aQWERTYon web application turns your (QWERTY) computer keyboard into an accordion keyboard. There are a lot of different sounds to use. It does take a second to load, so give it a moment to load up. You can play along with your favorite YouTube songs by copying and pasting them into the URL bar. There are some tutorials on the webpage that show how to work with the program.

This is a performance that I played with New Generation Branches Steel Orchestra last October. A steel orchestra is setup similar to a Symphony Orchestra. Instruments are grouped together by families of similar instruments. The main difference is that all instruments in a Steel Orchestra are percussion. Groups of steel drums and different percussion instruments in the percussion family make up the voices of a Steel Orchestra. The song Savannah Grass is a pop song from Trinidad and Tobago by the band KES. The tune is a melody about the famous Savannah Park, where Carnival is held. The tune was arranged in a Panorama style for the 2019 Miami Carnival Panorama. Florida is home to one of the two major steel band competitions in America.

This is a great video of a young boy named George that visits an Orchestra to learn about the Instruments and Families of the Orchestra.