Notes from the Staff

Power of Play with Jed Dearybury

Jed Dearybury, author of The Playful Classroom and The Power of Play for All Ages joins us to talk about how bringing play into classrooms--no matter the age or level--leads to deeper, more engaged and more joyful learning.
Links:
Jed Dearybury’s webpage: https://www.mrdearybury.com/
The Playful Classroom: https://theplayfulclassroom.com/
Jed’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrdearybury
Jed's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCV4Y68wd0lR5kuIzghPGxCw
Ron Clark: Move your Bus - http://www.moveyourbus.com/
A Mathematician’s Lament
Improving Science Content with Choreographed Songs
Show Notes:
00:00:15 Introductions
00:01:00 Guest introduction: Jed Dearybury
00:03:45 How did play become your profession?
00:09:00 Play is when we feel best in life and in the classroom, it allows us to let go of self-criticism and fear.
00:11:00 What are the benefits of play in the classroom?
00:15:00 Sometimes our music teaching is not as playful as our math colleagues imagine it is
00:19:50 Deep play
00:24:15 Value of songs with movement in teaching in non-music areas
00:27:45 Play personalities & types of play (Stuart Brown’s research)
00:35:40 Types of Play
00:38:00 “Level Up” – when students begin to take a game and add a layer of difficulty on top of it
00:38:45 How do you create a culture that’s safe for play?
00:45:24 If you’ve had teachers who were playful, that gives you a model, but what do you do if you haven’t had a model of a playful teacher?
00:47:50 What advice do you have for teachers who may face naysayers when working to create a playful classroom?
00:53:10 What would you say to someone who wants to include play in their classroom, but is worried about still being able to cover all of the content?
00:59:20 Imagination, sociability, humor, spontaneity and wonder – elements of the playful mindset
01:03:26 In the history of educational psychology, we have lots of evidence that we learn through play. Why hasn’t this way of teaching become the norm?
01:09:00 Where can people follow you?
01:11:00 Wrap-ups
Transcript:
[music]
0:00:21.0 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.
0:00:35.5 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:41.8 Leah Sheldon: I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:45.4 DN: And I'm David Newman. I teach at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:52.7 LS: And before we get started today, a quick thanks to our listeners for all of your comments and episode suggestions. We love to read them, so send them our way at notes@utheory.com, and remember to like us and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:07.1 GR: Our topic today is the power of play in teaching, learning, and life. And joining us is world play expert, Jed Dearybury. Uh, Jed, did I say that name right? 
0:01:17.9 Jed Dearybury: It was close. It's Dairy Berry. Dairy, like a cow and Berry like a fruit.
0:01:21.9 GR: Great. Actually we can do all that again.
[laughter]
0:01:25.8 JD: No, you did fine. You did... You don't even... Don't even, David don't even edit that. He did great. You did great.
[laughter]
0:01:33.9 GR: So, yes, joining us is world play expert Jed Dearybury. Jed is the author along with Dr. Julie Jones of The Playful Classroom: The Power of Play for All Ages, of The Courageous classroom with co-author Janet Taylor, and of the forthcoming, The Playful Life, also with Julie Jones, which will be released in November 22. We'll remind you when that gets closer. As a classroom teacher, he was featured in GQ Magazine as Male Leader of the Year, met President Obama as the South Carolina honoree of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science teaching, and was named as a top five finalist for South Carolina Teacher of the Year. Since 2015, he's been leading professional development across the country, as well as training the next generation of educators through his work and teaching in higher education. Jed, thanks for joining us.
0:02:24.1 JD: Thanks for having me and thanks for that great intro. I mean, I think that we're just recording our voices though. So all your viewers can't see how adorable cute I am to know about that GQ award, right? I mean, they'll have to look me up online.
0:02:36.8 GR: I mean, I can just imagine the spread.
0:02:38.4 JD: I mean, just imagine how awesome I look, right? 
[laughter]
0:02:43.5 JD: Oh, goodness. Yeah. I'm glad to be with y'all. Thanks for having me. I'll tell y'all, when I was listening to you do the intros, man, y'all all have classic radio voices. Maybe like a NPR vibe, I felt like, "Man, this is like serious business here. I don't know if they're ready for my Southern drawl to be on here." But anyway, here I am. Thanks for the invite.
[laughter]
0:03:11.1 GR: Actually, I think we're, but I don't know about you, Leah, I always feel a little jealous of David's resonant baritone.
0:03:16.8 JD: As soon as he started...
0:03:17.7 LS: Definitely.
0:03:18.5 JD: As soon as he started speaking, I was like, "Wow, that is like, David you that... I don't know what you, I mean, you'd said what you did, but you need to be doing that. It's full time. Like get you some gigs, man."
0:03:30.1 DN: I do so many things I can't even think.
[laughter]
0:03:37.9 GR: So Jed play... I was just thinking, how did you get into, how did play become your professional life? 
0:03:44.7 JD: You know, I knew that you were gonna ask me that question, I had been thinking about that answer and I don't know exactly other than I was born that way. I guess, I was born with this playful spirit personality. I credit a lot of it to my mom. My mom is a very playful person. She had a hard life growing up, there was lots of bumps along her way, but I think that she embraced that and got through that by being, having a playful spirit. She loves to make art. She loves to dance. She loves to try to sing. She's not that great of a singer, but she loves to try. You know, I just think that my mom is probably the one that instilled a lot of that in me. And then when I took that into my classroom, people started noticing what I was doing in my classroom. I was just minding my business. I had a piano in my classroom, new music teachers will love that. I have a great story of how I got the piano in my first classroom. I was working in the building late one evening. I was the only one in the building and I was, I don't know, just in an adventurous mood. And I started going around and looking in the empty classrooms to see if there was anything that I needed for my room. 'Cause if it was in an empty classroom, it's fair game, right? Nobody's using it, you can put it in your room. And in the gym, in a supply closet, in the gym, there was a piano covered in about two inches of dust, and I was like, "You know what? It's better to ask for forgiveness than permission."
0:05:20.5 JD: And I just wheeled that thing right down to my classroom and cleaned it up. And the next day, of course, I started playing with my students and the principal came across the hall and she was like, "Where did you get that?" And I was like, "Oh, it was in the gym." And she said, "We had a piano in the gym?" And I was like, "Yeah, it was in the closet in the gym." And I said, "Do you mind if I use it?" And she said, "Nobody else is using it." [chuckle] She said, "I didn't even know it was here." And so that started the... That started my playful classroom, I think, right there is me having that piano because anytime, and let me just stop right here and say, I'm not an expert piano player by any means, I just know some chords and can... I read music obviously, cause I play the trumpet, and I read piano music bass and treble, and... But I just like to make up stuff. You know, you get a couple of chords and just bang it out and see what happens. And we would make up fun little songs in my classroom to different content that we were learning. One of my favorite ones that we did was, it was learning about the things that plants need to grow. And it was to the tune of bingo. You know, there was a seed down in the ground, how will it grow? Water, light, air, soil, space, water, light, air, soil, space, water, light, air, soil, space. That's what it needs to grow.
0:06:41.0 JD: And then the first year that I did that, I had this really amazing kid, his name was Zaelon. He is now a college graduate, but he was very gifted reader in first grade and he had just read a book about how bees help plants to grow. And so right at the end of that song, he would always chime and go, "And bees," and he would give his fingers like a little spirit finger wave, you know. And so we added that to our song and that was where play started for me, I guess, in my classroom. Fast forward to 2015, I met Julie around that time. I can't remember exactly when we met. I just know that we met and she and I are the exact kind of teacher. We just like to have fun and play with our students all based on the content that we're trying to teach. And both of us work in higher ed and we were trying to write something to help communicate to our college students what teaching should look like. What playful teaching should look like. And we realized about halfway through, this is a book that all teachers need to read, not just our students. We need everybody who's in education to read this, not just classroom teachers, but administrators, anybody who has an education role. So anybody who works at your institutions of higher ed, even if they work in the office, the human resources office, they need to read this book, because they're connected to playful classrooms across that campus. And... But not only those people, but anyone who's in a teaching type role.
0:08:14.2 JD: So I've done a lot of work with the 4-H Club, those leaders, they are absolutely teachers, the American Campus Association, the Special Olympics, all of those people connected to those organizations are in essence teachers creating playful classroom spaces, wherever they teach their participants. And so, next thing you know, people are asking me to come play with them and teach them about play. So here it is, this is my life. And I hate your viewers can't see me, but it's authentic. You see, this is my home office that you're looking at in the background. Maybe take a screenshot, you could put it out there in the world or something, I don't know. But this is what I do. I guess I do play for a living. But you know what? If you're a good teacher, you play for a living anyway, you just call it something different, you call it teaching, instead of playing for a living. But that's what you do, if you're good at it. That was a lot of talking.
[laughter]
0:09:14.5 DN: That is when I feel best in the classroom.
0:09:16.0 JD: Mm-hmm.
0:09:18.6 DN: Even, and yeah. Even with a room full of jaded college sophomores. [chuckle]
0:09:25.6 JD: Yeah, yeah. Look, I agree. Sometimes in my college courses, I bring what I think is one of the most fun lessons. And I just finally look at 'em I'm like, "Look, I could pull a PowerPoint up and just talk to you for an hour if y'all would rather do that. And they're like, "No, no, no." I was like, "Then get engaged with this. We need some participation, don't we," like you said, you know? So I fully understand that too, but you're right. I too feel at my best in the classroom when I'm teaching and it's playful like that, and not just with little kids, but I love teaching adults, and helping them to find their childhood again. Because I think the problem is in our culture, we have squashed that. We have forgotten the joy of childhood because the heaviness of adulthood is upon us. But I think if we were more playful as adults, that, that heaviness wouldn't be so large on our shoulders. And there's science to back that up. We're killing ourselves in essence, you know? I'm very open and honest about my own journey with anxiety and depression. And I have found that when I am in moments of play, that that releases itself, it lets go of me for a bit. I get lost in the flow of the playfulness. I let go of that self criticism that fear, play does that, it's 'cause all the things that are released, all the feel good chemicals in your brain that are being released when you're playing, it just makes you feel better.
0:11:04.0 GR: So beyond the feel good nature of it, what are the benefits of play in the classroom and learning? 
0:11:11.9 JD: Well, being more playful, first of all, it helps you to have an emotional connection to the learning. So I could absolutely put a PowerPoint up and I could talk to you and you could take notes in a traditional format. And for some people that still is the way they wanna do it. But scientifically speaking, if you have an emotional connection to the learning, you remember it better and play helps us to have that emotional connection. If we took the time to ask each of you to share something that you learned through as a kid, I guarantee you it would be something that was connected to a playful event. The very first thing that most of us learn academically speaking, is our ABCs, right? We learn our ABCs, and how do we do that? We learn 'em through a song. Singing is playing. Music is playing. And so that right there should show you the power of play just that alone should sell you on it, I think, because it makes the learning stick. You have this emotional connection to the song. People cheer for you and you learn, "Yay. You sing all of it. Yay." Now I'll sing along with you. You know, like the end of the song says. And you have this emotional connection, music make the learning stick. You ask somebody to say their alphabet, nobody really says it. They sing it even as an adult.
0:12:39.4 JD: If you have to put things in ABC order, most people inside their brain are singing the alphabet, whether they wanna admit or not, even the business, the suits at the highest levels of the corporations, if they had to put something in alphabetical order, they're gonna sing it in their brain because that's the way they learned it. And imagine if you can take that into numerous aspects of the curriculum. So rather than just a song, maybe you created a piece of art that helped you remember the life cycle of the butterfly, or maybe you did a tableau to help you remember the sequence of events that led to the American Revolution. Or maybe you created a game that involved a piece of paper, balled up in a ball, aiming at a bullseye on the floor that you made outta tape that helped you to remember... I don't know, the physics of that piece of paper. You see, I went really deep there because I was trying to... I went from the life cycle of a butterfly to physics and hitting that bullseye, right? Because that is what, play is for all ages. It is literally for all ages. I get so frustrated when I hear people say, "Oh, that's great for early childhood, but I teach calculus." If ever there was a course that needed some playfulness in it, good God calculus is it, right? I mean, look, I took pre-cal and I honestly, follow this here, I thought pre-cal was what happened before the cal.
[laughter]
0:14:09.3 JD: Did you hear what I said there? I took precalculus, I still don't even know what it is. I took that course for a whole year in high school. Miss Inclen, God lover, she was, I'm sure she was a great teacher, but I didn't know anything. I didn't, I really, I still don't even to this day, know what pre-cal is. I still think it's, I think it's just what comes before the cal. [laughter] They're gonna revoke my adjunct teaching position after they hear that, they're gonna kick me out.
[laughter]
0:14:39.2 DN: As a fellow adjunct, I... But I've been doing it for 16 years and they haven't, they haven't not rehired me yet, so...
0:14:49.3 JD: Well, that's good to know. That's good to know. I've been doing adjunct work in some capacity since 2010. So I'm not far behind you there.
0:14:58.0 DN: This, that your talk about, pre-cal reminded me of... Greg and I were talking about the other day an article I had read and I found it, it's Lockhart's Lament and it's about teaching math. And of course they're, the first thing he does to say why we teach math wrong is to imagine a musician waking... Having a nightmare where instead of letting kids play music, they force them to just write down notes on a page and know their modes and scales. And we don't actually do music till we get to college. And we were talking about the problem that sometimes music teaching does look a little too much [chuckle] like that. But...
0:15:53.5 JD: Well, I think teaching in general can sometimes look like that, because what happens is and all of you are educators, there's a certain amount of fear that every educator has that they won't know the answer, that they won't know the right path, that they'll lose control of the classroom. And so in order to alleviate those fears, they find a box, they find their lane, they find their path and they get in it and they stay in it because it's comfortable. It's easy. And you don't know what you don't know if you don't get out of the, where you do know, does that make sense? You stay there. And I think that's the problem that we have is that we're just afraid. And some of the fears are valid, especially in public education world, there's a lot of testing going on, you're constantly being evaluated as a teacher, but I think if our administrators who are doing that would read our book and understand the brain benefits of playfulness, your scores are going to increase because your kids are going to be more engaged.
0:17:03.5 JD: They're gonna have these emotional connections to the learning. They're going to feel better about themselves, about each other. The playful classroom is also an empathetic classroom. It's a compassionate classroom. It's a classroom where people are not afraid to take risk with their learning, and maybe even not afraid to take risk with their own personal adventure, you know? Like in a playful classroom, maybe some kid will come to school with a crazy new hairdo because he just felt adventurous that day, and knew that in his playful classroom, he would be loved and accepted. So I will never understand why we hold so tightly to those fears when the evidence is so blatantly obvious, that this helps our students. And it helps you, the teacher. I think we need to address that too. You said it, David, you feel your best when it's that way in the classroom. Leah, Greg, what do y'all think? I mean, when the classroom feels more playful, how do you, as an educator feel? 
0:18:11.8 LS: You can't match the level of engagement, no matter the age of the students that you're teaching. When everybody is involved in playing and those light bulbs are going off, whether you know it, whether they know it or not, that is just...
0:18:26.0 LS: The best kind of learning.
0:18:28.6 GR: Totally, and also the freedom to... You learn so much, so quickly about what students know or don't know when you're playing because you just... You see it, you see it in the choices that they make, and you can direct towards that in a way that's a lot easier than if you've got your fixed PowerPoint or whatever.
0:18:49.6 JD: Yeah, 'cause 99% of the time when you're delivering the PowerPoint, you're focused on the PowerPoint. Are your word spelled right? Are you flowing correctly? Did you advance the slide too fast? When the students are playing, that gives you a moment as an educator to truly just watch and to take it in and to listen and to sometimes participate alongside with your students? There's numerous times when I was in my second grade classroom when I was right there beside the students, playing with them, so it gave me a first-hand account of not only their academic ability, but their social ability, their mental ability, how were they... Were they able to handle if something went wrong and if they weren't able to handle it, what triggered them to go the wrong way? Why did they get frustrated? It's just... I just don't know why anybody doesn't wanna have a playful classroom, but they're out there, and that's why we have this podcast, and that's why we have this book, so we can help educate them.
0:19:54.5 GR: I think the reality is that a few of us were taught with a play throughout our learning, it's like... I remember a certain amount of play in some classes, physics class, where we'd be given a challenge and just the whole day to figure out a way to try and solve how far away are we from San Francisco based on the sun shadows or like... Those are some of the most formative learning experiences of my life where it was just like, Just play, just see if you can figure out a way to do it.
0:20:24.6 JD: Yeah.
0:20:26.4 GR: But it's certainly not how most of us were taught all the time, I was so struck reading the playful classroom by... This is gonna sound a little weird, but by what serious business play is, how much really interesting research there is around it in psychology and sociology. Could you talk a little bit about the concept of deep play? 
0:20:46.8 JD: Well, you've all experienced deep play, whether you knew it was called deep play or not, think about those moments where you just were completely lost in time, where you started a project or you started a game, and then you looked at your clock and you're like, "Oh my gosh, it's been four hours. We've been doing this for four hours." I think of a deep play, it's very similar to like working a puzzle. Now, I know a lot of people are gonna hear that and they're gonna be like, Oh, that sounds horrible. Working a puzzle, because working a puzzle to some people is just boring, I get it, but if you've ever worked a puzzle, especially with another person, you can get lost in it very easily because your mind becomes fixated on finding that one little piece to make that connection and when you find that one little piece to make that connection, what happens in your brain, you're like, "Ahh, I did it, I did it. I found the piece." Right? You're so excited. And then guess what, you're ready to find the next piece, because what happens is all of that, those endorphins just are like, Ah-Ah-Ah, they got a hold of you and you like you found that piece.
