Resource: K-12 Modern Band with Jasmine
One of my favorite parts of attending any conference is meeting new people and learning new things. When you can do both at the same time, it’s pretty special. At the Modern Band Summit this week, I met a fabulous music educator named Jasmine Todd Faulkner who attended one of my sessions. She came up to me after I was finished presenting to share an incredible resource with me that she has created on YouTube. Her channel is called K-12 Modern Band with Jasmine, and it is fantastic. Jasmine is the music teacher at Polaris Expeditionary Learning School in Fort Collins, Colorado where she teaches K-12 modern band, songwriting and recording studio. She creates really cool play-along videos of TONS of pop songs. Her goal is to make a complete K-12 modern band starter curriculum for public schools, and her videos are terrific. Here are a few to give you an idea of what she does:
One VERY cool thing that she does is creating multiple videos of some songs, so that teachers can choose a key that works for their students. This is especially important when working with younger students. Here’s a few versions of We Will Rock You by Queen:
Here it is in a higher key:
And here it is as an instrumental version:
With 124 videos to choose from, you this YouTube channel provides TONS of content for teachers who incorporate modern band into their teaching. She has put together several playlists for different age groups and band instrumentation - VERY useful. She has also created a series of 20 videos that provide modern band teaching tips.
And if that wasn’t enough FREE stuff, Jasmine has also provided links to her own curriculum documents, including:
In addition to ALL of these fabulous free resources, Jasmine also maintains a separate YouTube channel for her modern band program at Polaris Elementary, with over 220 videos. Incredible stuff. Keep up the amazing work you are doing, Jasmine. The music education community is very lucky to have you creating these resources for them. Like and subscribe to her YouTube Channel today!
I leave you with a video of a performance of one of her groups. Enjoy!