Lulu's Song
“In an enchanted forest, lived a beautiful hummingbird named Lulu. She was known throughout the forest for her enchanting singing voice that made
everyone smile when they heard it.”
This is how this composition story starts, which is about a little hummingbirdcalled Lulu. She has lost her singing voice and is helped by her friends in the forest to find her voice and be able to sing beautiful songs again.
Throughout the tale, students, alongside Lulu's companions, assist her with four distinct tasks. Initially, they must uncover two rhythms for Lulu's song. By identifying tones for these rhythms and manipulating them through cutting,
mirroring, and inversion, new melodic fragments are born. Eventually, these fragments are pieced together with various emotions or moods to craft a song that Lulu can joyfully sing to her friends.
When you write music with your students, the students will hopefully gain greater ownership of the music and will more easily learn both the easy and the more difficult things with this method.
