Dalcroze Solfege Games with Gregory Ristow

Eurhythmics teaches music through movement, improvisation and play. In this episode, Greg Ristow shares some favorite games for teaching solfege drawn from the Dalcroze approach to music education.

Videos:

Bodyfege for teaching solfege:
https://youtu.be/ArVsGHZ8pTE

Doop Canon for teaching Quarter, Eighth, Half and Whole Notes:
https://youtu.be/kj7tNtNHeVM

Links:

Urista, Diane. The Moving Body in the Aural Skills Classroom

Ristow, Gregory. An Introduction to Dalcroze's Solfège Pedagogy

Ristow, Thomsen and Urista. Dalcroze's Approach to Solfège and Ear Training for the Undergraduate Aural Skills Curriculum

Dalcroze Eurhythmics with Lisa Parker (YouTube)

Show Notes:

00:23 Introductions

01:40 What is Dalcroze Eurhythmics?

04:00 Dalcroze Eurhythmics has been around for a while, but not that many people teach it, why?

07:05 Let's do some Dalcroze solfege games together.

07:44 Goals of Dalcroze Eurhythmics solfege training: Ground in students a sense of the feeling of each degree of the scale, and build the skills that allow them to translate immediately between knowing where they are in a scale and knowing what note that is (if they know what key they're in).

08:10 Solfege systems used in Dalcroze Eurhythmics. Eurhythmics teachers use two systems: one system to identify where we are in the scale (functional), such as moveable Do or scale degrees. One system to identify the letter name/pitch level of the note (phenomenological), such as fixed Do or letter names.

09:20 Bodyfege

12:00 Pacing of introducing notes over multiple classes. Changing the roles, having students lead the exercise to build improvisation skills.

13:30 Dalcroze games enable students to learn from each other, because they can look around and see how other students are moving, and help each other to find the right answer.

19:00 Bodyfege is a great game to sprinkle in for about 30-seconds at a time in each class over a long period of time.

19:30 To build translation between function (scale degrees/moveable do) and pitch space (letter names/fixed do), you can do Bodyfege using either.

20:20 Why do we leave out accidentals and syllable alterations for chromatics in Fixed Do, and usually not sing accidentals for letter names, for Dalcroze Solfege?

24:00 Relation of Bodyfege to Kodaly/Curwen hand signs

25:00 Partnering vs groups for Bodyfege.

27:00 In Dalcroze pedagogy there's no fixed version of any activity. Each game is an invitation to create a new variant of it to fit the students you have at that moment.

27:30 Dalcroze C-to-C Scales: Goal of making it possible to hear any note as any degree of the scale.

32:30 Using C-to-C scales to build fluency of translation between scale degrees/function and letter names/pitch space.

34:05 Different ways of prompting C-to-C scales

36:00 C-to-C scales help students call to mind harmonic context for parts of a scale.

36:45 Prompting C-to-C scale with a V7 chord with C on top.

39:45 The whisk and cluster prompt for C-to-C scales.

43:41 Using and trusting physical knowledge -- whether knowledge of what something feels like in the hands at an instrument, or the physical emotional feel of a scale degree

45:20 Modulation Exercises

47:45 An example of Dalcrozian way of teaching rhythm -- "Doop Canon"

50:30 The importance of keeping exercises musical

51:50 Teaching the layering and relation of rhythms

53:30 Ways of spinning out the Doop Canon into improvisation and rhythmic dictation

57:00 Learning through Play

58:05 Wrap-up & sign-off

Transcript:

[music]

0:00:00.0 Theme Song These are the notes from the staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're gonna do, and we hope you're learning something new, 'cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.

0:00:21.6 David Newman: Welcome to notes from the staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory where we dive into conversations about music theory, ear training and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education.

0:00:35.0 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

0:00:42.1 DN: And I'm David Newman. I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and I code and create content for uTheory.

0:00:49.4 GR: Thanks to all our listeners for the great feedback and ideas you've been sending us at notes@utheory.com. Keep them coming, we love your ideas and we'll try and get to everything that you suggest we should do.

0:01:00.4 DN: Our topic today is Dalcroze Solfege Games. Today, we're turning the tables and I'll be interviewing my co-host Greg Ristow. When he's not working on uTheory, Greg is an associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory, where he also teaches classes in Dalcroze Eurhythmics. In the Summers he conducts the World Youth Honor Choir and teaches music, theory and ear training at the Interlochen Arts Camp. He has given numerous workshops on Eurhythmics in the US and abroad and his writing on your Eurhythmics appears in the Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy, American Dalcroze Journal, Being Music: The Canadian Dalcroze Journal, and Theory and Practice. He holds the Dalcroze Certificate from the Juilliard School and the Dalcroze license from the Longy School of Music. Greg, Welcome.

[laughter]

0:01:44.7 GR: Thanks David.

0:01:46.0 DN: So, [laughter] this is the big question. What is Dalcroze Eurhythmics? 

0:01:51.1 GR: Yeah, So, the 30 second elevator: pitch Dalcroze Eurhythmics is a way of learning music through movement improvisation and play. In a Dalcroze Eurhythmics education, we approach musical concepts first by exploring them in movement in physical and musical improvisation. And then we turn from that towards theoretical concepts. A lot of people think of Eurhythmics as a method for learning rhythm, but in fact, as Dalcroze envisioned it, it's a method for learning all about music, any concept that you can think of in music, you can teach using Eurhythmics. Dalcroze himself was a teacher at the Geneva Conservatory in the late 1800s.

0:02:39.8 GR: He then actually resigned from the conservatory to found a school outside of Dresden in Hellerau, Germany where actually two brothers who were kind of industrial. I don't know what I call them. I guess magnates at this point. They were wealthy industrialists who built a little town with the idea that everyone would take classes and go to concerts, etcetra. And so they built the whole Eurhythmics school there to Dalcroze's specifications, including staircases in every classroom, so that you could practice all your rhythms not just on the flat surface, but going up and down the stairs and you know, this was, Eurhythmics really had its Heyday while the school was open which is like 1909 to 1914. And during that time everyone who was anyone was there: Stravinsky came, Orff came Diaghilev was so taken by the school that actually, they hired one of Dalcroze's top pupils to help them prepare the premiere of Rite of Spring, the choreography of Rite of Spring and so Nijinsky and Marie Rambert, Dalcroze's student worked super closely in that. So, yeah, in a nutshell, that's Eurhythmics. It's, I find it a very joyful way of both teaching and learning music.

0:04:00.6 DN: Is... I hadn't, I read a lot about Eurhythmics from, in reading old books and I kind of thought about it as an old thing. It never got brought up in my music education classes and I didn't know anyone before you, who taught it, and I think we've talked before about some reasons why that is but, why don't we know more about it? 