0:22:00.5 JD: And maybe it's not, maybe it's not a puzzle for you, maybe it's being on the golf course and finally making an amazing shot from the bunker into the hole... Like like dude did on Masters a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it is decorating your house and getting that flower in the vase just at the right spot after hours of arranging. So the deep play is digging into that deep inner self of what satisfies you, what brings you joy, what brings you contentment and peace, and a lot of times, our mistake with play is that we think it's what little kids do in the yard with blocks, and it is that, but it's also much, much more than that. And I think that as we dig deep into our understanding of what play looks like as an adult, because I don't think that we talk enough about that. We have these fun cliches, work hard, play hard, and play hard usually means like go to the bar and have drinks after work or something, but I think if we learn how to bring that work and play together, that is what helps us define the deep play.
0:23:14.2 JD: For example, you've seen how some companies are. They provide play bikes during the middle of the day for their employees, they have foosball tables and ping pong tables and all that's great. I love a play break, but imagine if you could somehow figure out how to make the work itself playful. For example, if you're a Mason and you lay bricks all day... Right. Okay, you're scooping out the cement, you're laying the brick, you're scooping out the cement, laying the brick, if you can somehow make a pattern, Boomchik-Boomchik-chikaboom, you've turned it into a playful and next thing you know, you've laid 500 bricks and it was 'cause you were singing and you were playing and you got lost in the deep play of it all, and just that I turned it into music that just was bonus for your listeners.
[laughter]
0:24:05.4 JD: I just remembered where I was, all of a sudden, notes from the staff. That was some ideas for the staff right there.
[laughter]
0:24:17.7 DN: I don't know if you all know that I collaborated with the planetarium at JMU to write a bunch of science songs for their space camp, and because they were tracking... They were doing pre-testing and post-testing for this camp, we were actually able to publish a paper about the value of songs with movements in teaching these science concepts, and there is...
0:24:53.5 JD: I need you to send me that link. I would need to read that.
0:24:56.0 DN: I will send it to you. Yeah, there is a... The first year they actually had a loss of learning on this one topic, and then the year they introduced my song, it was very high, it was very high the next year, and it was only low the third year because the pre-testing was so high and you can't do better than a 100% on post-testing.
[laughter]
0:25:22.6 JD: Yeah, you guys know this because you are music experts and you understand how that is an emotional connection. Even for kids that don't like to sing, the music gets stuck in their head. It finds that little place and it rests there. That's why I like to write. Specifically, I like to write parodies instead of writing my own original music, because that way when they hear that song out in the world, it connects back to learning. I love it when a kid... I had a kid of mine... I wrote lots of parodies too. It's a small world.
[laughter]
0:25:58.5 JD: Because... I did, to the same, to the same tune, because number one, the kids knew it, number two, I knew it, I knew the chords, I knew the basic chords, and I can just go over and play it. Right? And so I wrote parodies to "It's a small world," and I would have kids go to Disney World and ride "It's a Small World", and they would come back and they'd be like, Mister Dearybury, they were using your song.
[laughter]
0:26:19.5 JD: They are thinking it was a my song, and I would try to tell them, No, this is not my song, I didn't write this. I would set it up, but then they would go down there and parents would come back and say, Mr. Dearybury, we were at Disney World and we were riding the ride, and it's a small world was singing, singing, singing, and all my kid was doing, "There are seven continents, there are seven continents" and they would let me run through this amazing ride, but my students were singing about the seven continents that we had learned. Music is essential to the playful classroom, you gotta have it in some form or fashion.
0:27:02.1 LS: And that applies to adults as well. I watched the snippet on YouTube from one of your professional development sessions where you used "It's a Small World" and "I'm so glad I get to teach" has been stuck in my head for the last week.
0:27:12.5 JD: I'm so glad I get to teach. Yeah, I'm glad you watched that. That's fun. I gotta ask you this, Leah. Was I dressed as a squirrel? 
0:27:24.4 LS: No.
0:27:24.5 JD: Or was I dressed just in normal clothes? 
[laughter]
0:27:26.5 LS: Normal clothing.
0:27:26.5 JD: Okay, so what you saw, that video that you saw was the very first time I ever sang that song. So it's gotten so much better since then, and now sometimes I dress as a squirrel when I sing that, and it's a whole big production of a keynote that I do, but maybe one day you'll get to see it live and in person. And I'll sing that song and be dressed as a squirrel and you're gonna remember our time together here, you'll be like, I remember him singing that. Oh.
0:27:54.9 GR: So, there were so many things that really struck me in reading the playful classroom. The one that I think just absolutely bowled me over was the idea of play personalities and also of the 16 types of play. I wonder if you could dive into those a bit because I think they're, especially maybe helpful if we're thinking about how to make our contents more playful.
0:28:19.0 JD: I wish that I could take credit for that research and those words... It's just amazing, Dr. Stuart Brown, if you all don't know who he is out there in the listening world, look him up, he's America's leading play researcher that he's like our play guru that we go to and ask questions. Julie and I both had read his work for several years, and then we got involved with the US Play Coalition based out of Clemson University, and they have a conference every year the first week in April. And we go to the conference and there's Stuart Brown, there he comes and we just were blown away that he was at this conference and that he just... He's like milling around, just like hanging out, there wasn't a line a mile long to see him, he was just out and about. And we had this moment where the conference led us in this big group dance, and they were giving us all these different ways to dance and we were... Every time they changed the dance, we had to find a new partner, and one of the ways that we dance was like Spider-Man, and Julie and I did the Spider-Man dance with Stuart Brown, and we were like freaking out. And so we got to know him and he wrote the forward for our book, and the play personalities and the types of play. Those are... That's his work.
0:29:47.8 JD: The play personalities, I think is so beneficial for educators because it's basically helping us get a glimpse into who the student is, to understand who they are and understand how to craft experiences for them. For example, there are eight different play personalities, and I'm going to try to name them all, but I have a little help here. The viewers won't see this, but we have these little posters that we made to help us remember them all, they're out there in the world on my webpage somewhere. Storyteller, Kinesthete... Yeah, Storyteller, Kinesthete, Competitor, Director, Explorer, Joker, Collector, Creator. And in the book, Julie and I came up with a very non-scientific quiz to help you identify yourself a little bit. Think of it like one of those quizzes you used to take in the Teeny Bopper magazines back in the '80s. I don't know what the age group of your listeners are, but surely, they'll know what I'm talking about, but that's what we based it off of. So it's not scientific, but I will tell you almost everybody who has done the quiz has been like, Yeah, that's kind of me, or they say, Well, I got two or three different personalities.
0:31:06.6 JD: Well, that's true too. And depending on your mood, you can be all of these, and I think being aware of the different play personalities is the most important thing as an educator, so that you could craft experiences over time that hit on all of these. Storyteller, I think that's obvious as somebody who likes to tell a story, but also likes to listen to stories, likes to build stories. I thought that Storyteller was gonna be my highest one, because I am very much a storyteller. Public speaking is what I do for most of my work when I'm not in the adjunct career, so I thought storytelling would be mine, it wasn't. We'll get to mine in a minute. Kinesthete, the person who likes to move. A little bit of behind the scenes about that. When Julie and I were writing the book, we kept typing the word Kinesthete into our document and Google wanted to correct that to kinesthetic. And we were like, No, this is Kinesthete is the noun, the person who likes to move and it's in Stuart's work, and we kept using it and it wouldn't even find it anywhere, so we Googled it, and the only place we could find it was in Stuart's work.
0:32:18.1 JD: It wasn't in the dictionary, it wasn't in encyclopedia, it wasn't anywhere. So when we saw Peter, I mean saw Stuart at the play conference, we said, Hey, tell us about this word. He was like, Oh, I made it up. I just made up that word. [laughter] And I guess if you're America's leading play researcher, you can just make up words, so we rolled with it, and that's what we use. Competitor, obviously, the person who likes games, wants to win. Director, think of the director as the person who is behind the scenes organizing, organizing the podcast, getting everything set up, inviting the guest Greg to be on the show. Maybe David is the person who does all the editing, that's very a Director job too, I think.
0:33:05.2 JD: Next up is the Joker. And no surprise, maybe after this podcast, listening to me, this was the one I scored the highest on. I was a little bit shocked, but I think Joker and Storyteller do go hand-in hand, because if you're a good storyteller, you gotta be able to make people laugh in the middle of that, to keep them involved and engaged. And so the Joker is somebody who loves to laugh with others, not necessarily to tell jokes or to be the butt of the joke, but that's...
0:33:36.2 JD: The next one is Collector, which was also very high on my list, and at first I was like, I don't think that's accurate. But if you could see my home office for the benefit of you all... Okay, look over here. Do you see those rainbow cans? 
0:33:53.3 DN: Yeah.
0:33:53.9 JD: Every one of those has a different... Every one of those has a different set of pins in it, pins are markers, so I guess I am a little bit of a collector, I don't know. Then there's the Explorer, and this is not just a person who likes to travel, but it's also somebody who likes to try new things, adventurous, just walking around the neighborhood and looking at the world through a fresh lens, but of course travel is on that list. And then there's the Artist Creator, which also was on my list, I think the top three for me are Joker Collector and Creator. Now, why is that important for me as an individual? Well, it helps me to know better what I like and what's gonna connect with me the most. Taking that into the education world, if you had all that information about your students, then when you're sitting there planning your idea, you're not gonna put some kid who hates competition in a game, in a leadership role.
0:34:55.9 JD: You're gonna come up with a different path for that student and you say, Oh well, I don't have time to come up with all these different ways and ideas. Sometimes the ideas just unfold themselves, so if it's a game that you are wanting to do, then why not let the kid who hates the game maybe be the Director of the game. Maybe while the kid is watching the game, he can sketch note or doodle what's happening in the game, so he's still participating in the game, but it takes the competition part out and it's very simple to do, and that you just give that kid another path, but is the learning still happening? Yes, because whatever his play personality is, he's connecting to it in a way, he's connecting to the learning in a way that's meaningful to him.
0:35:43.2 JD: You also mentioned the different types of play. They're 16 different types of play, I won't go through all of those because it would just be boring to listen to me talk about them, get the book, read it. But knowing the different types of play, there's a poster that we have in the book that's also on the website. I encourage teachers to have that poster handy just so they can look at it and think, Oh, how could I drop this kind of play into my classroom? How could that be a director or a artist creator or a storyteller in my classroom? Because what this does, it broadens your teacher toolbox, but it also broadens it in a way that brings meaningful relevance and fun into your classroom.
0:36:29.8 GR: That's awesome.
0:36:30.0 JD: And I hope all that makes sense.
0:36:33.4 GR: Yeah.
0:36:33.4 JD: If it doesn't make sense, I'm available to come and do professional development in your school and we can make it happen in person.
0:36:41.1 GR: Jed, I have to tell you, after reading about the play personalities, like the very next day, I was in the classroom and working with a group of kids, and we were doing this ball game, which involved one student partners, one student bouncing the ball to another student as that student tossed another ball, and it was not going great, and this is a very competitive class, and I just said, Oh, wait a second, I said, Let's make this a game. I say... As I said, Okay, so we're gonna do three rounds as we sing the song, and the group that can keep going the longest without their ball flying all over the room wins, they were so into that game, I couldn't leave that exercise, it was like... They said.
0:37:22.0 GR: Okay wait. Let's do it faster. Okay wait, what if we did it... I was just... I scored lowest on the competitor. It's not where I think at all.
0:37:31.2 JD: Yeah, me too. Me too. I mean... Not me.
[laughter]
0:37:34.6 GR: But wow, did that induce the class.
0:37:37.9 JD: I have some deep seated trauma from one year in little league baseball... And when I was in sixth grade, it was traumatic. And so that did me in with competition. But it's amazing how you saw the impact just immediately. Just a little tweak of the game... Or the experience into a game, and then what happened was the student started coming up with ways to level it up.
0:38:02.8 JD: One of the things I talk about a lot in my work with just... I call it level up. And it's just taking something just one little step from where it is to an upward space. And 99% of the time those kids were... Once you give them that freedom and permission to know that they don't have to do exactly as you told them, that they can level it up just a little bit... That's what happens.
0:38:29.8 JD: And they had ownership of it then... It sounds... They said, "Let us do this. Let's try this." And thankfully, you had sense enough to give them that freedom instead of being like, "No, you have to do what I say." You know... Of course, you have to have safety parameters and make sure they're staying on content, but within that parameter, you gave them the freedom that they needed. And it sounds like... You said you couldn't pry them away from it.
0:38:53.4 LS: So how does a teacher, no matter the age that they teach or the subject that they teach... How do you create this culture? How do you get your classroom and your students to a place where everyone feels safe and free to play? 
0:39:08.7 JD: Well, it starts prior to even the first day of school... Or the first day of the semester, whatever you're doing. It has to be... And this is why we wrote the follow-up, the playful life. It has to be a part of who you are to some extent. I don't think you can manufacture this. I don't think that you can force it. I think it's something that has to be... You're willing to cultivate it in your own personal life... Daily practice.
0:39:42.3 JD: I will be honest with you, there are some days I am not in a playful mood... Okay... That just happens. We're just in a grumpy mood... Maybe something happened that upset us. That is where you have to dig deep into your own personal play history and who you are as a playful person to get through that in your... So it can come into your teaching. If not, it's gonna crash and burn. You're gonna let that mood get into your classroom.
0:40:08.7 JD: So I think a lot of just personal practice is the first thing that you have to do. Second of all, I think that it's something that you model to your students on a daily basis. And it doesn't have to be just in the way that you deliver content, it's the way that you... If you teach at... The age group where kids have to line up to leave the room... Just in the way they line up. Create a playful way for them to do that. Create a playful way for materials to be passed out.
0:40:41.8 JD: One of the things I loved in my classroom was to create a playlist geared to students in the classroom... Ask them what their favorite song is... Okay. Ask them what their favorite songs, and then create a playlist of just their favorite songs. And whenever their favorite song comes on, that is three minutes for them to dance, to wiggle, to go give their friend a high five... Whatever. It's a great way to introduce a brain break. It builds a culture of play. It gives them freedom to understand that, "Hey, those moments are coming where I'm gonna get my turn to play." And it sets the ground work for you to invite play into the other areas.
0:41:22.1 JD: So I have been in classrooms where a teacher is very strict. Sit in your seat, face the front, in your rows... And then all of a sudden they say, "Oh, now we're gonna play a game." The kids don't know what to do because they don't... They don't know if they're allowed to get into the game... Are we allowed to make noise? And the teacher's like, "Oh yeah. Yeah. Get into it. Get into it. But the teachers never invited them... Never modeled for them how to get into it. Does that make sense? 
0:41:51.7 JD: You can't just flip on the switch, and all of a sudden they play... I was in a kindergarten classroom one time... This was heartbreaking to me. I was in a kindergarten classroom and I was doing this lesson with tin foil. Y'all may call it... Look at me, I'm code-switching with y'all. I said foil. It's tin 'foal'. That's the way I say it down here. Tin 'foal'. Y'all might say aluminium foil. But anyway, I was doing... Doing a lesson with foil, and I passed out a piece about a foot long to each kid. And instinctively kids should wanna touch it to make noise with it, maybe even wrinkle it up before hand. These kids were terrified and they sat there and they did...
0:42:40.1 JD: They wouldn't even touch it. Even after I gave them permission, they didn't know what to do with it. They were like, "What do you want us to do?" I was like rip it up. Ball it up. Twist it. And they were just... Kept flattening it with their hands. And one of them said, "We don't wanna mess it up." And I began to think in any other kindergarten classroom I'd been in that wouldn't happen... What was going on in that classroom was so structured. The kids were afraid to experience that.
0:43:05.3 JD: So when you think about how do you... Your question was, how do you start this in your classroom... You have to give kids the freedom that they need. Kids instinctively have this play drive in them... You can go anywhere in the world, and regardless of the kids' social status, economic status, racial status, sexual... Whatever their sex... Kids all around the world have an ability to play instinctively. But when they're in an environment where that is controlled and squashed, they're reserved.
0:43:42.4 JD: And that's what was happening in that kindergarten classroom, is that the model hasn't been set... The freedom wasn't there, and it wasn't part of the teacher's daily practice in her own life. And I knew that teacher personally, and it definitely was... The reason I was even in that room is 'cause she thought that I was just saying a bunch of hog wash and she said, "I need you to come to my room and show me. My kids can't do this."
0:44:06.4 JD: So I went down there. And she was right. They couldn't at first, but by the time I was done with them, they were making little trees and nests and birds and eggs. And we had a great lesson on where do birds go at night... And it was all focused on sculpting with tin foil while we were learning.
0:44:24.5 JD: And a great story, a year later, after that experience, I was at the grocery store... Literally across the street from the school that I had worked at... And a little girl came up to me and she said, "Are you Mr... " She was... First grade and she had a little problem with 'R'. She said, "Are you Mr. Dearybury?" I was like, "I am Mr. Dearybury." She said, "You're the bird man." I was like, "The bird man?" And she said, "Yeah. You came to my school and taught us about birds."
0:44:53.8 JD: A year later, she remembered me being in her kindergarten classroom talking to her about birds. And it's because... I'm a firm believer... It's because we had this emotional experience where we connected with the tin foil. And probably it was probably the first time they had gotten to play in a while based on their reaction there at the beginning. So... I hope that answers your question Leah. Three tip there. Personal practice, modeling and freedom for the kids to explore... And I'm gonna write that down 'cause I liked it.
0:45:31.0 DN: I do... I tell people that... I tell my students that any good thing I do as a teacher is based on me just trying to channel all of my best teachers that I had. And so I guess if you've had a teacher who was playful, then that gives you a model. And if you haven't... What do you do? 
