If your child is in their 3rd Year of Let's Play Music, your family is entering the final semester: Orange Roots. At a recent symposium, Let's Play Music creator
Shelle Soelberg shared her inspiration behind choosing the Orange Roots icon for this semester.
It's Always Been About Making Musicians
By the final semester, Soelberg hoped parents would have gained the experience to fully understand what it takes to create a total musician and to appreciate the achievement. But how could that be captured in a semester name?
By now, Mom and Dad, your child has attended at least seventy-five classes—3,675 minutes of classroom instruction. You've arranged for babysitters, managed schedules, and ensured your child made it to every class on time. You've set up a daily practice routine, played alongside your child, and spent hundreds of hours helping with practice. You may have even laminated ten complete sets of puppets!
And now, something wonderful is happening: your child is learning serious music theory, performing incredible songs, and even composing and transcribing her own music. Finally, your bamboo has sprouted!
The "Bamboo Lesson"
Shelle shared the motivational allegory, "The Bamboo Lesson." It makes perfect sense that this final semester should celebrate roots.
There once was a music parent who felt discouraged. Her child had been attending Red Balloon music lessons, but it didn’t seem like her daughter was becoming a great musician. She started to lose hope and decided to speak with the LPM teacher.
The teacher said, “Come, watch this incredible stop-frame film of a bamboo tree growing.”
Together, they watched a day of growth. The sprout rose from the ground and grew three feet. Over the next several days, it continued to explode upward. By the end of six weeks, the bamboo had reached ninety feet tall.
The teacher then asked, “So, how long did it take for the bamboo to grow to that impressive height?”
“Six weeks!” the parent excitedly replied.
“Ah, this interpretation will definitely set a person up for disappointment,” said the teacher.
The bamboo started as a tiny seed. In the first three years, it grew slowly, with little visible change, even though it was carefully watered and tended. By the fourth year, it became strong enough to be moved outside, and over the next few years, it grew taller and stronger. Then, in the seventh year, during a wet spring, it shot up three feet on the first day and reached ninety feet in just six weeks. It took seven years for the bamboo to develop the roots and strength needed for this rapid growth.
So, what was happening all those years when there was no visible growth?
Under the ground, out of sight, a network of roots was developing to support the bamboo’s sudden growth. If the grower had stopped tending the bamboo at any point, there would have been no amazing performance in the seventh year.
Growth takes patience and perseverance. Every practice session counts. You may not see change right away, but growth is happening!
Throughout the entire Let's Play Music program, your child is developing an enormous network of roots. Your child is building a musical foundation that will support future years of practice. These roots will support amazing performances in the years to come!
How Deep are the Roots?
In Let's Play Music, we focus on building skills that help students grow into total musicians, not just piano players.
Parents, you’ve supported your child’s growth like bamboo, trusting that the foundation was being built, even when it seemed like progress was slow. The focus on audiation, hand shapes, chords, and cadence games was key in developing that foundation.
Now, you'll see the results: students who understand music theory, can write songs, use the correct terminology, count accurately, harmonize, hear chord progressions, and transpose music. These students are total musicians!
The "Chord Root" Lesson
The name "Orange Roots" reflects more than just the bamboo story. In this semester, students are learning how to build chords from a root note. You’ll cover this in Orange Lesson 5, but here’s a quick recap in case it gets confusing at home.
I. Choose Any Note
We start by building a triad (three-note chord). You can pick any note on the staff; let's use F for this example.
II. Add a Third and a Fifth
From F, a third up is A, and a fifth up is C. The bottom note is the "root," just like roots of a plant, and the notes grow beautifully from it.
III. Root Position
This chord looks like a snowman—notes stacked neatly with no gaps. This is the "Root Position" because the root note is on the bottom. So, this is an F chord.
IV. Inversions
Even if we rearrange the notes, it’s still an F chord. If F is on top, it’s the First Inversion. If A is on top, it’s the Second Inversion. The root is still F in all cases.
Challenge: The shape doesn't define the chord as red, blue, or yellow—it's the notes that do. In the key of C, an F chord is the Blue (IV) chord.
Why Did We Do That?!
Now that you can easily identify the root of a chord, you'll notice that in the key of C, the Red, Blue, and Yellow chords are C, F, and G chords. In the Primary Roots Song, you’ll jump between these three chords in root position. Try jumping from C to F to G! It’s a great exercise but it can be tricky. (Parents, take the time to learn this song too—it’s not too hard and teaches a lot!)
By using inversions, you can play the Primary Chord Song with the Red chord in root position, the Blue in second inversion, and the Yellow in first inversion. This means you can play all three chords without moving your hand from C position. That’s much easier!
Congratulations and welcome to Orange Roots—our musicians are really starting to grow!
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