0:04:26.9 GR: Yeah, I think at the heart of it is, there's a very tightly controlled certification process, which has has ensured over the century or so that Eurhythmics has been around, that people who are teaching it are super qualified and really good at it. But has also made it much harder for more people to learn about it. So at this point to get the top level of certification, which is the only level that allows you to certify other people, you have to go over to Geneva to the Dalcroze Institute there and do a course of study which takes about two years usually to do that. So...

0:05:03.5 DN: Wow.

0:05:04.7 GR: I have my certificate from Juilliard and my license from Longy. That's the highest level you can get in the US without going over to Geneva. And I've spent some time in Geneva, but not nearly enough to get the diploma, which is the highest level of certification. Also, I think a real impediment is that, Eurhythmics teachers, when we teach, we generally teach from the piano and we're generally improvising music for whatever musical concept we're teaching. And so there's, there's some piano skills that are required. Although, you can do a lot of improvisation on any other instrument, but certainly there are improvisation skills that are required which may not be at the center of a lot of people's musical training. Although, if you come up in a Eurhythmics approach, then improvisation is very central to all the work we do.

0:05:47.2 DN: Yeah, and of course, a lot of the conversations in higher level Music Theory Pedagogy is about how we need to do more improvisation.

0:06:00.1 GR: Yeah.

0:06:02.1 DN: So, this is exciting to me to sort of see how what ideas I can grab from this without going through the whole certification process.

[laughter]

0:06:12.6 GR: Absolutely. And I think actually, that's a great way of looking at it: that Eurhythmics, even if you're not going to go and become a full-fledged Eurhythmics teacher, then absolutely, there are great ideas from the Eurhythmics approach that you can bring into your teaching especially because so many of the things we do are little short games, you can just... You know I think it was just being like, "Oh, yeah, let's sprinkle in a little Eurhythmics here, and then let's go back to the chalkboard and teach the way I normally teach."

0:06:40.8 DN: Yeah. Yeah, and I've already got some, you had recommended to me the, the book.

0:06:48.5 GR: Diane Urista's book? 

0:06:49.7 DN: Yeah.

0:06:50.5 GR: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

0:06:53.1 DN: The Moving Body in the Aural Skills Classroom, which has a whole bunch of great ideas in it.

0:06:58.0 GR: Yeah, it's a great book and, yeah, we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Yeah, I thought what we might do today is... Our topic is Dalcroze solfege games... Is that we might just play the role of teacher and student, and I might take you through some Dalcroze solfege games that I might do with a class. Does that sound good? 

0:07:18.3 DN: I am so here for this.

0:07:19.8 GR: Okay, [laughter] awesome. And for everyone listening at home, we're also video recording this because a lot of Dalcroze work is movement involved. So while we'll try and talk about what we're doing in movement, we'll also put some clips up to YouTube and put those in the show notes so that you can check out and see actually what we're doing beyond our audio descriptions of it. As we dive in, I should say, a primary goal of Eurhythmics training is to really ground... Of Eurhythmics Solfege training, is to really ground in students a sense of the feeling of each degree of the scale and an ability to translate immediately between the degree of the scale and the note name in whatever key we happen to be in. And so Dalcroze teachers work always in a system that describes where we are in the scale and in a system that describes what actual pitch level we're at. And so for many Dalcroze teachers, that's a scale degrees to describe where we are in the scale, and fixed Do to describe what pitch level we're at. But I thought today, because it's more common in America, that we'd work using movable Do for where we are in the scale and using letter names for what pitch level we're at, since I think more of us in America speak that language, and that's absolutely consistent with the Dalcroze work. You just need one of each system to work. So, yeah, shall we dive in? 

0:08:49.1 DN: Yeah.

0:08:49.6 GR: Great. Okay, David, if you're comfortable doing so, would you stand and step back a little bit to where we can see a little more of your body, and I'm going to do the same.

0:08:57.5 DN: I might have to adjust my...

0:09:00.7 GR: Your camera a bit. Sure, and I'll do the same for mine. Good.

0:09:04.5 DN: I'm not sure I have the... [laughter] Can I kneel? 

[laughter]

0:09:11.5 GR: I think that's gonna work, okay. As long as we can see your hips then we're fine, and yeah, great, okay. We're going to do a game that I call Bodyfege. I learned this game from Lisa Parker at the Longy School of Music. When I introduce this, I just say, "Face a neighbor." And you have to imagine, David, that you have a neighbor, and I say, "Do what I do four beats later." And then... Yeah, okay, so here we go. Let's just be, why not in this key. Do, Do, Sol, Sol, Sol.

0:09:45.3 DN: Do Do Sol Sol Sol.

0:09:47.9 GR: Good and the "Sol, Sol, Sol" for everyone who is listening as we do this, the Do is fists tapping on your thighs. Yup. And the Sol is high tens with your partner, so flat palm high tens with your partner. Great, okay, here we go. Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:10:08.0 DN: Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:10:11.5 GR: Sol-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.

0:10:14.4 DN: Sol-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.

0:10:17.5 GR: Do-Sol-Sol-Do.

0:10:20.3 DN: Do-Sol-Sol-Do.

0:10:23.1 GR: Do-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol-Do.

0:10:26.2 DN: Do-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol-Do.

0:10:28.3 GR: Do the same thing, but I'm gonna play it on the piano instead.

[music]

0:10:34.0 DN: Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol.

[music]

0:10:39.8 DN: Sol-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.

0:10:41.5 GR: Good, and David, I'm gonna make just a little correction on what you're doing. The Do is actually straight arms really on your thighs, not on your hips, but on your thighs.

0:10:48.2 DN: Fantastic, okay.

0:10:48.6 GR: We're gonna need our hips for another degree of the scale as this goes on. [laughter] Okay, great going on.

[music]

0:10:57.7 DN: Do-Sol-Sol-Sol-Do.

[music]

0:11:03.4 DN: Sol-Do-Sol-Sol-Do-Do.

0:11:06.4 GR: Sol-Sol-La.

0:11:10.9 DN: Sol-Sol-La.

0:11:11.5 GR: And La is as a little snap, just above the high tens, so exactly. Go ahead and snap as you do it. Sol-La-Sol-La-Sol.

0:11:21.2 DN: Sol-La-Sol-La-Sol.

0:11:23.3 GR: La-Sol-Do-Do-Do.

0:11:25.3 DN: La-Sol-Do-Do-Do.

0:11:29.9 GR: Do-La-Sol-Do-Do.

0:11:32.9 DN: Do-La-Sol-Do-Do.

[music]

0:11:38.9 DN: La-La-Sol.

[music]

0:11:44.7 DN: La-Sol-La-Do-Do-Do.