0:45:56.8 JD: Do the opposite of everything that teacher did... I don't know... You know what I think about my own teaching career. I had a... And maybe this was why I was drawn to second grade... I don't know. My second grade teacher was not great. She was... I had her the year that... Remember when the Challenger tragedy with the space shuttle... That was the year that I had her.
0:46:25.0 JD: And every second grade classroom was watching the Challenger that day. Now, we didn't know how it was gonna end up. Nobody knew what... The traumatic event that was about to happen. But our second grade class wasn't watching that day, 'cause we had work to do. She was just a mean teacher. She wouldn't call me... My initials are JED and that's how I get Jed. My name is John Edwin Dearybury III. And she refused to call me Jed.
0:46:55.1 JD: She would say if... She said to me, "If your momma wanted you to be called Jed she should have put that on your birth certificate. Now have a seat John. Have a seat."
0:47:05.2 DN: Oof.
0:47:05.7 JD: She was just horrible. Call the kids by the name they wanna go through... Let them be a part of the grade level experiences... That teacher was just... I think back on all the things that she did. She had us sitting in rows, whereas other teachers were starting to experiment with groups during that time.
0:47:22.9 JD: I mean, I get it. It was the mid-80s, so grouping wasn't exactly a popular seating at that time, but they were starting. We didn't do anything fun in her classroom. I remember there was this other teacher down the hall, you'd go by her room and she had stuff hanging from the ceiling and they were out in the hall making stuff. And what were we doing? Sitting in our desk facing the front. And I can't remember anything learning wise from second grade. So if you had a teacher like that, just do the opposite of everything she did... Just opposite.
0:47:55.9 LS: I was just gonna say, do you have any tips or any advice for teachers who face naysayers? Teachers who are inherently playful, and... I think back to when I started teaching and it was an elementary school and there were chairs and desks in the room, and I wanted them gone. And I was looked at like I had three eyes and a horn sticking out of my head.
0:48:19.2 JD: Oh yeah... Look, I have been there Leah, many, many times. I have faced the naysayers... And I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna pretend like, it's not difficult. Those naysayers are hard because sometimes those naysayers are teachers that you thought that you loved and respected in the profession. They are people who've been doing it for a long time, so there's definitely a... I always give credence to those who have been teaching longer than me. But I also know that teaching is very evolutionary and that it changes over time, because society changes over time.
0:48:58.2 JD: Kids today are not the same in many ways as 50 years ago, but in many ways, they are... So we have to be evolutionary in our teaching so we can reach the students that we have. And so it's hard to face the naysayers. But I will tell you that's why... If you read the book, I wrote the specific section on the excuses that we have. And one of the excuses was my admins won't like it, or my colleagues won't like it. All I can say to you is that usually naysayers respond to data. They respond to scientific research. They value those things.
0:49:42.9 JD: So carry this book around with you everywhere you go, highlight it and mark it up... Put tabs on it, so you'll know exactly where to flip when somebody says something... There's a specific story in the book where I talk about an instructional coach coming to watch a lesson that I was doing... A sample lesson... A Skype in the classroom lesson... Where we Skyped with an Arctic expert... A Penguin expert who was in an Antarctica. Her name's Jean Pennycook.
0:50:17.5 JD: And it was... Amazing experience. We spent a whole hour with Jean, learning about penguins on Antarctica. And the very first thing that instructional coach said to me when we walked out of that room... She said, "You know at our school, we like to focus on the standards and penguins aren't really standards for third grade." And I said, "No. But this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this." I rattled off like 10 different standards that we had covered during that experience, but she was so fixated on penguins that she forgot of all the other things that we were doing. So I think in order for you to respond to the naysayers, you have to be aware of what you're doing. Don't try... If you know that naysayers are around you, don't try to fly by the seat of your pants. Arm yourselves with knowledge.
0:51:06.9 JD: Know what's best for your kids. Know what's best for their curriculum. Know that you are doing a great job in spite of what they say. Because sometimes those people look with a very narrow lens. And I hate to say this, but sometimes administrators look with a very narrow lens. They look at their checklist and not at this big holistic picture. And because they didn't say two or three things on their checklist, maybe they think, "Oh, well, that teacher didn't do what she was supposed to," or he was supposed to. And I think if you are armed with the knowledge of what you're doing, then that's gonna help fight the naysayers.
0:51:41.2 JD: Another thing too, I'm gonna tell you... You have to ignore some of the naysayers. I don't know if you all have read on Ron Clark's book, Move Your Bus. Have y'all ever heard of that book? Do you know who Ron Clark is? You should look... Look Ron Clark up. He has an amazing school in Atlanta. He's got a book called Move Your Bus, and he talks about in that book how there are different types of teachers.
0:52:06.7 JD: Some of them are go-getters. They're the ones... Think of the bus being like a Flintstones bus with everybody's feet dangling at the bottom... You know... And it's those feet that are moving the bus forward. There are some feet that run, there are some feet that walk, but there are some teachers that have their feet up in the seat and they're not giving anything to the bus. And guess what, they're never gonna put their feet down.
0:52:31.5 JD: And every time you try to get them to put your feet... Put their feet down to power the bus, you are taking energy away from yourself, from your students from the colleagues who are invested and you're giving them too much attention to put their feet down when they've already made up their mind... They're not part of it anyway, and they don't wanna be.
0:52:49.6 JD: And so there comes a time where you have to just ignore some of the naysayers and say, "You know what, the evidence is here. I'm gonna go this path, you do your path, and I wish you well." Because if not, the naysayers can suck life out of you and take away from your playful life. Trust me. I have to tune out naysayers a lot. They comfort me sometimes on Twitter, and I just have to just put my ear muffs on and tune them out.
0:53:18.3 GR: Jed, I have to say, as you were talking about the checklists I recognize a bit of myself in that description. That I often think, "Oh gosh, I really have to get through these things." What would you say to someone like me... I want to involve more play in my teaching, but I'm really worried about losing out on time to cover everything I need to cover.
0:53:39.2 JD: Well, I'm gonna free you up right here. Give yourself grace and give yourself time. Grace and time helps a lot because this is not something that you can go into your classroom tomorrow, Greg, and totally upend everything that you've done for decades. And not only that you've done for decades, but probably... Like you said earlier, that has been modeled for you by your teachers. I would gather to say that most of you when you were in your higher ed institution as a pre-service teacher, you were taught in a very traditional way, how to be a teacher.
0:54:13.8 JD: So we're undoing a lot of years and decades of training. So give yourself some grace there. But also give yourself some time. Because what will happen as you become a more playful teacher, you will begin to look at those things that you have to do with new eyes, with new lens of, "Hmm, maybe I could try this to make that more playful." Right now, you might have to keep doing it like you've been doing it. But over time, as your playful spirit grows... We talk about it in the book, the playful mindset.
0:54:48.8 JD: The playful mindset begins to grow and helps you start to see things in your everyday life that can become more playful. A prime example of how the playful mindset grows... Used to when I would come on a podcast like this in the morning and I would get my tea ready... I would be frantically trying to get my tea ready, but now I've turned it into a game. I know exactly how many seconds I have from the time I close the curing lid until the time tea is ready. So I know that I can come in here, get my computer turned on... Log in... And I've got my timer set. I'm like, James Bond around the house.
0:55:26.8 JD: That didn't happen at the beginning... To make the connection to what you're saying... As a teacher, I fully understand that we all have those checklists of things that we have to get done. Don't try to flip your classroom completely upside down and just play all day every day at the onset. You have to give yourself grace and time to grow into this, to understand this.
0:55:53.7 JD: Think about your first year of teaching. Were you good your first year of teaching? No. Nobody was. Anybody who says they were... They're lying. They don't even know... Maybe a third year teacher would say, "Oh yeah, I was so good." They don't know what they don't know yet. Give it 10 years and then look back and you'll be like, "Oh my God, how did any of those kids survive my class, right? But you did the best you could. And over time, you have grown in that practice. Playful teaching is the same way. It takes time for you to begin... Like if you're looking... If you're an algebra teacher and you have to teach the quadratic formula... I don't even know if I said that right. Quadratic formula... Equation. I don't know.
0:56:34.0 JD: I taught elementary school. Anyway, whatever you're having to teach, you may have a very set way that you have to teach it for now, but as that playful mindset grows, you'll begin to look at it in a different way and maybe come up with an idea that who knows is revolutionary, and you put it on YouTube and go viral, and everybody wants to copy you, and the next thing you know, people are inviting you to your school to teach that playful way of how to teach that quadratic formula equation, whatever. Time and grace, Greg. Time and Grace.
0:57:04.4 GR: Another thing I've started to realize is the things that if I teach them in a very traditional way, if I ask the students about those two weeks later, they don't remember them. It's like we never did that.
0:57:17.8 JD: They don't know anything, they don't know. They don't know. Look, I remember more about the American Revolution from a rap that my student teacher wrote than I ever learned in any textbook, any class that I ever took about US History. Because she talked about the Stamp Act, the Tea Act, she talked about all those things, and she wrote it to a rap. And the rap was so good, then we put it in our class musical that we did, our grade level Musical, we taught it to the other kids, it's just... I don't know, you've got to think of non-traditional ways to deliver the content, you've got to. Because look, you're competing... As much as I hate it, you're competing with YouTube and TikTok, and look, I think... Look, if you really wanna be a great teacher, figure out a way to put every bit of your content into a TikTok. I'm serious. Figure out a way to put all of your content into a TikTok. Your kids will nail the test, I promise, if you can figure out... 'cause that's where they're at. That's where they're at. They're swiping through those TikToks, those reels. If you could figure out how to... Now, you don't have to really put it on TikTok unless you'd want to, but if you could figure out how to deliver look and just those little bits.
0:58:37.4 JD: That's where the minds are, give me little bits, little chucks. And guess what? TikTok is playful. 'cause there's dancing going on. There's this, the fun ones where the little things pop up on the screen.
[vocalization]
0:58:51.3 JD: I hate that people aren't seeing me 'cause I'm giving some really good motions here. [laughter]
0:58:56.5 GR: We can put some clips up, actually. It might be...
0:59:00.0 JD: It might... I mean, please put some clips up because I do better in person. People are gonna listen to my voice and they're gonna be like, Lord, he's just a southern redneck from South Carolina, he didn't... I'm better when people can see me.
[laughter]
0:59:15.8 GR: That's great. You mentioned the playful mindset. Early on in the playful classroom, you quoted Dr. Anthony Benedet, who identified imagination, sociability, humor, spontaneity and wonder as elements of that mindset, I highlighted that and I wrote... I wrote in my book. I wrote this is a recipe for play, 'cause it really... I just... I...
0:59:38.9 JD: It is. It is a recipe for play that came from his book, playful intelligence, it is a recipe for play, because each of those components is so vital to the playful spirit and in the playful mindset. So the more you cultivate those specifically like spontaneity in the classroom invites playfulness. I'll give you a classic example of what spontaneity in the classroom looks like. Several years ago, I was... Someone nominated me for the Presidential Award for excellence in math and science teaching. You all mentioned that at the beginning of the show, I got to meet Obama, so you know that I won the award. But as part of the award, I had to record a 45-minute video of my teaching. 45 minutes in second grade, it might as well have been a marathon y'all. I'm just telling you, that was an incredible amount of time, and I was like, There's no way there's that it's gonna be 45 minutes of me lecturing from the board, obviously. So there was about five minutes of that and then I let them go with their Lego Robotics, they had a challenge that they were doing. This was actually when I taught third grade.
1:00:45.4 JD: And so they were doing their robotics, doing their robotics, and right in the middle of the lesson, there was this huge splash in the pond that was right outside of our classroom window. We had one of those ornamental goldfish ponds that had been sponsored by our PTA and there was this huge splash, and I'll never forget it. One of the kids said, "Mr. Dearybury, it's a bullfrog, it's the bullfrog." And we knew that there was a bullfrog that had been living in the pond because we often heard him splash going into the water, and we never... So we would run over there and never saw him, but this particular time he was jumping out of the water. So right there in the middle of the video, all the kids leave their robots, run across the room to... They're all glued to the window, and I had this moment where I was like, I can freak out, I can get them back on task. Or I can be spontaneous and we can roll with it. And this particular group, I knew what they had learned in second grade about the amphibians, and so we just had a little pop-up lesson about amphibians right there at the window, we went through the characteristics of amphibian, we sang our amphibian song, and then we went back to our robots.
1:02:06.2 JD: Now, we did have to repair one of the robots that got trampled when all the kids ran to the window, but every single judge for that award, on my feedback, every single judge, there was 10 of them, I think, commented on how the spontaneity of that moment added to my classroom experience, and that was a very playful moment. I could have... My second grade teacher would be like, "Get away from that window. Get back to your work... And that's what a lot of teachers would have done, that's what they would have done because they were so focused on the goal of the robotics lesson that they missed that spontaneity. What else happened at that window? There was some wonder, kids were in awe of the... And yeah. I'm telling you that was the biggest bull frog I've ever seen. I'm trying to think of something in the real world, but like, I'm showing you all about how big it was. It was as big as my head. It was as big around as my head, it was the biggest bullfrog I'd ever seen, and he sat there forever and just let us look at it and it was just amazing. There was... It was just a beautiful moment of play, and it captures like what you said, the recipe for play. I like that, I like that you named it that.
1:03:22.2 GR: This is great, I feel like it gives me a lot to think about. Maybe just one sort of last curve ball question, as I was thinking back on my own Music Education Training and Educational Psychology, I think about reading Pasulotsi and POJ and Ria Montessori and it seems like all of them kind of come from this mindset, and this is not a new thing.
1:03:51.0 JD: It is absolutely.
1:03:53.2 GR: Why do you think it hasn't taken over? 
1:03:57.3 JD: Well, I don't wanna go to the canned answer, but it's the right answer, testing. The testing culture of our country squashed this. I think if you look back, the early childhood years really really embraced that POJ and Montessori life, even though now we call it a Montessori classroom or a Montessori school. Back in the day, I think a lot of what happened, and when I say back in the day, I mean when I was a kid, and before... I was a kid in the '80s. My kindergarten classroom was very playful. I remember the kitchen center and the Block Center, and the alphabet Center, and the Play door Center. I remember those things and a lot of that has been taken out of kindergarten, but... And the reason that those upper grades are even more fearful of the playful classroom is that we have developed this culture where test scores are the only thing that matter, and they think that the only way to get those test scores is to cram it all in there. You cram it all in there. Cram, cram, cram, cram, cram. It kills me when I hear a teacher say, Oh, I have to cover this. You are not a coverer, you are a teacher, your job is to teach that not to cover it. But what they're doing is operating on that checklist that's based on the standards, which leads to the test.
1:05:21.0 JD: And I get it. We're under a lot of pressure as teachers, so I'm not... I'm not faulting those teachers, but the question was, why has it not caught on? It's because somewhere between when POJ and Montessori and all that wrote their pedagogical beliefs, we've interjected it with this testing culture, and I don't know that they knew we were going that route.
1:05:46.1 JD: I don't think any of us did, but even in the '80s, I remember taking a BSAP test, we took a test called CTBS test. We used to have these rallies where they would psych us up for the test, you can do it, you can do it, you can beat that test. And it was ridiculous that we did this. So I think that's the number one answer. Number two, our American culture has a lot to do with it. Our American culture is very much work, work, work, work, work, work, work. And anything that's not, work, work, work, work, work cannot be... Lead you to success. I think that's why a lot of older people, and I'm gonna lump myself into that 'cause my generation is kind of becoming an older generation. I'm mid-40s now, that's why they look down on kids who make the TikToks and make the Instagram posts because they don't understand it, they think, Oh, they're just playing.
1:06:47.2 JD: But man, some of these kids have developed multi-million dollar businesses because of... They're just being silly and playing on their Instagram and their TikToks. I think some of these old people are jealous is what it's really... They can't make the millions of dollars. Right? I think our American culture has really distorted what play is and its benefits, I think if you look at cultures that there's always these studies that come out, or cultures that are the happiest around the world, the cultures that are happiest are the ones that don't focus so much on the work, work, work, work work. They have a good balance. And I think one of the ways for us to find that balance here at the beginning is by infusing more play into our work, that's why we want the playful classroom, that's why the playful life is coming. We want you to be playful everywhere, not just in little isolated pods, but we want you to learn that play can happen anywhere at any time with anybody. We... In the next book, we even talk about how you can play with strangers at a coffee shop. One of my favorite things to do is just look at a stranger in the coffee shop and throw up my rock, paper, scissors.
1:07:53.7 JD: Just throw it up, and... Rock, paper, scissors shoot. And sometimes you might have to do it two or three times before they catch on, but I promise you, if you do it, nobody can turn it down. Nobody can turn it down. Even the grumpiest old curmudgeon of a man if he knows the game, he is gonna throw up a rock... He's gonna play with you, I promise. Next time you're at a coffee shop, give it a try. Leah, I know it's a little scary to think about, you're going to have to... Look, you're gonna have to be vulnerable.
1:08:24.6 LS: You saw my face.
1:08:25.9 JD: I saw you, I saw you. You're gonna have to be a little vulnerable there, remember spontaneity part of the recipe, maybe just maybe just try it at a faculty meeting then. If you're sitting at a faculty meeting and just look, make eye contact, look. And this is all you have to do. You don't even have to bet, you don't have to go... All you have to do is like this, and then go and then mouths go, "One, two, three." Just mouth that one, two, three and then, "One, two, three." And then see how many times you win. Oh, let's make it fun, see how many times until you get caught. And then when you get a caught say, "Hey. Everybody, lets play rock, paper, scissors." A little bit of play even in the faculty meeting. Right. What do you think, David, are they gonna fire you if you do that? 
1:09:05.2 DN: Possibly.
1:09:06.4 JD: You're an adjunct, you don't have to go, have to go. Wait, do you have to go to faculty meetings David? 
