Casa Music
Our music teacher is Mr. Matt Langhorne, a certified ORFF teacher from The Royal Conservatory of Music of Toronto. Matt received first class honours in Special Education Through Music for Exceptional Children from York University and has been teaching children the Music Makers Method for over 20 years. He also works with various music groups and teaches drums/percussion privately.
Mr. Matt’s aim is to introduce music as an enjoyable and integral part of your child’s life. A child’s response to music begins at birth, and should be cultivated at an early age, when learning habits are established. Appreciation of music, as with any art form, is developed and nurtured with understanding and knowledge. Music is a jig-saw puzzle in sound. Its parts are beat, rhythm, tempo, pitch, melody, harmony, dynamics, etc. As the children use these separate parts, they become more familiar with them, and when the parts are put together in a song, the song as a whole is better understood and appreciated in a true musical sense.
The Music Makers Method strives to stimulate observation, curiosity, and inventiveness while developing attention span, memory, sensitivity and discrimination, and improving psychomotor co-ordination. The instruments provided are designed especially for child education by Dr. Carl Orff, world renowned educator of children’s music. Xylophones, glockenspiels, timpani and hand drums, encourage the child to respond actively to rhythm and pitch.
The keyboard instruments (xylophones, etc.) have the same key system as a piano, with the letter names on the keys. On them a child can see a scale or melodic pattern. There is a visual understanding that is not available on wind or stringed instruments, but is essential to understanding the theory involved in playing any instrument, or in vocal studies.
Singing is an important part of each class, and usually the children accompany themselves on the Orff instruments. Some songs are sung to movement or action games; in others the children contribute to the words of the tune. This helps them to realize that music does not come from the push of a button or someone else’s pen, but from inside themselves.