[music]

0:11:50.9 DN: Do-La-Sol-La-La.

[music]

0:11:56.7 DN: Sol-La-Sol-Do.

0:11:58.6 GR: Good. Now, I'm gonna keep adding notes, and I think it's worth saying here that when I'm doing this with a class, this is something that I space out over a number of weeks. We start with just a few notes, usually with just these first three notes, and then once those start to be really solid, we gradually add other notes to it. Although I'm gonna get us through the whole scale now, this is not something I would do in one class. This is to gradually build up over it. Now, the other thing that as we're building it up, in any Dalcroze exercise, a great joy is to switch around who's the teacher and say, "Okay, let's have... Who would volunteer to lead this?" And it's a great game to lead and also for you to test not only can students identify what they hear, but can students call to mind the sound of each Solfege? So David, do you wanna lead it with these three notes so far? 

0:12:50.1 DN: Sure.

0:12:50.9 GR: Great.

0:12:52.1 DN: Sol-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:12:56.9 GR: Sol-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:12:58.1 DN: La-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol.

0:13:03.3 GR: La-Sol-Do-Sol-Sol.

0:13:03.6 DN: Sol-La-Sol-Do-Do-Do.

0:13:05.8 GR: Sol-La-Sol-Do-Do-Do. Excellent, excellent. And now, why don't you lead it? Sing like... Bum-Bum-Bum, something without the syllables.

0:13:19.5 DN: Right. Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum.

0:13:22.6 GR: Do-Sol-La-Sol-Do.

0:13:24.6 DN: Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum-Bum.

0:13:27.5 GR: La-Sol-La-Do-Do-Do.

0:13:29.7 DN: That's great.

0:13:30.6 GR: Yeah, yeah. No, this works really well in classes, even very large classes, because the students also see what's happening around them. So if they're wondering, 'Wait a second. Was that Do-So? Or was that Do-La?' They can kind of see, 'Is my partner going to a snap, or is my partner going to a high ten?'

[laughter]

0:13:50.3 GR: And there's that sort of communication and trust. And I think this is true of a lot of Dalcroze games, that the class teaches, in many ways, itself through that. And now, if I had given you a pattern that you had made a mistake on, then what... Instead of just doing that pattern over again, or saying, "Oh, that was wrong".

0:14:13.1 DN: Mm-hmm.

0:14:14.1 GR: I'll often then do a pattern that will correct it. So let's say that I'd given you...

[music]

0:14:19.5 GR: And you went, 'Do-Sol-Sol... ' Then, I just go...

[music]

0:14:25.1 GR: At which point, you've got, 'Oh, yeah. It's Do-La-La-La.' Right, so, just a pattern that simplifies things to correct it. Yeah, good. Should we add some more notes? 

0:14:34.5 DN: Sure.

0:14:35.2 GR: Okay, great. Now, do what I do four beats later. Do-Do-Mi.

0:14:39.5 DN: Do-Do-Mi.

0:14:41.9 GR: So, Mi is a clap right in the center of the chest, right in front of the body. Do-Mi-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:14:49.3 DN: Do-Mi-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:14:52.3 GR: La-Sol-Mi-Sol-Sol.

0:14:55.4 DN: La-Sol-Mi-Sol-Sol.

0:14:58.5 GR: La-Mi-Sol-Do-Do.

[chuckle]

0:15:01.2 DN: La-Mi-Sol-Do-Do. That's a...

0:15:04.2 GR: La-Mi-Mi-La-La.

0:15:08.2 DN: La-Mi-Mi-La-La.

0:15:12.1 GR: Sol-Mi-La-Do-Do.

0:15:16.4 DN: Sol-Mi-La-Do-Do.

0:15:20.6 GR: Mi-Do-La-La-Sol.

0:15:24.8 DN: Mi-Do-La-La-Sol.

0:15:29.1 GR: Sol-Mi-La-Do.

0:15:32.5 DN: Sol-Mi-La-Do. [chuckle]

[music]

0:15:33.7 DN: Sol-La-Mi-Mi-Mi [laughter]

[music]

0:15:40.3 DN: Mi-Mi-La-La-Sol.

[music]

0:15:46.0 DN: Sol-Mi-Mi-Sol-Sol-Mi.

[music]

0:15:52.1 DN: La-Sol-Mi-Do.

0:15:53.4 GR: Do-Do-Re.

0:15:55.7 DN: Do-Do-Re.

0:15:58.1 GR: Re is hands on hips, elbows out to the side, a big strong posture. Do-Re-Mi.

0:16:07.0 DN: Do-Re-Mi.

0:16:09.6 GR: Mi-Re-Mi-Re-Re-Do.

0:16:14.7 DN: Mi-Re-Mi-Re-Re-Do.

0:16:19.8 GR: Sol-Mi-Re-Do-Do.

0:16:24.3 DN: Sol-Mi-Re-Do-Do.

[music]

0:16:26.7 DN: Do-Re-Mi-Re-Do-Do-Do.

[music]

0:16:32.0 DN: Do-Re-Mi-Sol-La-Sol. [laughter]

[music]

0:16:39.5 DN: La-Sol-La-Sol-Mi.

[music]

0:16:42.9 DN: La-Sol-Mi-Re-Do.

0:16:49.8 GR: Do-Mi-Fa.

0:16:52.4 DN: Do-Mi-Fa.

0:16:55.0 GR: So, Fa is hands up and out to the side in a questioning gesture like, 'What is that?'

[laughter]

0:17:01.8 GR: Do-Mi-Fa-Fa-Mi.

0:17:04.3 DN: Do-Mi-Fa-Fa-Mi.

0:17:06.9 GR: Sol-Fa-Fa-Mi.

0:17:09.1 DN: Sol-Fa-Fa-Mi.

0:17:11.3 GR: La-Sol-Fa-Mi-Do.

0:17:14.0 DN: La-Sol-Fa-Mi-Do.

0:17:16.7 GR: Re-Fa-Fa-Mi-Mi-Mi.

0:17:19.7 DN: Re-Fa-Fa-Mi-Mi-Mi.

0:17:22.8 GR: Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do.

0:17:26.0 DN: Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do. [chuckle]

0:17:29.2 GR: So, yeah. Exactly, you did it.

0:17:33.8 DN: I can keep up with the syllables, but not with the action steps. [laughter]

0:17:38.8 GR: Not with the motions, right? This is the other thing to... Of introducing it over a longer period of time, yeah. So, what remains? Ti. Of course, Ti, right? And so, Ti... Actually, before I introduce Ti, I usually introduce a high Do. So, high Do... Our low Do is fists with straight arms on thighs. Our high Do is fists pumping straight up into the air. So, Do-Do-Do-Do-Do.