1:09:11.6 DN: No, I don't. I don't. It's the blissful perk.
1:09:12.8 JD: Yeah, that's the best part of being an ad job. It is a perk. It is a perk. They pay us pennies, but I'll take those pennies so I don't have to go to that faculty meeting.
1:09:26.6 GR: Chad, this has been just wonderful. If people wanna... Sorry, if people wanna read the book or follow you, where can they find you? 
1:09:35.7 JD: Well, I'm on social media, @Mr.Dearybury is my handle on Twitter, Instagram. Those are the two I'm most active on. I try to make TikToks, I'm trying to get better at it. But I'm not consistent, I think. But TikTok is another platform that you could connect with me with. Mr.Dearybury dot com is my consulting website where you can read about the consulting options I have, you can also order a book straight from me on the website. Of course, you can order on Amazon. You can pre-order the playful life on Amazon. I haven't got the pre-order up on my website yet, but should be soon, we'd love for you to order... If you order it straight from me, you get an autograph copy and you get some stickers. Amazon and... Amazon Abaser's, they don't have all that, and you just get a... Just a random copy that's sitting in some warehouse. But from me, you get one filled with love and my signature and Julie's and find a little sticker for your water bottle. Also if you wanna learn more about the playful classroom and see what resources we have out there, theplayfulclassroom.com is full of resources.
1:10:41.6 JD: Also, I wanna mention this, Julie and I do have an online course that goes with our book, it's through the company advancement courses. If you go to advancement courses, we have a... You type in Jen Julie in the search, type in The playful classroom. The official title of the course, I think is Let's Play, creating a playful classroom. You can get renewal credit or you can get grad credit, and you interact with Julie and I through the process we're your assessors. And it's a lot of fun. Our students are giving us rave reviews, and we would love to see some of you pop into the course there.
1:11:22.6 GR: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining us. This has really been a playful fun hour together.
1:11:29.3 JD: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun for me too. A great way to start my day. And let me tell you all this too, I didn't mention this, but a couple of months ago, I started a little YouTube series called a Dearybury of a day. It is where you join me on a zoom call, just me and one other person, and we start our day with a moment of play, it's about 10 or 15 minutes. I come up with a game or an arts experience, or a dance or something that we can do together via Zoom. And then I record it and drop it out there in the world, and you can find it on my YouTube channel, which is also Mr. Dearybury. But if anybody out there wants to be a guest on my show and start your day with a moment of play, if you go to my Instagram, there's a link there where you can sign up for a date. I start as early as 6:00 AM. And my last one, is at 9:00... Yeah, I do look... And people have signed up for 6:00 AM. We get up and it's still dark outside, and I always show my phone what time it is so that people will know that we're starting our day with moment play. But my first recording... I record Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
1:12:39.2 JD: First recording is at 6:00, the last one's at 9:00, and I have 30-minute blocks that you can sign up for. So I would love to start the day with a moment of play, if anybody's out there wants to join me, I'd be happy to have you.
1:12:52.1 GR: Awesome. Very cool. Did we miss anything that we should have talked about? 
1:12:57.1 JD: This was fantastic. I thought you all had some great questions... This was so much fun, thank you for allowing me the opportunity. I'm so tickled that you reached out and that the book is resonating with you all. And if you all ever need me again, let me know.
1:13:14.9 GR: Thank you.
1:13:15.9 LS: Thank you.
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1:13:20.5 LS: Notes from the this stuff is produced by utheory.com.
1:13:22.1 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
1:13:26.8 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing. UTheory has helped more than 100000 students around the world, master the fundamentals of Music Theory, rhythm And ear training.
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[music]

Hexachordal Solfege & Theory Pedagogy Trends with Megan Long

Dr. Megan Kaes Long of Oberlin Conservatory joins us to talk about the earliest system of Western solfege, hexachordal solmization, and recent trends in music theory pedagogy.
Links:
Dr. Megan Kaes Long's Oberlin Faculty Page
Long, Megan Kaes. Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectations at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century
Early Music Sources: Solmization in the 16th Century 
Smith, Anne. The Performance of 16th Century Music
Orlando DiLasso's Novae aliquot et ante hac non ita usitatae cantiones suavissimae
Show Notes:
00:00:20 Introductions
00:01:45 What is hexachordal solmisation?
00:04:10 The pattern of the hexachord
00:05:35 Mutation -- linking hexachords together to melodies beyond a range of a hexachord
00:06:30 Singing a scale with hexachordal solmisation
00:08:15 Relationship between mutation and points of imitation in Rennaisance music
00:10:00 Solmisation in Renaissance musical pedagogy, and the connection to improvisation
00:11:05 The Gamut
00:12:00 Renaissance names of notes, like "C sol fa ut"
00:15:40 The relationship of letter names and hexachordal solfege, and the question of octave equivalence
00:16:30 The Guidonian Hand
00:18:53 The "Do a Deer" of the Renaissance
00:20:40 The interconnectedness of the history of solfege and of staff notation
00:21:30 How do we get the other accidentals, besides B-flat, that aren't in the gamut?
00:24:50 What is musica ficta?
00:28:25 How does thinking in hexachordal solmisation change how you hear Renaissance music?
00:30:15 Puns and jokes in hexachordal solmisation
00:35:30 The intersection of movable and fixed solfege in hexachordal solmisation
00:37:00 Teaching and learning hexachordal solmisation
00:41:50 If we want to learn the basics of hexachordal solmisation, where should we start?
00:42:45 How is the field of music theory adapting to the changing world of music, and a desire to broaden the music that students are able to understand and analyze?
00:46:45 Oberlin's reframing of the music theory curriculum: Rhythm, timbre, melody, harmony and bass.
00:51:15 How might we refocus the music theory teaching we're doing at the high school level?
00:53:17 Do we have to sacrifice part writing for this?
00:55:53 Transforming the first-year theory curriculum from being a weed-out course, to become an entry point and gateway into learning music.
00:57:30 Wrapping up -- plus several conferences to be aware of
Transcript:
[music]
0:00:03.9 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're hope you're learning something new, 'cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.
0:00:21.1 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.
0:00:35.3 Greg Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
0:00:42.2 DN: And I'm David Newman, I teach at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory. We have two topics for today, hexachordal solmization and recent trends in music theory pedagogy and with us to talk about both is Dr. Megan Kaes Long.
0:01:00.1 GR: Dr. Long is Associate Professor of Music Theory at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and a scholar of vocal music in the 16th and 17th centuries. She's the recipient of the 2021 Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory, the top award for music theory book for her work Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectations at the Turn of the 17th Century. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Music Theory and Music Theory Spectrum among others, and she's the editor of SMTV, the Society for Music Theory's video journal, we've put a link in the show notes. She's received numerous grants and fellowships including awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. Megan, thanks so much for joining us.
0:01:42.3 ML: Thanks so much for having me. It's a delight to be here.
0:01:45.9 GR: I'm really excited for both of our topics today, hexachordal solmization is something I've heard a lot about over the years but not really done, we thought it'd be fun to chat about because it's this solfège pedagogy system that has a really rich history, but that is I think not something I know. David, have you done much hexachordal solmization? 
0:02:07.9 DN: I've done almost none, but I have been super interested in historical pedagogical styles and part a mentee, and when I read about the book The Solfeggio Tradition, I ordered a copy and I started to read it, and so, I've found it incredibly interesting.
0:02:26.1 ML: Yeah, one of the things I really love about hexachordal solmization is that it sounds really scary, the word sounds really scary, hexachordal solmization, and when you read about it, it sounds impossible, how would you possibly do it? But it's actually pretty simple to learn and to put together, and it was invented to teach little children how to sing, just the same reasons that we use solfège today. And it's just as accessible and just as logical and approachable as any of the other kinds of solfège systems that we already use and we already teach, and especially if like me, you're immersed in music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it is so illuminating and it really... The way they say, when you learn a new language, you start to think in a different way, I feel very much that way about singing Renaissance music using hexachordal solmization, I just hear the music differently, I make different musical connections. I feel like I have a much better understanding of how the composers and the musicians that they were writing for understood what they were doing, and that I find extremely exciting, it's like unlocking a door into the world of the Renaissance, which can be a hard place to access.
0:03:38.2 GR: So, what is hexachordal solmization? I think the only time I heard the word hexachordal, in my music theory training...
[laughter]
0:03:43.9 GR: Was poly-hexachordal combinatoriality, literally like...
0:03:46.8 DN: Oh, my gosh.
0:03:47.0 GR: Crazy 20th century set theory work. We're not talking about 6-Z7 hexachords, are we? What is this? 
0:03:55.2 ML: Absolutely not, it is the opposite of that in every way. So hexachordal solmization is the original kind of solfège and it dates from the Middle Ages, and it was used all the way through the Renaissance, and a hexachord just means a six-note collection, hexa, six, six notes. And so the pattern of the hexachord is ut, re, mi, fa, so, la. So just like our modern do-re-mi-fa-so-la, except we use ut instead of do, and the idea in the Middle Ages was that the notes that were available to sing, the scale, the gamut, you could make that six-note pattern in three different places, so you could make it on F, using a B-flat, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la and you could make it on C with no B, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la. And then you could make it on G, I'm not in the right key, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la with a B natural. And so you have this one pattern and it can only be replicated at three places in the gamut, and those three places are important and distinct because the middle of our hexachord is our half step between mi and fa. And so the hexachord is always helping us orient to where the half step is. And so just like modern solmization helps us figure out where our half steps are, just exactly the same principle is supporting hexachords, just a little more flexible than modern solmization because the way the scale is constructed in the Renaissance is a little bit different and a little more flexible than the modern scale.
0:05:35.2 ML: The other thing that's important to understand about hexachords is that obviously most melodies have more than six notes in them.
[chuckle]
0:05:41.7 ML: Right? So the way it works is that you do what's called mutation, you mutate from one hexachord to another hexachord when you're extending beyond the range of your single hexachord, and it's by linking these hexachords together that you can fill out and sing a whole tune.
0:06:03.2 GR: So if we wanted to just sing what we think of now as a major scale, how could we do that since we don't have ti? 
0:06:11.3 ML: Yeah, I think... Actually, I think the minor scales are a better way of demonstrating what's interesting about hexachords. Do you have a D? Could I get a D for the here? 
0:06:19.3 DN: Yup.
0:06:20.2 ML: Okay, so say we wanted to sing a D Dorian scale, so all the white notes on the piano starting on D, so D, we're gonna start in the C hexachord. So D is gonna be re in the C hexachord, so I'm singing, re, mi, fa, so, la. And when we get to la, we're out of notes, so we need to mutate and since we're headed to B natural, we need the G hexachord 'cause that's the one with B natural in it. So we'll sing re, mi, fa, so, re, mi, fa, so.
0:06:52.5 ML: And that takes us right up our scale, notice that the low "Di-Re" and the high "Di-So" are actually different syllables, so we don't necessarily have octave equivalents in the syllables that we use, but the mutation from the C-hexachord to the G-hexachord makes sure that our half-step is in the right place. Now, say we wanted to sing a D-Aeolian scale, so we're gonna use a B-flat instead of a B-natural, then we need to mutate to the F-hexachord, instead of the G-hexachord, and that's gonna put our half-step in a different place, so we would sing... What would we sing? "Re-Mi-Fa-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La... Re-Mi-Fa-Re-Mi-Fa-So-La... " so we mutate just a teeny, tiny, bit earlier from the C-hexachord into the F-hexachord, and then that ensures that our half-step is between A and B flat, and we get our D Aeolian scale instead of our D Dorian scale. And this is useful because tunes built on D in the Renaissance will use both B natural and B flat, so once you get up to G A, you can kind of go either direction, depending on what your tune is doing.
0:08:02.3 DN: I noticed in both of those, that the text, as it were, of the scale kind of repeated itself. You started, when you mutated, it began with Re-Mi-Fa-So each time. Is that significant in terms of like... We think everyone starts music off having these points of imitation at different pitch levels, is that significant in the solfege system, that you sort of hear where those possible places of repetition are when you solfege? 
0:08:29.8 ML: Absolutely. And this is one of the most fun things about singing Renaissance music on solmization. It doesn't work every time, but often when you have a motive and then it's imitated at the fourth or the fifth above or below, the motive will have the same solmization in every hexachord. So we might sing "Re-La-So-Fa-Mi-Re" and then another voice will sing "Re-La-So-Fa-Mi-Re" [laughter] so then you can hear these connections and then eventually, often, another voice will come in at a new pitch level and we'll introduce a new accidental. Then we get, "Re-La-So-Fa-Mi-Re" so the motivation for the introduction of, say, a B flat or something will come from the solmization, and this desire to maintain the solmization, and Renaissance music theorists even had a special name for imitation where the solmization stayed exactly the same. They called imitation that was diatonic, so where the half-steps might move around, they called that imitazione, and then imitation where the half-steps were exact and the solmization was exactly the same, they called fuga, the precursor to our word fuga. Yeah, and they're very insistent about this, and the treatises is like "No, no, no, no, no."
0:09:50.2 ML: "People said that This was fuga, but the syllables change, and fuga the syllables have to stay the same." So there's this real emphasis on how you're solmising, how you're singing the syllables, what their names are, that shapes what kind of imitation is happening.
0:10:06.4 GR: And obviously this was meant to teach singers, but I gather that it's also meant to teach other kinds of musicians, so that musicians were taught through singing. Is that fair to say? 
0:10:18.9 ML: Absolutely, and it's important to remember that before anyone does any composing in the Renaissance, what they're doing is improvising. And so little children are taught to improvise pretty complex polyphonic music, and when a composer is notating music, is writing music out, what they're really doing is writing out a complex improvisation, and so having these patterns that repeat themselves in predictable ways is a really helpful strategy for successfully improvising and then successfully composing complex polyphony because you don't have to memorize as many combinations when you know that those combinations can be transposed by fifth without changing anything about the way your counterpoint is structured.
0:11:01.4 DN: If I'm tracking this right, you have access to B flat and B natural in this system, but what about all of my other black notes? 
0:11:12.2 ML: This is a great question, and it's a way in which the background scale of Renaissance music is pretty different from the background scale of contemporary music. Renaissance music is built on what's called the gamut, and if you've heard like, "Oh, we're gonna run the gamut," that comes from solmization. And gamut is a kind of portmanteau of gamma-ut. Gamma being the lowest note of the scale, and ut being the solmization syllable for that note. So the Renaissance gamut, it's the set of notes that are considered diatonic in the Renaissance, so more like a major scale or something than all of the keys on the piano, and it starts from the G at the bottom of the bass clef staff, and it goes up to the E at the top of the treble clef staff, and you hear theorists will say something like, "Well, the reason that's the end of the gamut is because anything below that will sound like a low grumbling, and anything above that will sound like a kind of constrained shrieking." So our gamut is constrained in range and register, and the gamut includes what we think of as all the white notes on the piano and also B flat.
0:12:21.0 ML: So like in the example of the Dorian versus C Aeolian scale, B natural and B flat are both available pretty much all of the time. And if you've seen the complicated names for notes like "A-La-Mi-Re" or "C-Sol-Fa-Ut," what those names are, that's how Renaissance musicians named the notes, they're just the letter name for the note, and then all the possible solmization syllables that that note could have.
[laughter]
0:12:54.5 GR: So, I wish... I'm sorry... [laughter]
0:12:54.9 ML: Greg is making a face like he's in awe right now. [laughter]
0:12:56.1 DN: I'm just thinking of there's that Shakespeare, fa me Bianca. There's these places where you hear this in Shakespeare, and I just thought it was a bunch of notes, but it's like one note? 
0:13:06.8 ML: Yes, if we find that passage, I'd be happy to parse it for you, to construe it for you, which is the language he uses. Yeah, so if you wanna dig that up, that might be fun to look at.
0:13:15.8 DN: I think it's maybe "Be me Bianca," what is the line from? 
0:13:20.5 ML: She's also conjugating Latin verbs or something.
0:13:23.2 GR: There was also a composer who used the pseudonym Alamire, remember that correctly.
0:13:28.8 ML: Yes, and so Alamire is like A-la-mi-re, so the note A is la in the C hexachord, mi in the F hexachord and re in the G hexachord and this composer Alamire famously would sign his name by just drawing a base clef and the note A.
[chuckle]
0:13:47.5 ML: Because if you saw that, you would say A-la-mi-re, that was the name of the note.
0:13:51.6 GR: Awesome, so that was not a pseudonym? It was a real name or was it a pseudonym? 
0:13:55.6 ML: I think that was his real name, I don't know for sure, but that's just the sort of... There's a lot of puns that are possible using solmization, and that's... It's I think really indicative of the way musicians in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance thought. Just like we see the note E-flat and we say that's an E-flat, and sometimes students will say, "That's an E," and we're like, "No, no, no, no, the name of the note is E-flat, and that's important." The note A was A-la-mi-re, there was no just A in the Renaissance, it was important that you used all of that note name and all of the syllables and that was one of the ways you learned to navigate through the gamut as a choir boy. Maybe I should kind of restate what I said before about the gamut and talk a little bit about the Guidonian Hand.
0:14:43.9 DN: Oh, yeah.
0:14:44.5 GR: Sure.
0:14:45.5 ML: 'Cause I know Greg's now hunting for Bianca talking about...
[laughter]
0:14:48.6 DN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Be my Bianca right, is the... I found it's Act 3, Scene 1 of Shrew but...
[laughter]
0:14:58.6 ML: Oh, here we go. Gamut, I am the ground of all accord, A re, to plead Hortensio's passion. B mi, Bianca, take him for thy Lord. C fa ut, that loves with all affection. D sol re, One clef, two notes have I. E la mi, Show pity or I die. Call you this gamut? Tut, I like it not. Old fashions please me best; I am not so nice to change true rules for old inventions. So what she is doing is learning the gamut the same way a child would learn it, which is you say Gam-ut, A-re, B-mi, C-fa-ut, D-sol-re, E-la-mi. And so she's just learning the first six notes of the gamut and just simply saying their full names in that passage.
