“Hip Hop meets Classical”

This simple search on YouTube led me to find some neat videos and create a brand new musical experience that was pretty cool for my teen clients.

Many of them are working on improving their attention and auditory perception skills.

So, their task was this –
Listen closely to the hip hop classical medley and determine which classical song was embedded into the hip hop song.

Most of the classical songs were fairly famous and recognizable:

Canon in D (embedded in “C U When U Get There” by Coolio)

Fur Elise (embedded in “I Can” by Nas)

Toccata and Fugue in d minor (perfect for Halloween!)

Beethoven’s 5th Symphony

Wagner Symphony No. 5

La Serenissima

Four Seasons

Air on a G String

My clients had a blast movin’ and groovin’ to the hip hop beats, while also trying to “name that classical tune” (and name the hip hop songs, too!)

This was an engaging way to work on auditory perception and listening skills with my teen clients. They had the opportunity to learn about different genres of music AND get some movement in during our session (win win!)

We followed this experience up with a lyric analysis of parts of the clean version of the song “I Can” by Nas. Then, we created our own raps using the sentence starter “I Know I Can.”

One simple YouTube search sparked several creativity ideas, and served as a great way to engage my teen clients virtually.

For more easy ideas on how to incorporate rap and hip hop into your music therapy sessions, check out The Rap Pack for Teens.