0:18:00.3 DN: Do-Do-Do-Do-Do.

0:18:04.0 GR: Sol-Sol-Do-Do-Do-Do.

0:18:06.6 DN: Sol-Sol-Do-Do-Do-Do.

0:18:10.2 GR: La-La-Do-La-Sol-Do.

0:18:13.6 DN: La-La-Do-La-Sol-Do.

0:18:17.0 GR: La-Sol-La-Do-Do.

0:18:19.9 DN: La-Sol-La-Do-Do.

0:18:22.8 GR: Do-Do-Ti-Ti-Ti.

0:18:25.5 DN: Do-Do-Ti-Ti-Ti.

0:18:28.2 GR: Ti is just a good old-fashioned curving point-your-finger T, with arms... Upper arms parallel to the shoulders and fingers pointing up. Do-Ti-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:18:42.3 DN: Do-Ti-La-Sol-Sol-Sol.

0:18:46.3 GR: Ti-Sol-Re-Re-Do.

0:18:49.4 DN: Ti-Sol-Re-Re-Do.

0:18:52.4 GR: Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do.

0:18:55.3 DN: Fa-Mi-Re-Do-Do.

0:18:58.0 GR: Anyway, you can see how you can introduce this slowly, let's say, over the course of a semester, or even longer, especially if you're working with kids, to introduce each of the notes.

0:19:08.8 DN: Yeah.

0:19:09.1 GR: And an important thing...

0:19:09.3 DN: And we get a work out.

0:19:10.5 GR: And we get a work out.

[laughter]

0:19:12.0 GR: Yeah, you have seen. You get moving. I love to do this even with my college students, with Oberlin College Choir. I love to do just 30 seconds of this at the start of rehearsal. And just brings us into thinking about a tonal space, which is great. You can also, with your classes, and this is a very Dalcrozine thing to do. I give the prompts on Solfege, you give the prompt back to me in letter names. I will tell you what key we're in, and we switch it around that way. Or vice versa, right? Or I tell you the key, I give you the prompt from the piano, you give it back on letter names. You're still doing the motions showing where we are on the scale. So, let's say if we count to D major, right? 

0:19:53.6 DN: Right.

0:19:54.0 GR: Then, if I gave Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol, you'd give D-D. A, A, A. And just because it takes too long to say F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, F sharp, we don't bother saying the accidentals when we do this. We just say the letter name. Yeah.

0:20:15.8 DN: Is that... In the long run, does that inhibit or... I know that when you do fixed Do, you don't... I'm doing fixed Do in classes right now for non-tonal Solfege, and we're using the chromatic declensions for the purpose of interpreting exactly where we are, so we know exactly what the letter name is, but... Obviously that works. I just wonder why it works. [laughter]

0:20:50.5 GR: In other words, why in fixed Do not using the accidentals works?

0:20:55.0 DN: Correct. Yeah.

0:20:58.7 GR: I'll tell you in... If we actually go back and we look at Dalcroze's book on Solfege pedagogy, which came out in 1906, he suggests actually using alterations for the chromatic syllables, but he stopped doing that in his own teaching at some point, I think to match more just how fixed Solfege is used throughout Europe. But actually, we'll get to this in a moment. In the Dalcroze world, there's actually a little bit of benefit to not using alterations because in some of the exercises we do, it's about discovering where the half and whole steps are. And by not using alterations, in other words, F would always be F, even if it's an F sharp, F flat, etcetera, or if we're using fixed Do, it'll always be Fa. Then the class can sing, for instance, through a scalar passage, not knowing what key they're in, but discovering as they go where the half and whole steps are, to then be able to figure out what those are.

0:22:08.6 GR: That's, boy, without a classic example, that seems really weird, so maybe we should dive into some of that stuff, yeah? But before we do, one more thought on Bodyfege, which is, this is designed to get students to recognize the feeling of each note of the scale, to build up comfort... to make it comfortable for students to go between any two degrees of the scale. What intentionally it does not teach is intervallic thinking. It really teaches, does that sound like a Do, does that sound like a So? I remember where Do is, I remember where So is. And our goal is with that Bodyfege work, that students are really memorizing where each degree of the scale is in relation to tonic, and that they would be able to go to and from any other degree of the scale regardless of interval.

0:23:06.5 DN: Which is so much more useful, I think, for most levels of... Yeah.

0:23:13.1 GR: Yeah, yeah. We do have to build up tonal intervals. We'd have to build Do, Mi, Re, Fa... We have to build up the thirds within the scale, the fourths within the scale, etcetera. And it points to that La-Mi moment where it was like, "Ooh, that La-Mi feels weird." 'Cause it does 'cause that's a much less common leap. Yeah, the other thing that as you're teaching these, as you get enough notes to build the different triads, to work through arpeggiations of the different triads within the key as well, to build those in. Cool. Okay, shall we leave Bodyfege? 

0:23:45.8 DN: Sure. [laughter] But that was great, and I can see so many reasons to do it. As I may have mentioned possibly, it's embarrassing, but you know at the college level, I hadn't done Kodaly hand signs until maybe five years ago. And I hadn't ever seen anyone else do it at the college level except in choirs, but I thought we need to get some physical involvement. And I think what's neat about this is it has the same opportunity for a kinesthetic engagement, and I like how much more physically engaged this is. I'm making plans for...

[laughter]

0:24:38.0 GR: It's also, I don't know if you noticed. It's actually, it's designed to transfer to and from the Kodaly hand signs relatively easily, 'cause Do is fists, just the way it would be in Kodaly. Re you put your hands on your hips and if you just bring those up, they become like the Re. Mi, your hands are flat when you clap, and of course, Mi also flat hands. The Fa is the weird one and that's fine.

0:25:00.6 DN: It's fine, and the partnering aspect of it, that sounds great. If you have an odd number of students, do you group three people together? 

0:25:09.3 GR: Absolutely, and actually, sometimes early on in this, I'll have students work in groups of three or four with the hopes that at least one person is going to be strong in that group of three. 'Cause if you have one leader, they can gradually pull the others along.

0:25:26.3 DN: That's great. I've always looked for ways of having the stronger students help the weaker students without pointing out like, "Hey, you should probably get help from this person." [laughter]

0:25:37.4 GR: Yeah, exactly, exactly. And also your stronger students asking for volunteers to lead it, it will often be those students who know they're strong at it who are like, "Oh yeah, I wanna lead this." And it's another level of magnitude harder to lead this than it is to follow it. And of course it is improvisation. You're creating little one-measure phraselets.

0:26:00.7 DN: But what a great start to improvising. That's not intimidating. That's not gonna be intimidating to most people or...

0:26:07.9 GR: Yeah. Especially...