0:15:44.9 DN: Wow, so letter names also were a thing.
0:15:49.7 ML: Yes, absolutely, and one of the interesting things that comes up a lot in terms of hexachordal solmization, is there such a thing as octave equivalence in this system. Since you remember when I sang my scales from D to D, D at the bottom was re and D at the top was sol or la, depending on which scale I was in, but they are both D-la-sol-re. So there is that octave equivalence built into the way the notes are named in the gamut, even while they might be solmised in different ways depending on what octaves you're singing in, or sometimes if you're singing in an ensemble, you'll be singing octave Ds say, and we'll be singing different syllables on the same note but somebody will be singing an A that harmonises with it, and that will be the same syllable as something that we're hearing in another voice.
0:16:38.6 GR: So, was this the first version of solfeggian western music? 
0:16:41.9 ML: Yeah, so it was and it's the predecessor obviously to our modern solfège. Ut has changed into do, and we have ti now, which is really useful, but it was invented for the same reasons that we use modern solmization. So we don't exactly know the origins of the solmization system, but it's been attributed to Guido of Arezzo who was a monk, and he was active in the early 11th century, he died in the year 1033, and he had... One of his responsibilities as a monk was teaching chant to choir boys, and if you're a monk in the Middle Ages, you sing chant all day and you sing the entire Liber Usualis every year, so you sing thousands and thousands and thousands of chants, and you learn them all by ear and you remember them all because you're in a culture that's steeped in memory. And Guido got frustrated with how time-consuming it was to teach all of this repertory to choir boys and so he came up with this system to make it more efficient to teach them new chant.
0:17:51.6 ML: And so the idea was I will teach these children this pattern ut-re-mi-fa-sol-la, and then I will point to those different notes and then they'll be able to sing those notes back to me, and the way he pointed to them was he drew all of the notes or he would imagine all of the notes in a spiral on the palm of your hand. So you've probably seen these diagrams where you see a hand and a million little letters and note names and things and clefs and all sorts of things written on hand, and the idea was that you would hold up your hand for the choir boys and you would point to whichever joint represented the specific note they were supposed to sing, and then they would sing that note back to you. And the way Guido taught them how the relationships between the notes were, where the half steps and whole steps were, was the same way we teach children now, which is he used a song like doe a deer, a female deer.
0:18:51.0 ML: His song was a chant that he composed called Ut queant laxis but it was the same idea, Ut queant laxīs, Resonāre fibrīs, Mīra gestōrum, so exactly the same idea, ut, re, mi, fa, so, la, each line was one of the notes. And so he used that as a reference and then was able to extrapolate outwards from that with his students to teach them chants, and it's very similar to using solfège hand signs today like we often do in the classroom. It's not a...
0:19:26.1 DN: And... Oop, go ahead.
0:19:26.9 ML: Oh yeah, go ahead, sorry, Greg.
0:19:27.9 DN: As you said, so Ut queant if I remember, 'cause when I took Renaissance Counterpoint in grad school, assignment number one was to memorise Ut queant and to sing it back.
[laughter]
0:19:38.4 DN: And if I recall, it doesn't ever leave those first six notes, that first hexachord, is that right? There are no mutations in it? 
0:19:45.7 ML: That's right, and this is how you teach solmization to children, and this is how I teach solmization to my college students too, is you start with tunes that live in one hexachord and you get comfortable, and then you add a single mutation. So you add tunes that start in your main hexachord and then just occasionally mutate upwards by one hexachord. And then you add B-flats and B naturals to introduce a little more complication. And then maybe you add something that will also mutate down below, so you kind of gradually add complexity and add mutations as you go, until each mutation becomes kind of second nature. 'cause you can't... When you're singing on hexachords, it's not like you have access to every possible syllable, every possible moment. There're fixed locations where you might mutate from one hexachord to another, and so it's all about kind of practicing and getting familiar with those exact locations. One more thing I wanted to say about the Guidonian hand and Ut queant laxis is that, it's not a coincidence that the history of staff notation coincides pretty much exactly with the history of solmization.
0:20:55.5 ML: 'cause what's happening in the 11th century is a shift from an entirely oral tradition, where music notation is just a mnemonic device to help remind you, "Wait, which chant was this?" So you've probably seen neumes, unheightened neumes and heightened neumes, which are just kind of squiggles that tell you the contour of your chant. This is the period when, all of a sudden, we have the invention of the five-line staff or the four-line staff and the clef, and these more precise ways for notating the exact locations of half and whole steps. So we have to, if we're gonna have a notation that's exact like that, we also have to have a system for understanding how to read that notation, and hexachordal solmization goes hand-in-hand with staff notation for that reason.
0:21:44.2 DN: I am fascinated by this, I have to say. I'm getting a little caught up on this, but I'm wondering about the... Still, how do I get to the other black notes? 
0:21:51.7 ML: Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot to answer your question. So there's this idea that like, "Oh well, Renaissance music, it's in the modes, it's very pure, it just doesn't use accidentals." And that's not true at all. And "Oh, the Gamut, it only has B-flat in it, so what about C-sharp? Surely there are C-sharps." So sharps and flats are different in this period. So sharps are kind of ornamental and you use them to make your cadences lovely. So say, I'm cadencing on D, I might sing, re, ut, re, and I'm gonna be singing a C-sharp there. So the rule, which is not entirely agreed upon by all Renaissance music theorists, but is more or less shared by a critical mass of them, is that when you're singing a sharp, because that's a kind of decorative ornamental thing, you don't change your solmization.
0:22:48.7 ML: So, so, fa, so, no problem, you just kinda sharp your fa, you don't say anything different. Flats though will always change your solmization. So a flat will always be fa, no matter what. So if we're hanging out in a world where we have no B-flats and all of a sudden we have a B-flat, we're gonna call that fa, and that will constitute a mutation into the F hexachord. And if we get an E-flat, same idea, we're gonna imagine what we call a fictive hexachord on B-flat. So imagine that ut is B-flat, and then that E-flat is going to be fa in our B-flat hexachord, so just basically transposing our F hexachord down by a fifth and transposing our whole Gamut down by a fifth to make that happen.
0:23:39.4 DN: Very cool. And that's where people may have heard, was it fa supra la and is that where you just put a B-flat on top of an A briefly? 
0:23:51.6 ML: Yeah, more or less. So there's this principle, Una nota supra la. Semper est canenda fa, which is bad Latin for, "If you've only got one note above a la, you're gonna call it fa." And so the idea is if you're singing ut, re, mi, fa, so, la, fa, la, so, la, fa, la, so, fa, mi, you don't have to mutate all the way into your next hexachord, you're just gonna go ahead and sing that one as a fa. And that rule mostly exists to avoid a tritone from fa up to mi, 'cause what we don't want is, fa, so, la, mi, la, so, fa, so, fa, so, la, fa, la, so, fa, kind of helps us prevent that indecorum. It doesn't work every time, and it's not a hard and fast rule, but it's a good rule of thumb, it's a kind of shortcut for a mutation that accommodates really common melodic patterns in Renaissance music.
0:24:49.2 DN: And that starts to get into something that we hadn't even talked about, which is this idea of Musica ficta, in other words, we might be looking at a piece of Renaissance music and there might not be an accidental written, but we might have to sing one? 
0:25:00.9 ML: Yes. And the tune Greensleeves is a really good example of this. If we see notated versions, it looks like re, fa, so, la, mi, la, so, mi, ut, something like that. And a lot of people will flatten that B at the top, re, fa, so, la, fa, la, so, mi, ut, that's using the fa supra la principle as a way of approaching that. It's not actually obvious that one or the other of those solutions is the right one or the best one, and it may be that that's a tune that could be sung both ways, because yeah, these Musica ficta accidentals, they're are non-notated accidentals that performers would have known to sing, that composers would have implied, but there's a gap between what composers might have implied and what performers might have chosen to do in practice.
0:25:57.6 GR: And there are some required ones too, like at cadences, like you were saying.
0:26:02.2 ML: Yes. Musica ficta is a whole other situation. It gets into a lot of really messy things that I don't think that your listeners are gonna wanna hear all about in excruciating detail. We tested Musica ficta in my class this week, and I think the students left with a lot more questions than they came in with, because the basic takeaway was, all of your answers are probably right and they're also probably all wrong, and we kinda lived in that space.
0:26:35.4 DN: I also feel like as a choral conductor, as a singer, every rehearsal I've been in where musica ficta ever comes up, we all leave with more questions than answers, like, "What note should I sing in measure 23?"
0:26:46.0 ML: The interesting thing about musica ficta from the perspective of modern performance is we're so used to a score giving us all the information that we need. And in the Renaissance, that wasn't necessarily the case, and it's not because this notation was deficient in some way, it's really like a feature not a bug of the notation that there's stuff left up to the performers and stuff that's left unnotated, and it's hard for us to reconstruct that now because it's been hundreds of years and a lot of that tradition has been lost. But this idea that there's only one right set of notes to sing is a very modern idea. And in the Renaissance, there are stories about people getting into fights about musica ficta in rehearsals, like, "Oh, I think this should be flat, and I don't think this should be flat," and the composer's in the room and nobody asks the composer, that's just not relevant, because there's flexibility. The same way that we wouldn't expect somebody to write out today all the rubato that you would take in a performance. That would be so unmusical to put quarter note equals 60, quarter note equals 58, quarter note equals 54, quarter note equals 62. That kind of...
0:28:00.3 GR: Although I've seen some scores like that. [chuckle]
0:28:02.2 ML: Well, and we've all sung Carmina Burana, where every note has an accent and a tenuto and a staccato mark. So I think, in the Renaissance, it's just like, why would you notate all of that stuff? Why are you trying to control something that should be up to the performer? 
0:28:20.4 GR: Very cool.
0:28:22.8 DN: So you mentioned early on, you said that singing this way affects how you hear and understand this music. Could you talk a bit more about that? 
0:28:32.1 ML: Oh, that's such a big question. There's almost nothing about Renaissance music that I don't experience differently now that I think more in terms of hexachordal solmization. I think for me, the biggest revelation is that B-flat and B natural are both equal partners in the Renaissance style. There's not one of them is default and the other one is a deviation from the norm, but rather that they're both opportunities that are available to a composer over the course of, say, a motet, and that composer may or may not choose to take advantage of that B-flat that's just right there waiting for him. But it's there if he wants it, and that's a really different way of thinking about what it means to be diatonic than we're used to where we're like, "There's diatonic notes, and then there's chromatic notes."
0:29:29.5 ML: So there's a kind of flexibility that goes all the way back to how I sang those two D-scales. Where once we get to Ray-Mi-Fa-So-La, we have a choice to make, we can go either way. That is everywhere once you start looking for it in Renaissance music. The other thing that I've really notice is imitation; noticing where imitative patterns are repeated with the same solmization syllables at different pitch levels. And when I sing with my students, if you're the second voice to enter and you've already heard your line and it's already been beautifully solmized for you, just 'cause you're entering a fifth above you just copy paste what just happened.
0:30:11.1 ML: So that's a really great opportunity that solmization provides. Renaissance musicians also embedded all kinds of puns and jokes involving solmization into their music all the time, and those are really fun to uncover and really revealing about how people were thinking about solmization all the time, even if they were singing music on words or were just singing "la la la la la." Would you like to hear some more about some of those sorts of things? 
0:30:41.6 DN: Absolutely. Please. [chuckle]
0:30:42.9 GR: Are you able to tell these jokes, explain these jokes, in a way that doesn't ruin them for us? [laughter]
0:30:48.5 ML: Absolutely. Absolutely. So there's two kinds of solmization tricks that I really like. The first one is what's called the soggetto cavato, which is the idea of a subject that's carved from the words. And so a famous example is the text Lascia fare mi, which means leave me alone, but if you notice, La-scia-Fa-Re-Mi sounds like the solmization syllables, La-So-Fa-Re-Mi. So, the composer sets it, "Lascia fare mi," and every time it comes back at every pitch level, you can solmize it so that the syllables of the... The solmization syllables match up with the sounds of the words, and there are lots and lots and lots of examples of tunes like this, where the composer took somebody's name, or took their own name or anything like that and turned it into a tune, a kind of precursor to Bach's BACH motif. Same idea.
0:31:51.0 GR: That's the kicker, I don't know anybody who likes solfege puns. [chuckle] I've never heard any solfege puns in my life. [laughter]
0:31:58.0 ML: I'm looking at two of those people. They're everywhere. And sometimes you'll find them just in the middle of a motet or something, all of a sudden, it's just for the Altos and as an alto I'm like, "Alright, this is just for me," [laughter] "Nobody's going to appreciate this but me, but I'm loving it at this moment." The other technique that composers use is a technique called inganni which means deceptions, and the idea of inganni is you take a melody that's solmised in one way, and then you mutate somewhere unexpected and you keep your solmization syllables the same, but you change the melodic contour of the tune. And so it's a deception because you think you're looking at two totally different melodies, but actually the solmization is the same for both of those melodies, which is a neat trick. If you give me a second, I can find an example. Just pulling my copy of Zarlino's Art of Counterpoint off the shelf.
[laughter]
0:33:06.9 DN: As one does.
0:33:06.9 ML: I'm serious, I literally pulled my copy of Zarlino's Art of Counterpoint off the shelf. Okay, so here are Zarlino's examples of this concept that's called Inganni, so deceptions. He gives us a tune, ut, re, mi, fa, la, so, fa, mi, re. And then he gives us the same tune, but different, ut, re, mi, fa, la, so, fa, mi, re. And then he gives it a different way, ut, re, mi, fa, la, so, fa, mi, re.
0:33:48.6 GR: Gotcha.
0:33:49.7 ML: And so there's a mutation between the first four notes, ut, re, mi, fa, and then the last four notes, last what? Five notes, la, so, fa, mi, re. And he changes what that mutation looks like each time, and so that gives us three different versions of the same tune, that if you're looking at a score, you might not notice, you might not find a relationship between them, but if you're singing in solmization, you can't miss them. And there's lots of really great ways to use this trick. It's really common in the ricercar, which is an instrumental type of composition where you showcase like your most learned counterpoint. And there's this question of, okay, well, ricercar means to... Ricercare means to seek out or to search for something.
0:34:38.7 ML: And one theory of what's being searched for, when you're playing, usually on the organ, when you're playing a ricercar, is what you're searching for is the subject, and what the composer is doing is finding as many ways to hide or bury that subject in the counterpoint as possible, and you, as the performer, have to figure out, using these inganni, these deceptions, where is the subject? Where is it now? What's happened to it? And these get extremely complicated, to the point that some early 17th century musicians, like Trabaci, make these really complicated chromatic ones, and they just label them, they're like, "Inganno, inganno, inganno, inganno." 'cause otherwise people can't find them because the tune is so disguised that they're like, "Wait, but I did something really clever, let me show you."
[laughter]
0:35:29.8 DN: Oh, that's great, that's great. I keep thinking with this that, there's an interesting intersection between movable solfège and fixed solfège, and this kinda seems to live somewhere in between the two of them.
0:35:41.8 ML: Absolutely. That's kind of... I grew up on movable do solfège, and now I teach fixed do solfège, which was a challenge, and now I mostly think in terms of hexachordal solfège. So keeping three systems in mind is a real challenge all the time, but one of the things I find interesting is that hexachordal solfège is both a movable solfège and a fixed solfège at the same time. And in some ways, you get a little bit of the best of both worlds when you're using the system, because you get this kind of sense of, here are the actual notes I'm singing, here's where I'm actually living in musical space, relative to the notes I'm reading on the page, but also, here are where the half steps are, here are musical relationships that are being replicated throughout this piece, and I can feel that they're the same, even though they're happening in different places in the scale. One of the reason this works is because there's not that many keys in the Renaissance. So you can't do hexachordal solmization on something in A-flat major or B major or keys with a lot of accidentals, because this is not a system that's designed to accommodate that, but when you live in a world where there's only two key signatures, there's what we call cantus durus, which is no key signature, the hard B, and cantus mollis, soft B, where there's a B-flat signature, it's a lot easier to navigate that whole musical system using this kind of fixed, movable hexachord system.
0:37:18.0 GR: So pedagogically, when you're teaching hexachordal solfège, does that help with fixed do or movable do, or does it hinder? Do people have trouble moving back and forth? 
0:37:30.0 ML: That's a great question. So I only teach hexachordal solmization to my juniors and seniors who are taking my Renaissance class. I would not foist it on my freshmen, who are learning fixed do for the first time, but I do like...
0:37:47.3 DN: And they're also learning scale degrees, right? 
0:37:48.8 ML: Yeah, and a lot of them came in with movable do, so we do a lot of group therapy in Aural Skills One here.
[laughter]
0:37:57.2 ML: So I reserve hexachordal solmization for my seniors, where I tell them, "You thought you didn't like fixed do, just wait." But I think it really helps you to understand the Renaissance in a new way and helps get you in this mindset that this music is just different in some important ways from music today. And they pick it up pretty fast. And all of a sudden, we're in class, and was like, "Well, isn't that a fa supra la? And isn't this a re tonality and how will that be impacted by the sol cadence here?" And it's really exciting to hear them using this vocabulary that's native to music, and you just can't understand this music without having some of those tools. It's a lot harder to find, for instance, exact imitations versus diatonic imitations, if you don't have access to solmization. It's almost impossible to learn how to do Musica ficta, if you don't have access to the tools of hexachordal solmization. So navigating Renaissance music, specifically, is really useful. When I teach hexachordal solmization, I like to use these duos written by Orlando di Lasso, in this collection from... It's called Novae aliquot something, something, something, something, has this long name, from 1577, and he has 12 texted duos and then 12 untexted duos. And this is a tool I learned from Anne Smith, who is a musicologist and historical performance practice person in the UK.