0:26:09.3 DN: I shouldn't say that.

0:26:10.5 GR: No, no, no. Especially if you start with, say just Do and So.

0:26:13.5 DN: Right.

0:26:14.0 GR: Right? That's... Yeah, you can... Yeah.

0:26:16.8 DN: And then you're encouraging them to explore on their own how those notes function with each other and what sounds good and maybe what sounds bad. [laughter]

0:26:29.0 GR: Yeah, yeah. And I should say also, we were in 4/4, but I love to do this in different times as well. So, maybe we'll do it in 3/4, which actually... When the... As the duration between when you hear it and when you respond shortens, it becomes harder and harder, and so 3/4 in 2/4 is very hard, 6/8 is delightful because there's just so much more space in the measure to have different notes.

0:26:56.3 DN: Mm-hmm.

0:26:58.7 GR: Yeah, so lots of possibilities for extending that. Then of course, if you want, you could extend it to two measures, although I think there's something fun about the quickness of the call and response nature of it.

0:27:10.6 DN: Mm-hmm.

0:27:11.5 GR: And this is also... This is really central to Dalcroze pedagogy is the idea that it's not... There's not one right game, but every game is an invitation to create other games out of it, to modify the rules to change what we're doing, etcetera.

0:27:27.1 DN: Right? 

0:27:27.5 GR: Yeah. Cool, okay, so in Dalcroze Solfege, we have these weird scales that are called C-to-C scales, and they're very central to the classic Dalcroze training. And what we mean by that is we sing all of our scales major and minor starting from C or C-sharp or C-flat, whatever is in the key, going up to the next C and coming back down.

[chuckle]

0:27:55.6 GR: And as I describe that, you might be thinking, "That sounds a lot like modes."

0:28:00.8 DN: Right.

0:28:00.9 GR: Right? It sounds like a rotation of a scale, and you're right, the notes are the same as the modes, but what we work really hard to do with these is to actually learn them as major or minor scales already in progress.

0:28:20.1 DN: Right.

0:28:20.5 GR: So that if we were going to do the F-major C-to-C scale, we'll start on C, but we wanna hear that C... We wanna hear it not as being some... Ah, sorry. As being some sort of lovely Mixolydian thing.

0:28:40.0 DN: But that was a very nice Mixolydian demonstration. Thank you very much.

0:28:43.1 GR: Yeah. Absolutely. And you feel... And that C feels like tonic and that B-flat feels like part of the mode, and that is... And there is a modal C-to-C, right? But instead, what we work to do in Dalcroze is to say, "Can you make this C feel like scale degree five in your mind?" And to help that along the way, as we're introducing the scales generally one by one over a longer period of time, we'll say, "Okay, let's sing our F-major, C-to-C scale. Let's sing it on movable Do Solfege." So what syllable will be start on in F-major, David? 

0:29:25.0 DN: Sol.

0:29:25.7 GR: Absolutely. So let's sing together our F-major, C-to-C scale, on movable Do. Here we go.

0:29:32.7 DN: Sol La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La So.

0:29:51.2 GR: And the tonic is? 

0:29:52.7 DN: Do.

0:29:58.0 GR: Yeah, and so now that F feels very much like tonic, right? Even though we've sung the scale from C-to-C, we're very clearly in F-major. Now, let's do the same thing... Would you do it on letter names this time? 

0:30:10.2 DN: Okay.

0:30:10.9 GR: And I'm just going to play one chord underneath you as you do it. Here we go.

0:30:15.0 DN: C D E F G A B C B A G F E D C.

0:30:23.8 GR: And the tonic is? 

0:30:36.2 DN: F.

0:30:37.7 GR: Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so at that point, you have both the movable Solfege and the letter names going in your mind. Now, let's do the same thing... And I'm just gonna play a C, but we do the same thing. And at any point in the scale, I might call out switch, which means change from letters to scale degrees or vice... Letters to movable Solfege or vice versa. Yeah, so start in whichever you prefer.

0:31:04.7 DN: Sol La...

0:31:06.8 GR: Switch.

0:31:08.3 DN: B... Oh, shoot. [laughter]

0:31:11.9 GR: Now, I'd suggest you imagine playing along in your mind and it'll... Yeah.

0:31:15.7 DN: Right.

0:31:16.8 GR: Go ahead.

0:31:17.3 DN: Sol La Ti...

0:31:20.8 GR: Switch.

0:31:21.2 DN: F G...

0:31:23.2 GR: Switch.

0:31:24.8 DN: La Ti...

0:31:25.6 GR: Mi Fa...

[laughter]

0:31:28.7 GR: Yeah.

0:31:29.9 DN: Ooh, boy.

0:31:30.5 GR: Yeah. So...

0:31:31.4 DN: This is tricky.

0:31:32.7 GR: Let's do the intermediate step that we totally skipped, which is...

0:31:35.2 DN: Okay.

0:31:35.5 GR: Sing each note on both. So Sol is C, La is D, etcetera.

0:31:42.8 DN: Sol is C, La is D, Ti is E, Do... Yes, Do is F, Re is G, Mi is A, Fa is B-flat, really? 

0:32:08.4 GR: And...

0:32:09.4 DN: Sol is C.

0:32:11.8 GR: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we built that up, and even you feel the mental gymnastics that goes on to do that, right? 

0:32:19.6 DN: Yeah.

0:32:19.9 GR: And this is... I think the connection, the instantaneous connection of letter names and Solfege, this is something that takes a lot of time to develop, and it's something else to take the time to develop in each key.

0:32:32.8 DN: Mm-hmm.

0:32:34.5 GR: I was thinking back to our episode with Denise Eaton, where she was talking about how important the visual element of each key is when you're doing sight singing.

0:32:43.8 DN: Mm-hmm.

0:32:44.5 GR: And this is another way of getting at that of saying, "Okay, we're gonna do... We're gonna be working in this key." Let's work our C-to-C scale in that key, and let's practice going between the letter names and the Solfege, so that when we go over to the staff, I see that C and F-major and I'm like, "Yep, that is a Sol, and I know it."

0:33:05.9 DN: Right.

0:33:08.6 GR: And similarly, if I am hearing music that I know is in F-major, I hear a Mi and I say, "Oh yeah, absolutely, that is an A." And I know it.

0:33:22.1 DN: Yeah, that's a great thing to establish that connection.

0:33:26.0 GR: Yeah, yeah, I find my experience with students has been that the analysis of music is typically slow because the process of moving between the letter names and where they are in the scale is also slow.

0:33:45.0 DN: Right.

0:33:45.6 GR: And so these C-to-C scales, that is their primary goal is to connect in an inseparable way, that sense of in the key of F, A is three and three is A and ever more shall be so.

0:34:02.7 DN: Right.

0:34:04.7 GR: The other thing we do a lot with the C-to-C scales is we have different ways of prompting them. For instance, I could say, "Okay, hey everyone, let's sing our E-flat major C-to-C scale and let's sing it on movable Do so we'd all start on La and that would be fine." Actually, David, would you do that, would you sing the E-flat major, C-to-C scale starting from C on movable Solfege.

0:34:31.2 DN: Okay, using La based minor then? 

0:34:33.9 GR: No. This is an E-flat major scale but we're starting from C, so we are starting on La.

0:34:40.1 DN: So it's La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La.

0:34:52.3 GR: And that feels very much like C natural minor and...

0:34:57.3 DN: Right.

0:34:57.9 GR: To moveable-do La minor people sounds like it... Right.

0:35:00.7 DN: Right, absolutely.

0:35:02.2 GR: Okay, would you do the same thing again and I'm going to give us a little harmony.

0:35:06.0 DN: Okay. La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La.

0:35:21.0 GR: And coming down.

0:35:22.4 DN: Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La.

0:35:32.6 GR: And the tonic is? 

0:35:34.5 DN: Do.

0:35:36.5 GR: And when we're that close we sometimes sing up to it.

0:35:39.1 DN: La Ti Do.

0:35:40.0 GR: Yeah, exactly, just so we feel... Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And now it feels it's the same notes, but it feels very much like E-flat major.

0:35:50.0 DN: Mm-hmm.

0:35:51.5 GR: And a primary goal of these scales is also to start to be able to hear harmonic contacts so that I could just singing La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La Do versus La Ti Do Re Mi Fa Sol La Sol Fa Mi Re Do Ti La Si La that I could call to mind whatever harmonic realm I want for those notes.

0:36:27.8 DN: Yeah, yeah, it's interesting that I heard the harmonic context of both of those. [chuckle]

0:36:35.8 GR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing about this, I said I could prompt it by saying what we're doing, but I could also prompt it by playing a C and then giving you a chord that's going to strongly suggest what key we're in. So here's that C and I'm gonna give us a chord that makes C very clearly a specific part of the scale.

0:37:02.0 DN: Okay.

0:37:02.7 GR: And let me know what part of the scale you think that is.

0:37:10.8 DN: That sounds like Ti.

0:37:13.1 GR: Absolutely, absolutely, yeah. Now, students may not get there that quickly, and one of the joys of singing without accidentals is that we could sing up and down the scale to feel out where the half and whole steps are on letter names. So let's do it, let's do it without accidentals on letter names, here we go.

0:37:30.9 DN: C D E F G A B C D.

0:37:38.4 GR: C, come down.

0:37:43.4 DN: C B A G F E D C.

0:37:50.1 GR: And tonic is? 

0:37:55.6 DN: Do.

0:37:56.8 GR: Otherwise known as D and what kind of D is that tonic by the way? 

0:38:06.0 DN: That's... Oh it's gotta be a D flat.

0:38:08.3 GR: It's gotta be a D flat because it started from a C natural, yeah absolutely. So we could cue a scale just by giving a chord, let's do another of those. So I've put C on top. Let's sing it together in letters and let's see what we figure out.

0:38:24.9 DN: Mi Re Do...

0:38:25.9 GR: Yes, bingo, good, let's sing on letters, here we go.

0:38:37.0 DN: C D E F G A B C B A G F E D C.

0:38:51.6 GR: And tonic is? 

0:38:53.3 DN: A flat.

0:38:54.0 GR: A flat indeed, yes.

[laughter]

0:38:55.5 GR: Right, so... And so yeah we can cue... uh, what I'm doing is I'm just playing a V7 chord and I put a C on top of that V7 cord.

0:39:04.3 DN: Right.

0:39:04.9 GR: So in that case, it was just an E flat dominant seventh and I put the C on top which makes it a dominant 13th chord.

0:39:12.0 DN: Right, but still, as soon as you have that dominant seventh chord, if you're thinking in standard tonal harmony, it just tells you what key you're in.

0:39:22.0 GR: Absolutely, absolutely. The proof of that, of course, is there's only one tritone within the major scale, so theoretically, if you have the tritone plus any other note of the scale, you can identify where you are. That's actually a very hard prompt that we sometimes do is we'll do tritone plus C.

0:39:40.2 GR: Gosh yeah, and can I share with you another prompt that I love? 

0:39:45.1 DN: Sure.

0:39:45.2 GR: This is called the whisk and cluster prompt. Whisk and cluster, ready? 

0:39:48.8 DN: Okay.

0:39:54.4 GR: I whisked first, and then I clustered, and now hum around in that and see if you can figure out where we are.

0:40:10.0 DN: Yeah, it sounds Lydian to me, but...

0:40:17.2 GR: Right. Uh-huh. And now, of course, if I put with it a... Now it feels not so Lydian, right? 

0:40:24.1 DN: Right.

0:40:24.4 GR: And the harder version of that is we take the whisk away and we do purely the cluster. Ready for a cluster? 

0:40:32.2 DN: Yep.

0:40:32.8 GR: Okay, here we go.

0:40:33.5 DN: Da da da da. Da. Da da da da da da da da da da.

0:40:45.0 GR: Almost.

0:40:45.3 DN: Oh, thank you, thank you. Da da da da da da da da da da da...

0:40:53.1 GR: Good, let's sing it on letters, ready? Here we go.

0:40:54.7 DN: Alright.

0:40:55.2 GR: Here we go.

0:40:56.2 DN: C D E F G A B C B A G F E D C.

0:41:08.8 GR: And the tonic is? 

0:41:12.8 DN: Do.

0:41:13.4 GR: Yes. Otherwise known as, in letters? 

0:41:20.0 DN: B flat.

0:41:21.3 GR: B flat, indeed, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's... Yeah so that's the cluster prompt, right? 

0:41:28.0 DN: Right.

0:41:28.2 GR: And that one is just great to let students hum around and sort of figure out where are the half steps, where are the whole steps? And then they're purely identifying where they are in the scale based on that arrangement of half and whole steps, which is really I think fun and delightful. You can do the same thing with harmonic minors. Right to where now we know clearly we're in...

0:42:02.1 DN: Yeah, well... Da da... I hear that very well. Can you cluster it again? Da da. Da da da da da da.

0:42:16.2 GR: Yeah, uh-huh.

0:42:19.4 DN: Da. It's decayed so much that I'm not sure I can hear it anymore. Da da da da da da da da da.

0:42:31.9 GR: Mm-hmm, yeah, so...

0:42:33.4 DN: Hava Nagila, Hava Nagila... I can't help but hear it in a mode.