0:39:33.7 ML: But what she found was that the second set of these duos, the untexted Lasso duos, are they clearly designed to teach you one new solmization challenge per duo, and they're really smartly designed, they're kind of really well-designed rhythms in the Hall Rhythm Book. Which is that they start out in slow notes, with not a lot of mutations, and then each one gets a little faster and then introduces more mutations and then introduces some syncopations and they get harder and harder and harder as they go. And then each duo is designed to work a specific mutation point. So I like to start with those in my class and the students kind of build up their solmization skills as they go. It's a great pedagogical tool, and you can imagine these Renaissance musicians teaching music to choir voice in just exactly the same way.
0:40:29.1 DN: This raises so many interesting thoughts for me, but I think back to episode one, where we were talking about different solfege systems, and even Do-minor versus La-minor, and how, depending on the music that you work with, one may be more suitable than the other. It's so interesting to hear this carried over to hexachordal solfège, and here's a system perfectly matched to this kind of music, and also this balance of thinking in fixed versus movable space, that keeping track of where you are on the staff and also where you are in your scale or hexachord. It's such cool stuff.
0:41:08.6 GR: And at the risk of... I don't wanna prematurely move us on, except that what I think is cool talking about the hexachordal system and how that was developed, and then looking at these... Hearing about these Lasso pieces is that these are people, active musicians, thinking about how to teach about pedagogy. "How am I gonna teach music?" And this was something we wanted to talk about. [laughter] Am I premature in moving us onward? 
0:41:43.2 DN: No, no, I think that's good. I feel like... I guess the only other question I would ask, Megan, is if someone wanted to learn, obviously, you have really been spending a lot of time in hexachordal solmization with your own study. If someone wanted to learn the basics of this where should they go? 
0:42:00.7 ML: I would recommend two resources that are a great place to start. The first is, there's a YouTube series called Early Music Sources, done by Elam Rotem, that is terrific. And he has a great video on hexachordal solmization that is a great place to start. The other place I would look is Ann Smith who has a book called The Performance of 16th Century Music, and there's a chapter in there that teaches how to mutate between hexachords, and she's written out the solmization for a bunch of tunes and explained the thinking behind it and shows original sources and justifies all of that, and so that's a great place to learn these basic techniques. So those are two places I would start.
0:42:46.8 DN: Those are great, we'll put both of those in the show notes. And the other thing I wanted to chat about, is music theory has been changing a lot in recent years, and I think maybe more than even other fields in academia as we sort of confront the biases, and biases in the way that we've been teaching these things, you've been really involved with a lot of work on that, at Oberlin in particular, and I wonder if you might just talk with us a bit about that. You're so plugged into the broader music theory community, how is the world of music theory evolving? 
0:43:24.5 ML: This is something music theorists are thinking really hard about, because the way we teach music theory hasn't changed very much since the 19th century. But the things that we're training musicians to do has changed quite a lot since the 19th century. At a music conservatory like Oberlin, obviously we're training a lot of our students to go play in major orchestras or sing in major operas, in opera companies, but a lot of our students are not doing that. A lot of our students are playing a lot of new music, are doing a lot of innovative work with technology, are thinking about outreach and bringing music to the broader public. And we're seeing a lot more musical hybridization, we're seeing a lot more cultural appreciation in what we think of as the realm of classical music performance.
0:44:15.5 ML: One of the things that we're grappling with as a discipline of pedagogues and a discipline of scholars is how do we prepare all of these musicians for their lives as musicians? One way that we've framed it here at Oberlin is that in the traditional conservatory music theory curriculum, we are really great at teaching our students to say extremely interesting things about music by Beethoven and Brahms, and that's great, that's a really worthwhile thing to do. But it's a little disheartening when you have a junior come to your office with a piece by Ravel and say, "I don't have anything to say about this," that's a real failure of our pedagogy, and Ravel is not out there particularly.
0:45:01.4 ML: Ravel is pretty mainstream canonical composer. So then what do you do when you have a student come in and they wanna talk about hip-hop? Or they wanna talk about music videos? Or they wanna talk about something that Roomful of Teeth is doing? Or they wanna talk about any number of new things happening in the musical world? So different... We're working collectively as a community of music theorists to think about how to approach this problem, and our solutions are emerging and are widely varied. Ranging from... On the one hand, just re-discovering the work of a lot of composers who are Black, composers who are women, composers from South America and Latin America, composers who have been excluded from the canon. I'm hesitant to use the word rediscovery because scholars of color have known about these composers, and have been writing about these composers and teaching about these composers for a long time, but White scholars especially and White pedagogues have not been aware of this music.
0:46:10.7 ML: When we add more of this music into our curriculum, it changes the questions we think to ask and that changes the tools that we need to develop to answer those questions, so that's kind of one way that we're working on revamping the music theory curriculum. Another way is just really thinking much more broadly about what does it mean to think about, talk about and write about music when music isn't just western concert music mostly written between the years 1785 and 1914, what if we wanna build tools to talk about a lot more music, so what we've tried to do at Oberlin is reframe our curriculum in terms of musical parameters that are not specific to any one kind of repertory.
0:47:00.1 ML: So our new freshman curriculum is about teaching about rhythm and meter, and that includes all sorts of things from timelines and the idea of groove, and it creates opportunities for us to talk about really complex metrical structures in 20th century art music but also African drumming and that sort of thing. We're talking about timbre, sound production, the different ways that acoustics work and how timbre might be used as a kind of analytical tool. We're talking about melody, so not just... It used to be that we would teach species counterpoint, we would teach out of the Fux book, which is ostensibly teaching the Palestrina style, we'd say, "Well, Palestrina would write melodies that have no leaps larger than a fourth, and when you leap up by a fourth, you must descend, and that's how you write a good melody." Well, so now in my class, we start with film scores, we start with Princess Leia's theme from the Star Wars soundtrack and come up with why is this a good melody? What are its characteristics? What kinds of tools might we use to analyse the melody and you don't have to use music in this kind of western concert tradition to do that, what are the values of melody in a pop music context? What are the melodic values in the context of the gamelan? We're talking about harmony and different kinds of ways of combining different melodies at the same time.
0:48:38.6 ML: That is where we spend most of our time pretty steeped in western music, but there's lots of other ways to think about and talk about harmony. And we're talking about bass, which is not something that I had ever really thought all that much about but becomes very interesting when you start to think about what are all of the different ways that bass and bass lines work and how is that specific to different repertories, different cultures? I really enjoyed spending some time with my students listening to Herbie Hancock's Chameleon and thinking about the bass riff at the opening of that and how it establishes groove and... So we're trying to think about ways to frame the central questions of the curriculum that aren't necessarily specific to a single repertory.
0:49:26.5 GR: I love that.
0:49:27.8 DN: It sounds like... How are the students responding to it? 
0:49:31.1 ML: They love it. I've never had my students be more engaged and more excited. And what my hope is for my class is that every student is gonna see some kind of music that is important to them, and every student is gonna see some kind of music that is totally unfamiliar to them, and I want all of those experiences to be valued, I want my students who come in reading only guitar tablature to feel like their musicianship and musicality is meaningful and relevant. I want students who have only really looked at lead sheets before to feel that that's a kind of music notation that is valuable and that that is as important for classical students to learn as it is for jazz students to learn how to read piano staves. I want students whose primary experience is working with Dos to have something to contribute to the class that nobody else has been able to contribute before. I want students whose background is in traditions that aren't the western tradition, to hear music that they grew up with or music that they like to perform, to hear that represented in the classroom, so we have a long way to go.
0:50:41.2 ML: Obviously, we all have a lot to learn to be able to teach musics that we're not trained in in a way that's ethical and in a way that is accurate and respectful, but it's been a really amazing experience to just start to sit down and learn about some new repertories, and to meet brilliant people around the world who are working on this music and learn from them, and to figure out how we can bring that experience into the classroom.
0:51:12.5 DN: So if I'm working say with high school students to help prepare for this broader approach to music theory, what kinds of things should we be stressing at that level, do you think? 
0:51:27.3 ML: I think it's really important to teach students how to ask interesting questions, and to learn that a piece of music or a repertory will tell you what sorts of questions to ask of it if you don't come in with too many preconceived ideas about it. So one way I like to start my theory classes is to play some top 40 song that has a lot of cool production techniques involved in it, and to say if we were to build a music theory just to describe this piece of music, what sorts of things would we need to talk about here? And students hear so much, they're steeped in this music, they hear so much that I don't hear, and they're talking to me about filter sweeps and reverb and like oh, it sounds like she's underwater and like oh, it sounds like she's far away, and all of a sudden we're developing all of these schemas, all these categories, we're talking about what's happening, oh, the size of the space she's in, it feels like it's changing, how does that go with the text? 
0:52:31.4 ML: And oh, we're hearing a lot of audible breath, and why is that important? And that's stuff that doesn't come up on the AP Music Theory test, but is very much a part of being a professional musician, a working musician today and having interesting things to say about music, it's training your ears to listen for what's there and build around to that. I think the more we can empower our students to identify what's interesting about something and find their own way of talking about it, the better prepared they're gonna be to embrace a new repertory, a new style that they're unfamiliar with and be game to see how it works and to get to know it.
0:53:14.0 DN: That's very cool. That's very cool. The sort of devil's advocate question, but what about part writing? Can they still part write? 
0:53:21.6 ML: We're still teaching chords, we still do a lot of that. And if you actually look at what's being taught in music theory classrooms around the country, as much as we're making space for new repertoires, we're still spending a lot of time on Mozart and Beethoven. These people aren't going away. I feel for my class, if I'm gonna teach Mozart arias, I love teaching Mozart arias, I should pick two instead of nine. So I'm trying to think about how can I focus on the most important of these or the ones that I feel like I get the most pedagogical benefit from, and what opportunities come from making room for other things? If I teach a Coleridge Taylor song instead of a Mozart aria on Thursday, what opportunities are gonna be there and what sorts of questions are my students gonna raise? And I've found that to be really rewarding. Another question to play devil's advocate right back.
[chuckle]
0:54:28.5 ML: Is what has part writing done for you lately, Greg? 
[laughter]
0:54:31.3 GR: Yeah, that's fair.
0:54:34.8 ML: I don't know that resolving the seventh of a seventh chord down every time is that hard of a thing to learn, but I also don't know that it's that useful of a thing in the real world. I think that we have expanded our part writing curriculum to fill the four semesters that we're given, and it is really useful to a small number of students in some very specific contexts. And so what we're trying to do here is find ways to reach those students in those contexts and give them the tools they need to be successful without making a bunch of students who are never gonna use part writing in their lives and who aren't gonna get that much out of it, spend four semesters on that in lieu of learning about any number of other things that they are gonna encounter every single day.
0:55:22.0 DN: Yeah and you know I have talked about this a lot, and that I had that very classical, I can analyse Mozart through Brahms beautifully kind of music theory training, but part writing didn't click for me until I had figure-based training and was actually having to do real-time part writing improvization at the keyboard, and suddenly I thought, oh, doing this all on paper maybe didn't make the most sense for me originally, even so. So I'm with you on that despite my devil's advocate question.
0:55:52.7 ML: One way I think about this problem is traditionally the freshman theory curriculum at the college level is a weed-out course. These are courses that are really hard and that you have to have really strong fundamentals, and you have to just do a lot of part writing, and a lot of students get through that kind of by counting, by writing in note names and by doing the algorithm and doing the math. I'd rather see the freshman curriculum being an opportunity, being an open door, being an entry point, a gateway into studying music, and then giving the students the opportunity to drill down on those really very specialized skills a little later on.
0:56:31.1 ML: So one of the things we're doing here is offering a portmanteau class for sophomores. And so that's where students who are interested to learn really detailed nuances of 18th century style, they learn to improvise in the 18th century style, they learn to compose in the 18th century style. In a way that's really much more robust than what we do in a traditional part writing curriculum. And jazz students probably won't take that class, and probably a lot of voice majors won't take that class either unless they want to, but organ majors probably will take that class, and will get the very specific skills that they need and that will support the repertoires that they're gonna be performing for the rest of their careers. In a way that's actually a lot more interesting and a lot more historically accurate than the way we teach part writing in the traditional music theory curriculum.
0:57:20.4 DN: Yeah, I think it's really lovely and I am jealous of these students getting this broad approach to music theory, and I just can't wait to see what that means for our next generation of young musicians.
0:57:38.9 ML: We can't wait either, and we're all learning and growing together and we're... I'm sure we're gonna make some mistakes and hopefully be supportive of each other as we all find our way through this new landscape because the thing that's clear is that we can't do nothing, we can't just keep doing things the way they've always been done. And so you have to start somewhere.
0:58:00.8 DN: Awesome. Well, I think that's probably a good place to wrap things up, I don't know, do you think, Megan, David, anything we missed we should talk about? 
0:58:09.3 GR: I can just say thank you so much for visiting us and talking with us about this stuff, and actually both of these things and actually if I dare with all this pedagogy stuff, there are some conferences coming up that are going to talk about these issues that are focused on these issues, and one of them I can't go to, but I am definitely going to be at the music theory pedagogy conference in Michigan in early June. I don't know if anyone is planning to be there.
0:58:41.9 ML: I will be this June at a conference at Case Western Reserve University about analysing music by Black composers. Really exciting conference that's hopefully gonna be really inspiring for helping music theorists think more about a much wider swath of repertory and how we can ethically bring that repertory to our students.
0:59:04.6 GR: Yeah, and that one's June 16th, am I right about that? 
0:59:09.0 ML: That sounds right.
0:59:09.8 GR: I think that's why I can't go. [laughter]
0:59:12.8 ML: Yeah, June 16 through 18. Theorising African-American music.
0:59:18.9 DN: Meghan, thanks so much for joining us for talking about these two huge topics, I feel like I've learned just an enormous amount in this short time from you, and I'm looking forward to diving into these topics a little more.
0:59:31.1 ML: Absolutely. I am always happy to talk hexachordal solmization, it's my very favorite thing.
[laughter]
0:59:36.8 GR: Thank you so much. Excellent.
[music]
0:59:43.1 ML: Notes from the Staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:59:45.7 Speaker 5: uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:59:49.9 ML: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world, master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
1:00:00.0 S5: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
[music]

Funding Your Program with Leah Sheldon

Leah Sheldon shares tips for going beyond bake sales to build a sustainable fundraising model that can support a vibrant music program.
Like what you're hearing? Have topics you want to hear more about? Drop us a note at notes@utheory.com.
Show Notes:
00:00: Introductions
03:28 What does the fundraising landscape look like these days?
04:00 Traditional fundraising: Sales and Raffles
06:00: How to choose the right time and the right things to sell
08:10 Challenges of sales-based fundraising
10:30 Build a strong team of parent volunteers
11:37 Passive Income Fundraising Sources: online donations/crowd-sourcing/project funding 
14:30 Know the policies of your school for fundraising, handling money, and restrictions on uses of various accounts
16:37 Getting creative on fundraising: Sponsorship ideas
19:45 It doesn't hurt to ask -- you never know who's just waiting to help out.
20:45 Sponsoring Students: "Make it possible for a student to join band"
21:30 Creative raffles: parking space raffle, seating raffles, "band on demand" raffle
23:45: Shoe drives
25:15 Grants: What they are, where to look for them, how to get them
27:30 Finding a match between the granting organization and your program
29:00 How to work with your administration on funding
31:30 Covid Relief Funding: CARES & ESSER
35:11 Last thoughts: Build a core group of parent volunteers, know your school policies, send thank you notes. And, above all else, don't do nothing: even if it's one little thing, your students and families will see your own investment in the program and it will be reflected in their attitudes.
Links:
NAfME’s ESSER Funding Toolkit: https://nafme.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ESSER-Funding-Toolkit-2021.pdf 
How to develop a needs statement for grant writing: ​​https://www.grantsedge.com/needs-statement/ 
Grants4Teachers: https://www.grants4teachers.com 
GetEdFunding: https://www.getedfunding.com/c/index.web?s@1_9EUGaBPOylM 
Scholastic: https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/teaching-tools/articles.html
Grant Watch: https://www.grantwatch.com/cat/42/teachers-grants.html
Solfeg:io - https://solfeg.io/music-education-grants
Transcript:
[music]
0:00:21.6 Gregory Ristow: 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.
0:00:37.0 Leah Sheldon: Hi, I'm Leah Sheldon, Head of Teacher Engagement for uTheory.
0:00:40.7 GR: And I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
0:00:46.9 LS: Before we begin, we want to thank our listeners for your feedback and episode ideas. We love hearing your thoughts. Let us know what you think at notes@utheory.com.
0:00:55.9 GR: Our topic today is Funding Your Classroom. And we're again turning the tables. I'll be interviewing my co-host, Leah Sheldon. Leah is Head of Teacher Engagement for uTheory and an experienced public school music educator, having served as a middle school and high school band director, assistant marching band director, and kindergarten through fourth grade elementary music teacher. A recipient of the Teacher of the Month Award through Partners in Education, Leah is passionate about helping teachers meet the needs of today's learners. Leah, thanks for joining us.
0:01:27.6 LS: Thanks for interviewing me.
0:01:29.2 GR: So Leah, for our listeners who may not know you in this context, how is it that you have wound up having so much experience in this area of fundraising and funding a classroom? 