[laughter]

0:42:38.6 GR: And that's kind of a question, do you hear Hava Nagila in... With this as tonic or do you hear this as tonic? I hear this a tonic myself. I hear it starting on a V chord. But you know, either way, right? In any case, yes absolutely, we're starting from... Oh, pardon my clock here. It's got... This is the thing about doing these C to C scales is, you really start getting into hearing where are things between C and C? 

0:43:18.3 DN: Uh huh.

0:43:18.3 GR: And then, I don't know about you, but after I've done a few of these, especially these cluster examples, I'll turn on the radio and I still have in mind where C and C are and I just start hearing the collection of clustered notes between C and C and the key emerges and suddenly, I know all the notes I'm listening to.

0:43:39.9 DN: I think there's great value in having a lot of avenues into things. And one thing that I have never quite explained to myself, because I'm a terrible pianist but I can still, within my skill limits, I can play anything that I hear by ear. Anything? That's probably an exaggeration, but definitely a pop song. And I've noticed that I can be going along and listening to a pop song and I will get to a chord or get to something and I will lose track of where I am. And I'm trying to mentally analyze where things are. Doesn't everybody do this, mentally analyze all the pop songs you hear on the radio? Anyway, I have exposed myself. Alright. But I have found moments where I lose track of where I am and I think, "How would I play it?" And my fingers immediately know where they would go.

0:44:41.8 GR: Yeah, yeah.

0:44:44.3 DN: I will be like, Oh, now I know where I am.

0:44:48.9 GR: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.

0:44:50.9 DN: That's some other part of my brain that knows how to do that, but I think having these multiple avenues...

0:45:00.1 GR: Yeah, and Dalcroze was really after training that sort of subconscious level of the brain. That the goal was to make things so automatic that you couldn't disentangle pitch from scale degree, that you couldn't disentangle hearing the half steps and whole steps in a row and going, "Oh yeah, I know that that exists as either two, three, four or as six, seven, one. And therefore, I am in a specific place in the scale.

0:45:30.9 DN: Right.

0:45:31.4 GR: And which is it? Oh, now I have enough information. It's two, three, four"

0:45:34.4 GR: Right.

0:45:35.3 GR: Which also leads to wonderful exercises of modulation as well, that we could say, I'm starting from C again, and what arrangements of half and whole steps was that? That was a half step and then a whole step. What are the keys I could be in? Don't tell me, just think of them. And would you improvise a little tune that starts from that C that convinces me of what you have decided is tonic in that key."

0:46:00.2 DN: Uh. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da.

0:46:10.4 GR: Great. And I believe absolutely that you're in A flat major. Yes, you fully convinced me of it. Did someone in the class pick a different key? Don't tell me what it was. Let's hear your tune. And suddenly you've introduced the concept of modulation.

0:46:24.3 DN: Right.

0:46:24.4 GR: And of pivot. Of pivot scale fragments instead of pivot chords. Of course, you're having just sung that we would then sing it back either on letter names or scale degrees or moveable do.

0:46:34.1 DN: Right.

0:46:35.0 GR: Mi fa sol la ti la sol fa mi, la ti do, do re me.

[laughter]

0:46:44.7 GR: Sorry... I live in fixed do you see, and so...

0:46:45.6 DN: It's hard to switch.

[laughter]

0:46:45.6 GR: I'm gonna need numbers. "Three, four, five, one, sev, six, five, four, three, one, two, three. A six, five, four, three". I think you did something like that. Do you remember? 

0:46:55.6 DN: That was good memory.

0:46:56.9 GR: Right? And so was...

0:46:57.6 DN: This is another thing we try to teach students.

0:47:00.7 GR: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's the... Yeah. Yeah. And of course going back to the Bodyfege, that is also about tonal... About tonal memory, memorizing small...

0:47:07.7 DN: Yeah.

0:47:08.7 GR: Smaller sections, yeah.

0:47:11.6 DN: Now I think, of course, I was trying to not sing a tune that immediately sprung to mind. And then I thought, "Oh, well, for another key... Oh, Danny Boy... ".

[laughter]

0:47:21.5 GR: Yeah. You were gonna sing... Yeah.

[music]

0:47:28.4 GR: Yeah, which is a great... I mean, there aren't that many well-known examples of tunes that began on scale degree 7. Isn't that a great one? "Sev, one, two, three". Totally. Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so these are the C to C scales. There are infinite games that you can spin out of them. We've only... We've only touched on a few. I wanted to share one more thing, which is just to give a sense of how Dalcrozians might introduce rhythm elements in the classroom. Shall we do a quick rhythm game? 

0:47:55.1 DN: Sure.

0:47:55.9 GR: Okay. So this is gonna sound familiar, 'cause this is something you hear quite a lot in a Dalcroze class. "Do what I do four beats later."

[laughter]

0:48:03.8 DN: Okay.

0:48:04.3 GR: Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop. Oh, we have earphones on, we have to tug on our earlobes for this next part. Because for the "Doops... " When we say the "Doops," were touching our pointer finger to our nose. And when we get to "Chikas", which will be tugging left, right, left, right, left, right on my earlobes. When I eventually get to "Ooh's", I'll be tracing a long arc of a hand from down by my knee up to the sky. And then when I get to a "Ksss," I'll do a clap in the middle of my body, spreading out over the full length of the "Ksss". Okay. So now our listeners know what we'll be doing physically, but we also post it quick. Okay. Here we go. Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop.

0:48:42.7 DN: Doop. Doop. Doop. Doop.

0:48:45.5 GR: Chika. Chika. Chika. Chika.

0:49:21.1 DN: Chika. Chika. Chika. Chika.

[vocalization]

[laughter]

0:49:42.2 GR: So this was... You should know David and I are doing this over the internet, and we're using Jamulus, which has pretty low latency. There's still a little bit of latency, so I was having to be ever so slightly ahead of David, which was totally... drammatically confusing for me.

[laughter]

0:49:58.3 GR: But yeah... So, just to talk through the sequence of that. First we did one sound at a time, leaving silence and echoing. Then I would do one sound for measure and the next measure, I do was put a...

[vocalization]

0:50:09.2 GR: A whole note in.

0:50:11.3 DN: Mm-hmm.

0:50:11.4 GR: And then each measure changing to whatever I want it to be, but still... By the way, every fourth measure I was putting a ksss [whole note]

0:50:21.8 GR: In, so that there was a sense of cadence and ordering to the phrase length.

0:50:26.5 DN: That is so important, to me, is that things be musical.

0:50:32.8 GR: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

0:50:34.4 DN: Because you can do things at random, and if you don't make them musical, are you really... It's like you're putting another impediment in the way while you're creating new skills.

0:50:46.1 GR: Yes, yes. And I'm really glad you said that, because the next thing I would do... Actually, let's just go a little more, yeah? 

0:50:54.5 DN: Okay.

0:50:55.5 GR: Ready? 

[vocalization]

0:51:15.9 DN: I started my chikas too loud.

0:51:17.3 GR: Oh, it's all good...

[laughter]

0:51:21.2 GR: It's all good, right? But to intentionally then create dynamic, and even pitch shapes within it, so that it starts becoming not just a... We have doops, we have chikas, we have oohs, but we start to create a thing.

0:51:31.3 DN: Right. There's a whole other layer of information that we often don't work on.

0:51:39.7 GR: Yeah. And intentionally, when I first did this exercise, I do not put that layer of information in.

0:51:45.4 DN: Right.

0:51:45.5 GR: At the beginning, this is an exercise of, can I do one thing...

[laughter]

0:51:51.7 GR: While seeing another thing being done? 

0:51:52.6 DN: Right.

0:51:54.4 GR: And that's a really hard skill to learn at first. With college students, yeah, great. But with elementary students, that I'm holding my own, and I'm not doing what I'm seeing, that takes a lot of work. And actually, what I will do in that, I do sort of like a Simon Says kind of thing. I'll say, "Do what I do. Do, do, do." We're all doing it. And then I say, "Keep doing that. Don't change until I say change." Class keeps doing it, I start to... chk-ah chk-ah

0:52:23.4 GR: "Keep doing your doops until I say... Change." And now we're all doing... chk-ah chk-ah

0:52:28.6 GR: Until I can... So you can layer it up that way of having them experience, "I'm doing eighth notes while I'm seeing quarter notes," or vice versa and starting to feel the relationship of those different notes.

0:52:39.4 DN: And you know what's also great about this? And this is just stating the obvious, I know. But it's all a game.

0:52:47.0 GR: It's all a game.

0:52:47.9 DN: It's all a game.

0:52:49.3 GR: It's all a game. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, okay, let's spin this game out a little bit. So now I'm just going to do the sounds at the Piano. But would you do everything back just as you were doing it? 

0:53:00.5 DN: Okay.

0:53:00.8 GR: So when you hear doops, chikas, oohs and...

[vocalization]

0:53:02.2 GR: From the Piano.

[laughter]

0:53:03.8 GR: Ready? Here we go.

[music]

[vocalization]

[laughter]

0:53:47.5 GR: Yeah, Exactly.

0:53:49.0 DN: And then you end with the symbol crash. Fantastic.

0:53:51.7 GR: The symbol crash, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And of course, what we are doing is rhythmic dictation. We're doing real-time rhythmic dictation.

0:54:00.3 DN: Yeah.

0:54:00.8 GR: And as we build it up, I could change the note value within the measure. Which I wasn't doing at all, I was doing a full measure of each, right? 

0:54:06.6 DN: Right.

0:54:08.1 GR: We changed the note values within the measure, which adds a little bit of complexity. Or as I was doing that, I was trying to play things that kind of sounded like our sounds. But I could just improvise freely, and everyone would still do about the same motions. But I don't necessarily have to do that. Or I could do like a bad Beethoven Sonata, like a... As if I start, it goes...

[music]

0:54:37.6 GR: You know, if I just...

0:54:38.0 DN: Right.

0:54:39.1 GR: You can just spin it out in any number of ways that you wanna spin it.

0:54:44.7 DN: And if I didn't feel confident at the piano, I can go... La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

0:54:55.8 GR: Absolutely... Which is equally good. Which is... Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And, as we were talking about with Bodyfege, having students lead this exercise, starting with the basic form of doing the doops and chikas, as we talked about. With the rule of every fourth bar they're gonna do a ksss [whole note]

0:55:10.3 GR: And that's hard, that's really hard to remember. Often actually, as they're doing it, I just politely say, "One... Two... " At the start of each bar. "Three... " And then gradually take that away. To learn to create four measure of shapes...

0:55:26.6 DN: Right.

0:55:28.7 GR: Is wonderfully challenging. And as we did, adding that layer of musical information that exists on top of notes and rhythm as well, really, these are wonderful pathways into Improvisation for students that they can do away from their instruments and in an art school classroom so cool.

0:55:49.7 DN: This was great.

[chuckle]

0:55:52.6 GR: I feel like that's probably enough as with anything in Dalcroze, you can take any of these and spin them out in infinite directions to fit your class...

0:56:03.2 DN: Right.

0:56:03.6 GR: To fit what you wanna work on, but I think...

0:56:06.2 DN: Yeah, I think, yes, I would love to see seven more hours of games, but just knowing this approach, there's a whole lot that one could invent on one's own...

0:56:19.5 GR: Totally.

0:56:20.5 DN: Just saying, "Oh, okay, I can use this." And probably, probably many people already are using games like this and they...

0:56:29.8 GR: Yeah.

0:56:31.8 DN: But if you're not, holy smoke. What a great process! 

[chuckle]

0:56:35.7 GR: Yeah, yeah, and I find having a number of these in my tool bag as it were, these are great quick transition fillers, like, we're going between this piece and this piece, insert 30 seconds of doop canon.

[chuckle]

0:56:51.0 GR: And that we're working. And it's just great ways, especially if you're teaching in a band or a choir orchestra situation, great ways to sneak in some really deep musical learning without having to take a bunch of time aside for it.

0:57:05.0 DN: Yeah, yeah. And the joy of playing, and we learned so much by playing, that's how we learn.

0:57:13.9 GR: Yeah, yeah, and this is the other thing because this work is so rooted in play, it takes, it removes a layer of stress that can absolutely be a blocker for learning concepts. I think when we're learning to play basketball, right, we don't go like, "Oh, I missed the basket, I give up." Right? 

0:57:34.5 DN: Right.

0:57:34.6 GR: And we don't overthink it.

0:57:36.1 DN: Well, some of us do.

0:57:36.7 GR: Some of us do. Yeah...

[chuckle]

0:57:37.9 GR: Especially adults, right? But give a kid a basketball and a basket and they'll just keep trying, and they're learning so much by that trying without horrible negative voices. The negative voices can typically come from maybe the coaching or the pressure of the game, of winning, but yeah, just working in play can be, especially for any students who are inhibited by their own stress or self-critique, it can be very freeing.

0:58:11.0 DN: Greg, this is fantastic, and thank you so much for sharing all these ideas today, I'm excited to incorporate some of them in my own classroom, and I'm sure that anyone listening is going to be thrilled as well so...

0:58:26.5 GR: Awesome. Well, thanks David. This was fun to flip the tables and do this. So...

[chuckle]

0:58:31.2 DN: Great to see you.

0:58:32.5 GR: You too David.

0:58:35.7 DN: Bye.

0:58:36.6 GR: Bye.

[music]

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