0:01:39.9 LS: Well, when I taught, I taught in a wonderfully supportive district. The administration and the community were both very supportive of music programs and arts programs in general. I was very, very lucky in that sense. But the district as a whole did not have the means to create an appropriate budget that is required by an instrumental music program, or even a choral or elementary program, for that matter. It was very fairly allocated across the district, but it just didn't leave me with enough to, say, purchase or maintain instruments. And we had a large percentage of each class in the programs, so we're talking about a lot of students, a lot of kids. So I just often had to turn to outside sources of funding to meet their needs.
0:02:27.8 GR: So are we gonna be talking about bake sales today? 
0:02:30.8 LS: [chuckle] We'll touch on bake sales a little bit, but we're also gonna talk about getting creative and what else you can do if you're not into selling items.
0:02:38.7 GR: Yeah. I think probably this is a challenge that a lot of us are familiar with around the country, around the world. That it is expensive to run a high quality music program, whether that's, as you said, elementary, chorus, orchestra, or band. And when you look around schools, it seems to me that everyone is selling something, right? It's like, "Oh look, here come the cheerleaders selling their chocolate. Here come the whatever selling their candy-grams," and all that. So I'm glad to hear that there are other things beyond that. Maybe can you introduce us a little bit to what the fundraising landscape looks like these days? 
0:03:20.7 LS: Sure. So it's still really popular to sell things, and I think that's because it's familiar and it's safe, in some way. Students are the ones going and selling items, or sometimes the students' parents, let's be honest. And parents are familiar with it too. You look at an order form, or you go online and place an order, and it's... Almost guarantees a profit. So it's just... It's familiar. It's easy to turn to. There are lots of companies that provide fundraising for selling things, whether you're selling wrapping paper or candy or... I mean, uh... Candles. There are just so many things. And then we've got big ticket items too, right? Like, now it's getting more and more popular to sell Christmas trees and mattresses, and even a local district where I live right now, they're actually selling mulch. You can have it delivered by the yard or you can have the boys' lacrosse team come and spread it for you for an additional fee. But so that... I thought that was a creative take on selling things. But I think... Yeah, it's just... It's readily available, everyone knows what to do with it, and it's usually profitable.
0:04:33.0 GR: Yeah. So what else is there beyond sales, in the big picture of things? 
0:04:37.3 LS: Yeah. So sales, and I'll kind of put raffles in under that as well, just selling tickets either for a 50-50 raffle, or selling tickets to win something like a gift basket, and even just selling tickets to concerts. I know that's a hot topic. Sometimes should we be asking parents to pay to come to concerts? And I think the answer is maybe sometimes. But yeah, so selling things and raffles. And then we're also gonna talk a little bit about some passive income options, some creative options, like I said. And then we're also going to touch on grant funding and COVID relief funding.
0:05:24.5 GR: Great. Great. So maybe what should we start with? 
0:05:28.4 LS: Let's keep going with the sales and raffles, because I think they're... Probably everyone's familiar with it. And if you've already heard this before, I hope that maybe you hear something that gives you a new idea or reminds you of something that you do like to do.
0:05:44.1 GR: So I think about when we're at music educator conferences, like OMEA or TMEA, and we see all sorts of companies with ideas for selling things. And what would you say are some of the most successful ones in this area? 
0:06:00.8 LS: Well, I... It's hard to define success, because it's gonna depend on your community. It's gonna depend on other groups in your district. If there's already another group that regularly sells chocolate-covered pretzels, and everyone knows to go to them at a certain time of year for chocolate-covered pretzels, you're probably not gonna have as much success if you try to jump on that bandwagon, and might even create some tension by maybe kinda stealing their thunder a little bit. So you don't really wanna get yourself into competing with another local group or group within your district. So look for something that's different. If you can find an item that you think that the community would have a need for or be interested in and would be willing to purchase it through the school or through your program, then that's what you should go for. And I can't necessarily tell you what that is.
0:06:52.7 GR: It's great advice, yeah. You mentioned a number of creative ideas already, and I see in our outline, you've suggested a few others that I hadn't thought of in a long time. What is a spirit wear.
0:07:07.9 LS: Oh yeah. So a spirit wear sale is you're literally selling t-shirts, sweat shirts, with the school logo on it, and then usually also something that denotes that it's from the music program. So maybe you get a logo drawn up or you have your students design a logo with the school mascot and marching band or choral department, something along those lines. The nice thing about those now is that mostly everything is done online, so parents can go online, look at all the products that are offered, and maybe even have the option of customizing, so getting a student's name also printed on the clothing item. I think spirit wear sales can be replicated across the district, so it's okay if your soccer team is doing it and the football team is doing it and the band is doing it, because they're all gonna be just a little bit unique, and parents and students want something that represent what they're in, so that's usually a pretty successful and easy thing to pull off.
0:08:14.1 GR: What are some of the challenges of doing sales-based fundraising? 
0:08:17.9 LS: So the challenge, like we've already mentioned, that sometimes you find yourself selling things that other groups are already selling, or the students are just tired of selling things. They do it all the time, or their parents... Parents are tired of either helping their students sell it, or they're tired of buying it. [chuckle] So the students and parents kind of lose motivation, maybe, and then if there is product involved and if you are... If you're gonna need to be distributing that product at the end of the sale, then you've gotta have a group of volunteers to help with that, for sure, parent volunteers, because it's often too much for just one single teacher to manage on their own. It can be done, but it's a lot easier with volunteers.
0:09:06.2 GR: And I'm thinking about return on investment too. How much are you putting out monetarily to get the product versus how much it costs for these kinds of things.
0:09:18.2 LS: Right. So all companies will take a percentage of the sales, so the school will make... They'll tell you up front what it is that you're gonna make, and I think it's really important to look into what company you're going to use to sell things. And it's okay to reach out and sort of interview lots of companies before you pick one for this kind of sale, because you wanna see who has the highest percentage of profit that will come back to you, and also look for other things, like, do they require a minimum amount of product? Or a minimum threshold of money to be reached? Some of them do have a minimum, and if you don't meet the minimum, then there's an additional fee, or they take a higher percentage of the cut. So that's always something to look out for it, especially if you've never done it before and you're not sure what you're going to be making. Maybe look for a company that doesn't require a minimum to start.
0:10:14.2 GR: It also sounds like a lot of organizational work and coordination of people. Yeah? 
0:10:21.4 LS: It is. It definitely is. And I was gonna touch on this later too, but one of my biggest tips for fundraising, whatever fundraiser you do, you have to have a solid group of parent volunteers. It's just... There's so much demand on teachers already. We have so much that we're doing, and this could turn out to be a large investment of time, unless you've got some people that you can trust and delegate it to. So whether that's your booster group, or you just reach out and you have a group of parents in charge of fundraisers for the year, as much of the fundraising that you can turn over to them as possible. Let them look for ideas, let them look for things to sell, or companies, or things to come up with. Really give them some room to make some decisions, and with your approval on everything, of course. But the more that you can hand over to them, the better it will be for you. [chuckle]
0:11:16.3 GR: So with some of those challenges you've outlined, if I as a teacher starts to realize, "Okay, so maybe sales isn't the strategy we wanna use, or maybe it's part of our overall strategy," what are some other things we might look at? 
0:11:33.1 LS: Yeah, so I always say that the best place to start is just find some passive income. It's gonna be the least amount of time investment, least amount of work, physical work and preparation work, and anything compared to a selling type of fundraiser. So when I say passive income, I'm talking about using something like GoFundMe or DonorsChoose or even just seeking donations.
0:12:03.3 GR: Can you... For those of us who haven't heard of those, what's GoFundMe? What's DonorsChoose? 
0:12:09.1 LS: Yes. So let's talk about DonorsChoose. So donorschoose.org, that's a website, it's an organization that lets teachers post usually, like, a specific project that they're trying to fund with some explanation. They let you post it on their platform, and then anonymous donors who are browsing the site for projects that align with their mission will choose to make donations to your project. This is free, free for teachers. The only thing that you need to be able to do is define your need and define your project and what your goals are and how much money you're looking to raise.
0:12:47.1 GR: It sounds great. And so then let's say I posted a project, right? Let's say that I wanted to get all of our school-owned instruments worked on because a technician hadn't touched them in however many years, then what do you do? Do you then reach out to parents? Or do you just sort of hope that the broader world sees it and says, "I wanna support this," or...
0:13:11.8 LS: I think social media is huge here. This is something that if you have a social media account for your music program, it gets shared there. If you can get your district to share it from any of their social media accounts... Alert the parents, too, and ask for them to share it as well. The more it is shared, the more people who will see it, and more likely that someone will say, "Oh, I support that. Let me make a donation."
0:13:38.0 GR: Awesome. So that's DonorsChoose... And you also mentioned GoFundMe. I think a lot of us have seen GoFundMe campaigns, but tell us a bit about those.
0:13:46.5 LS: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm talking about. The thing about GoFundMe, it's not specific to education. DonorsChoose is just for teachers, and I think teachers are gonna have a lot more success on there. But if you wanna post your project in both places and... You never know, right? It doesn't hurt to try. But yeah, GoFundMe is open to anyone for any idea, any product, anything... So I would definitely start with DonorsChoose.
0:14:17.5 GR: So DonorsChoose, GoFundMe, any other sources of passive income we should look at? 
0:14:21.6 LS: Don't be afraid to ask for donations, even if it just means printing a little blurb in a concert program about, "We're always looking for this," or, "We'd like to increase our instrument inventory," or, "Music is expensive. If you'd like to make a donation... " And just simply put how or where they can make a donation of any amount.
0:14:43.1 GR: Speaking of that, I'm just imagining I finished conducting a concert. A parent comes up to me and hands me a $100 bill...
0:14:48.2 LS: Yes.
0:14:49.8 GR: I'm suddenly very nervous about that, about the implications of money coming in, and it's gonna be true for all of these fundraising things. What sorts of things do we need to be aware of there? 
0:15:00.7 LS: Yeah, absolutely. You need to know the policies for money and for fundraising, and if you don't, please ask your administration or whoever it is in your district that handles that. Know what the rules are. Know what the policies are. Know where the money is going to go. You can ask them that, "Hey, if someone wants to make a donation, even if they just give us a cash donation, what do I do with that? Where does it... " Most schools are gonna have some sort of form that gets filled out or a special safe that things like that go into until it's deposited appropriately. But know exactly what account it's gonna go into. Make sure it's not gonna just go into some district general fund. You wanna know that that's gonna actually come back to your program, and it's more likely to do that if you know the process and you take the appropriate steps.
0:15:48.5 GR: Awesome, awesome. Passive income sounds great. I have to say the effort of all the sales stuff is not something I love, but... Yeah, but the idea of sharing, "Hey, these are some things we need," and making it possible for people who do have the means to support that, to support that. Really sounds great.
0:16:08.5 LS: Right.
0:16:09.1 GR: It probably depends a lot on your community.
0:16:10.9 LS: It absolutely does. That's just what I was gonna say, and sometimes it's just a matter of making your needs known. People don't know that there's a need, and the nice thing about passive income, you're not putting something else on top of the students, or asking parents to do any additional work for some profit. It's just a simple ask.
0:16:30.7 GR: Great. So what else? We've talked about sales, raffles, we've talked about passive income...
0:16:38.2 LS: Okay, so let's talk about getting creative. So what of your parents and students in the community are losing motivation to participate in the traditional fundraising? Sometimes it's a matter of just a slight change of wording. So continuing on the donation request, if asking for donations is not working, then try asking for sponsors. The thing about asking for a sponsor is usually right up front, you're saying exactly what you need a sponsor for. So, like, "We're looking for a sponsor for this concert," or, "We're looking for a sponsor for a student." Say, for example, a student who isn't able to afford the fees for the program. Then the person who's making the donation knows exactly what their money is going for, or even exactly who it's going to. And that's a huge difference. If someone knows exactly that, "Oh, this $50 that I'm gonna donate is going to buy a piece of music that I'm gonna hear at the next concert," they might be a lot more willing to give that up versus just, "Oh, here's $50 for the program?" So yeah, just changing the wording a little bit.
0:17:48.9 LS: And some more ideas to go along with that. So asking someone to sponsor a concert. This might be something that you go to a local company for or a well-known restaurant in the community. And you explain what it is that you're gonna do, and you offer to, of course, put an ad for them in the program, or if they would like for you to hang a sign somewhere at a concert, you offering to do that. They like that.
0:18:21.7 GR: And can I ask, like, what... Sorry. Can I ask how much would you ask to sponsor a concert? 
0:18:29.0 LS: Again, the 'how much' questions, this always is going to depend on your district, your community or what your needs are, you might go out and get multiple sponsors for $100, you've got five sponsors for $100 each, and they've sponsored the concert by providing money to buy music with, you're gonna have to... You really have to know your community, know what people are willing to support. And also know your program needs. If you do have, like I had, an extremely supportive community, you may be able to find companies that will... Or even individuals, not really, not individuals, but you may be able to find someone who will sponsor a season, so for example, an entire marching season, a company that will say, pay for all the snacks for the marching band students, or pay for the dry cleaning of the uniforms twice a year. So again, it's gonna depend on what your need is, but you can kind of sit down, prioritize your needs, break them up into create three levels, like a big need, a medium need, and a small ask, and then decide what you want those amounts to be from there.
0:19:49.1 GR: Yeah, and I think back to when I was starting teaching too, and I was frankly just so afraid to ask, but especially companies, a lot of them are looking for ways to be visible in the community, and they're used to being asked these things and it's not abnormal. It doesn't bother them. They're happy to say no, if they're not... If they can't do it.
0:20:12.1 LS: Right. Yeah, it does not hurt to ask, you may also find out that parents within your program have connections either because they work for a company or a local corporation that is willing to donate or they know someone who is, so just by putting the need out there and asking you never know what you might end up with.
0:20:34.1 GR: Yeah, that's great. Sponsorship. That's a great creative idea. Yeah.
0:20:40.0 LS: And sponsoring students too. That's one that... I didn't do that right away. I didn't do that until later in teaching, till I figured out really how to word it, and once people realize that they could make a donation that would go directly to allowing a student to be in band, it was very successful.
0:20:58.2 GR: So what wording did you use to invite parents to make that kind of donation? 
0:21:03.7 LS: Yeah, so it ended up being as simple as just saying, Make it possible for a student to join band, we had such a big alumni base in our community that they knew what joining band meant and what that would mean for that student, and so they were happy to make that possible.
0:21:20.6 GR: Great. So yeah, other creative ideas? 
0:21:25.8 LS: So we talked a little bit about raffles, which usually look like buying tickets to win a basket or 50-50 raffles, but again, know your community and find something that you think they would say, "Oh yeah, I would buy a ticket to that." So for us, parking was an issue, it was always an issue because we just had small parking lots, and that meant the concerts... People had to park very far away and walk a lot, so we tried raffling off a parking space real close up front, and that was very successful, so that was something that we decided to continue with. But yeah, so parking spot raffles, you can do concert seating raffles, again, that's gonna depend on what that looks like, is it a matter of raffling off a really good seat or is it mean raffling a padded folding chair versus the bleacher, the concert seating was a good one, and this is my favorite concert on demand raffle. Again, it worked for our community because it was a small community, but we called it Band-On-Demand, and parents could buy tickets to you have the band show up in their front yard and play a concert or on their street if there wasn't room to fit the whole band in, but that was wildly popular.
0:23:00.7 GR: That sounds amazing.
0:23:01.4 LS: It was fun.
0:23:03.5 GR: Awesome. Yes. Okay, so sponsorships, raffles, these are just great creative ideas and also it seems like not as frankly much work as say, selling mattresses or whatever.
0:23:18.8 LS: Right. There's still... I don't wanna say that it doesn't require any work, it might just be a little bit of work upfront to create a flyer that you're going to take to businesses to ask or putting that wording together. But then once you've done it, it's done, and you don't have to keep recreating the wheel. And there's one other thing I wanna bring up. It's been popular, and I've even done it myself, shoe drives are gaining popularity, and there are a lot of organizations now that will do this, but I worked specifically with Funds2Orgs, that's funds number two orgs. And it was a very profitable fundraiser. You ask for the community and parents and students to donate shoes, and then they at the end, they come with a grappling giant truck and you load up all the shoes onto the truck and they take it and they weigh it. And your profit depends on the poundage of shoes that you were able to collect, and they take nearly all types of shoes from used to gently used to even new. The challenge of a shoe drive is there is some physical work involved, all the shoes need to be tied together or rubber banded together and put into plastic garbage bags, and you need to have somewhere to store that, you might think that you know what 100 bags of 25 pairs of shoes looks like, but then you see it and you realize, "Oh, this is a lot of shoes."
0:24:52.0 LS: And then you get 500 bags and then it's really so the... Yeah, the challenge with the shoe drive is making sure that you have students and parents who will volunteer to help put things together for it and make sure that you have the room to store it but very profitable.
0:25:07.8 GR: That's great, that's great. Okay, so we have sales, fundraising, we have these wonderful creative ideas, passive income ideas, and then probably the big area that we haven't talked about is the area of grants. Can you talk a little bit about that? 
0:25:24.4 LS: Sure, so grants are... A grant is money that you receive from an organization, it does not need to be paid back, and usually they'll board money for a project that aligns with their mission. The thing about grants is that they... Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. Grants are a lot of work. When you're writing a grant, the grant application itself does require a bit of writing, companies who typically receive grant funding generally have a staff person dedicated to grant writing, and your district may have someone dedicated to grant writing, but funding the music program may not fall under their umbrella of responsibilities. So if you might be interested in looking into a grant, just know that you're going to need to be prepared to write a project summary, you're gonna have to write about how you're going to evaluate it, because grants do require evaluation and reporting because they wanna know that the money that they're giving is having an impact.
0:26:38.4 GR: So meaning, let's say I receive a grant from our local arts council, but at some point in the year after I receive that grant, I have to provide back some kind of report? 
0:26:48.7 LS: Yes. And even in the initial application, you're gonna have to talk about how you plan to evaluate for that, what you think the impact will be, what the community need is, your current strengths and challenges of your program and future sustainability without the grant funding. So those are just some things that you'll need to prepare to write about up front and then again throughout the year, be collecting the data on that evaluation and then submit an evaluation at the end of the life of the grant.
0:27:25.2 GR: I've worked with a community chorus for a number of years, and part of my responsibility there was being involved in that grant writing process, and one of the things that I found, and I know that you and I have talked about this as well, is how important finding a good match between the organization and... The organization that needs the money and the organization that is making the grant, how can you know if you're... If the organization you're looking at who's giving grants is the right organization to approach? 
0:27:55.3 LS: Call them and ask. Do not be afraid to reach out to them, to email or call and say, "Hey, here's what I'm doing. Does this align with your mission?" They'll be happy to answer questions, in most cases.
0:28:10.5 GR: Yeah, yeah, and where even do I begin to figure out what grants are available? 
0:28:16.1 LS: So this may require a little bit of research on your part, but we will provide a couple of links in the show notes that are a good starting place. A couple of organizations that either provide grants for music teachers or provide a list of other organizations that provide grants for music teachers. And also in the show notes, we'll also put a link to a website that helps you develop a needs statement. A need statement is very important for your grant application, and honestly, it can be used for all fundraising, especially if you're planning to be requesting donations or looking for sponsors, check that out, check out this website, read through how to develop a needs statement because that will help you clearly define your needs, no matter who you're asking for money from.
0:29:11.8 GR: Great, great. I think also speaking about that, maybe... Especially for teachers who are just getting started. One thing we haven't mentioned is, you can certainly start by going to your administration and saying, "Hey, we have these needs to make the program really successful, to be able to provide the experience that students need, we need these specific things. Is there funding for that?" And I think that's a lot of times, just that organization, as you're talking about, making a need statement, but also taking the time to actually just make a budget and say, this is what running a top level program for the course of the year really costs, and how much of that can come from the school's budget, and how much of that do we have to be more creative about finding ways of funding.
0:30:08.3 LS: Yes, absolutely, that's a great point. Don't be afraid to ask administration, but if you're planning to do that, yes, absolutely, prepare to do that. Like you said, and I wanna add to that, also prioritize the needs, because very frequently the administrator's gonna say then, "We can't do all of this, but if we can do some of it, what would you like us to do?" Come prepared, have the numbers, have your need clearly defined and prioritized and just make it easy for an administrator to look at and say, "Okay, I understand."
0:30:43.2 GR: Yeah, yeah, I've always found with the administrators that if I say I need 20% more money, they say no, but if I bring them a list of like, Okay, here's what we need, and here's why we need it, their response is, we may not be able to do it, but let's see what's possible. And that makes for a much easier starting place for a conversation.
0:31:02.1 LS: And back it up as much as you can with the student achievement, if you can tie it into state standards on why we need this particular new method book, or why we need to be purchasing new music, and again, make it show how it applies to the students learning as much as possible.
0:31:22.9 GR: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Great, what else should we know? This is just such good stuff, Leah.
0:31:29.9 LS: Well, we haven't talked yet about the newest available category of funding, which is a COVID relief funding. If you wanna touch on that.
0:31:37.2 GR: Yeah, please.
0:31:40.3 S12: Yeah, so the CARES Act in 2020 brought this new level of funding for schools, that is now the most recent bill of this is the America rescue plan, but this all falls under the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund. The thing about this money is that the federal government distributes it to states, and then the states distribute it to the districts. Some districts may get a lot, some districts may get none, so the first thing that you need to find out is, did our district receive any emergency relief funding? And then if your district did, then I suggest just like when talking to administration, you pull together your needs and prioritize your needs, and then you present this to administration. To receive this funding, a teacher cannot go and request it or fill out an application for it. Again, the state gives the money to your district, so you need to talk, you need to find out who it is in your district that handles this. Is it a principal, is it the superintendent. Is it the head of the LEA, the Local Education Association.
0:33:00.2 LS: So you need to find out who to talk to and then come prepared to discuss your needs and what you're looking for, the funding is available for anything related to creating safe learning spaces due to COVID or addressing any learning lost from remote instruction when schools were closed for COVID. So for example, technology and software for virtual learning or remedial instruction, additional instruments and equipment to avoid students sharing supplies for cleaning and sanitation, materials for social distancing and PPE, facilities improvements and even extra-instructional support, so even hiring a private lesson teacher could all fall into that.
0:33:50.2 GR: And as I recall, with the ESSER funding and specifically, kind of the big catch-all is that idea of remediation, the idea that there was learning lost because of remote learning, and we need to make the current situation better to make up for that, and that opens a lot of possibilities for requesting funding there.
0:34:10.6 LS: Absolutely, so if a teacher wants to use uTheory to address remedial or to provide remedial instruction, then that absolutely falls under that category.
0:34:20.1 GR: Great. So yeah, so CARES Act, ESSER and these things. Can you remind me when does ESSER expire? When's the last chance people can get funding for that? 
0:34:29.7 LS: So the first round of funding actually expires, I believe this coming September, September 30th, 2022, there will be money available until 2024 for this, so it doesn't hurt to ask now.
0:34:44.0 GR: Great, great. Well, I have a lot of ideas now. This is certainly exciting, ideas other than calling up my boss and saying, "Hey, I need more money," although that's not an awful thing to do. Is there anything that we've missed or is this a good place to wrap things up? 
0:35:04.2 LS: We can wrap it up. I just wanna reiterate that, you know, no matter what fundraiser you decide to do, I think it's really important to have a strong group of parent volunteers to help with some of this, and again, knowing the school policies and knowing the rules for allowing students and parents to handle cash. Even if you do have very trustworthy parents or students, always have multiple adults present if there's going to be cash being handled, and definitely have supervision over students collecting cash, and please remember to say thank you and send thank you notes. Thank you notes to donors or sponsors or those parents who are volunteering their time a little thank you note will go a long way because then they will know that they're appreciated and that they've been seen and they'll be more willing to come back and help again.
0:36:03.3 GR: And even administrators who are able to up your budget ever so slightly, they appreciate those little thank you notes too.
0:36:10.8 LS: And one final tip here is, don't do nothing, do something, even if it's one little thing, one little fundraiser, one little request for donations, start somewhere. By doing nothing, you're showing your administration that, Oh, you're fine with whatever funding you get, if you get any. And you don't really have any needs or anything like that, and it won't be on their radar for next year that I need to consider what the music program needs, and also if the parents and students see you going above and beyond to give them the best possible program then, that's gonna be reflected in their attitude and their effort as well, so don't do nothing.
0:36:54.1 GR: Awesome, that's great. It's great advice. Leah, thank you for that. Thank you for all these wonderful ideas. And thanks for joining us.
0:37:04.2 LS: Absolutely. Any time.
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0:37:08.8 Speaker 3: Notes from the staff is produced by uTheory.com.
0:37:11.7 Speaker 4: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:37:15.6 S3: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
0:37:26.4 S4: Create your own free teacher account at uTheory.com/teach.
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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:
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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.
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0:10:34.0 DN: Do-Do-Sol-Sol-Sol.
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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.
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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]
0:58:37.3 S1: Notes from the staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:58:40.0 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:58:44.1 S1: With video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world, master the fundamentals of Music Theory, rhythm, and ear training.
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Rhythm Counting Systems with David Newman, Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow

Rhythm counting systems: what they are, how we use them, and why might we choose one over another. We break down the plethora of approaches (including 1-e-&-a, Takadimi, Gordon, Kodály, and Orff) into groups, and share tips from our own experience teaching these from preschool to college. 
Links:
Free Printable Rhythm Resources on uTheory
Eastman/1-ti-te-ta Counting System
Traditional American/1-e-&-a Counting System
Gordon Rhythm Solfege
Takadimi Counting System
Varley, Paul. An Analysis of Rhythm Systems in the United States: Their Development and Frequency of Use By Teachers, Students and Authors. (Ed.D Dissertation, UMSL, 2005)
Show Notes:
0:30 Introductions
01:20 What are counting systems? What ones do you use?
03:05 Kinds of Counting Systems: Analytical/Metric Subdivisional vs Mnemonic
04:45 1e&a/Eastman/Traditional American approaches
06:11 Gordon Rhythmic Solfege
07:55 Takadimi
10:11 Mnemonic/Pattern-based/rhythm word approaches (Orff)
14:00 Note-syllable approaches (Kodály)
16:00 Kinesthetic Approaches (Dalcroze)
17:35 What are shared goals of counting systems?
19:40 Conceptualizing rhythm as existing within a metric grid, rather than as the addition of longer- and shorter-duration notes
21:22 How do you use these systems when you're teaching?
24:00 Role and value of using rote teaching with rhythm
25:50 Teaching the reading of rhythm using counting systems
29:23 Value of using multiple approaches: using both a subdivision & pattern-based system, and with each system varying the kind of activities and engagement
31:45 Teaching dictation using rhythm counting systems
33:00 Protonotations ("Box approach", "Beat sheets", drawings, symbols, etc...)
35:45 Call and response exercises
37:55 What are strengths/weaknesses of analytical-subdivisional approaches and mnemonic/pattern-based approaches?
43:50 Creating a sense of meter, especially in systems that don't make them explicit
49:30 A shared goal with pitch solfege systems is to learn a rhythmic system so well that in the end, we don't need it at all
51:40 Challenges of analytical/subdivisional systems
53:50 Wrap-up
Transcript
[theme music]
0:00:20.3 Leah Sheldon: 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. I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory.
0:00:37.3 Greg Ristow: And I'm Greg Ristow, I'm an associate professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory and the founder of uTheory.
0:00:43.1 David Newman: And I'm David Newman, I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University and I write code and create content for uTheory.
0:00:50.6 GR: Our topic today is one that several of you wrote in to say you would love to hear. Shoutouts to Noel Warford, Michael Joviala and Maddy Tarantelli, in particular.
0:00:58.9 LS: We'll be talking about counting systems or rhythm systems, which are basically solfège systems for counting rhythms.
0:01:05.6 DN: There are a lot of systems, but we'll break them down into categories and give examples of why you might use one or more of these to help teach rhythm.
0:01:14.3 LS: We've also got links in the show notes to helpful references, including printable rhythm system resources you can find at utheory.com/teach/resources.
0:01:24.9 GR: So, yeah. Let's dive in. What is a counting system? Probably many of us have had encounters with these growing up. The most common is, in America at least, is probably the 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a approach. So yeah, so what are these? Why do we use these? And I wonder, what systems do you use, Dave and Leah?
0:01:45.7 DN: Well, when I started teaching aural skills, I didn't use any system at all, I definitely used a version of counting in college when I was learning. Mostly in choir though. Then we switched to Takadimi at James Madison University. And then recently we have switched to what we're calling the Eastman System, which is 1-e-&-a and 1-la-li, 2-la-li. I guess that's not really the Eastman System, but it's some hybrid. [laughter]
0:02:19.4 GR: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. I think it's probably... One of the things you mentioned you did a lot of it in high school choir. I think that for a lot of us, that's probably where we learn our counting systems is through our school music programs.
0:02:32.6 DN: Right.
0:02:33.2 GR: Certainly for me that 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a was a constant partner to my years in band. How about you, Leah? What systems do you use, have you used?
0:02:42.6 LS: Yeah, I grew up using 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, so just a traditional counting system. Used that throughout college as well. In my first couple of years of teaching, especially at the elementary level, I actually taught with Kodály syllables. And then when I began teaching at the middle school and the high school I was mostly teaching counting again.
0:03:05.2 GR: Yeah, yeah. So there are different kinds of approaches to this and in a lot of ways, I think they parallel the debate about how to teach reading, just how to teach reading a language. And there are approaches that you might call phonics approaches, where you kind of break down the rhythm and analyze the relative durations and then there are approaches that you might think of as being more whole language or whole word approaches, where you learn basically rhythmic patterns in groups. So you might learn like an eight and 2 16th, ti-ta-ta as pine-apple, or 2 16th and an eight as cherry pie. So we're gonna talk about these approaches in different categories, we'll talk about what we're calling analytical or metric sub-divisional systems and these are the kind of traditional systems like the American Counting System, 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, or the Eastman System 1-ti-te-ta. Gordon, the du-de's and Takadimi as well. And pneumonic or pattern-based systems, these are especially used in the Orff approach to music education.
0:04:16.4 GR: Note syllable systems, as Leah mentioned, the Kodály system, where we have things where the syllable is associated with the note duration, so ta as a quarter-note, ti as an 8th note, etcetera. Although doesn't follow that exactly. And a little bit kinesthetic approaches like the Dalcroze approach to music education, which combines a bit of the analytical metric subdivisional system approach and pneumonic approach with work through movement. So yeah, let's dive in. Let's talk first about these analytical or metric subdivisional systems. We've said a couple of times, probably the most common is that 1-e-&-a. It doesn't really have a name, if you look around, people call it the Eastman System though the Eastman System is proposed by McHose and Tibbs was actually 1-ta-te-ta, which is still in use in quite a lot of places. When we say that, what we're saying is that if you take 4 16th notes in simple time, you would call each of those notes by a syllable 1-ta-te-ta, right? So if I had 2 eighth notes, I could say 1-te, 2-te, 3-te, t-te for a measure. If I had a measure of 16th, I'd say 1-ta-te-ta, 2-ta-te-ta, t-ta-te-ta, 4-ta-te-ta.
[laughter]
0:05:30.8 GR: Which, you know, the Eastman System seems to have been... Is newer than the Traditional American System, which I think most of us are familiar with 1-&-2-&-3, right? It's modified so that you get a more percussive beginning to each syllable. In the Traditional American System, we go 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, t-e-&-a, 4-e-&-a. And if we're in compound meter in the Eastman System, we go 1-la-li, 2-la-li, or if we have 16th notes, say we're in six-eight and with 16th notes, we can subdivide all the way down to 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta, 2-ta-la-ta-li-ta, 1-ta-la-ta-li-ta, 2-ta-la-ta-li-ta. See that's Eastman/Traditional American System and a lot of people use a combination of those. Leah you wanna talk about Gordon?
0:06:14.5 LS: Sure. So Edwin Gordon's music learning theory really focuses on teaching the students to audiate and think in rhythms and that's done through learning the patterns that are really based on macrobeats, microbeats and then what he calls melodic rhythm. So for example, if the macro beat were a quarter-note, that would be duuuuu-duuuuu and we break that down into eighth notes then we have duuu-de, duuu-de all the way down into 16th notes du-ta-da-ta and in compound meters, we're breaking that into du-da-di-du-da-di and if there's further subdivision, du-ta-da-ta-di-ta. But again, the whole approach of Gordon is to help students audiate the rhythm. So it's not necessarily looking at the rhythm and reading it from notation, but hearing it so it's subjective. What one person hears as a macrobeat might not be what someone else is hearing as the macrobeat. But it at least it gives us a way to analyze the rhythm that's heard and be able to break it down into those syllables.
0:07:31.6 GR: And the Gordon music learning sequence places a big focus, I think what you're saying, is on the sound before sight kind of thing.
0:07:39.7 LS: Yes, yes.
0:07:42.2 GR: Yeah. And if you're listening and you're saying, oh my goodness, they're saying all these syllables and how am I going to remember what's what, don't worry. We've prepared resources on these counting systems for you at utheory.com/teach/resources. So how about Takadimi, David?
0:07:58.3 DN: Takadimi is interesting. It was conceived relatively recently, about 20 years ago, maybe a little longer, as a way of sort of making a fluent way and a logical way of dividing up each beat, so. And I think all of the systems that we've talked about so far, they're... We've talked about them referencing a quarter-note beat, but they can be used with a half note beat or a whole note beat. They're really beat-based and how you divide up that beat. So when you divide up a beat into four parts in Takadimi, you use, surprisingly enough, Takadimi. [chuckle] And if you divide it into three beats, you do ta-ki-da and if you divide that further into six beats, then you use ta-va-ki-di-da-ma. And one of the things that they tried to design it around, aside from the fact of changing the part of your mouth that makes each syllable so that they're easy to do fast syllables together, is that they made sure that di is always the middle of the beat, so the middle division of the beat. So even if you have ta-ka-di-mi, ta-va-ki-di-da-ma, di still lines up in the same place.
0:09:30.6 GR: Cool. I have to say, I love the sound of Takadimi when I hear people do it well and fluently. It has kind of... I find it as a sort of musical flow, maybe because of what you're talking about with where the syllables are, that my beloved 1-e-&-a doesn't have so much.
0:09:51.0 DN: And people like the crispness of the consonants as well, which is my colleagues' main complaint with the counting, is that wa is very ambiguous about it, where it starts.
0:10:08.3 GR: Yeah. For sure, for sure. So these are all these what we've been calling analytical or metric subdivisional systems, which is to say that given a beat that's either in simple time or at a time where the beats divide in two or four, or in compound time where they divide in three or six, then we can break down the beats into the notes within the beat into various syllables. These are the most probably common approaches to teaching rhythm. We also have mnemonic or pattern-based approaches, sometimes these are called rhythm word approaches, where you assign different... You can assign different words, actually literally English words to syllables.
0:10:48.0 GR: So I use these a lot myself when I'm teaching compound meter, which has fewer commonly used patterns. So for instance, say we're in six-eight and we have three eighth notes, if we're in geography land, that might be Ca-na-da, Ca-na-da. The dotted quarter could be Ro-me, Ro-me. The eighth and a quarter could be... I don't know. What's a good da-di, da-di-da? I've used Lo-ngy, Lo-ngy because I learned these at the Longy School of Music, but that may not apply anywhere else. And for eighth quarter, I've always used Scot-land, Scot-land, Scot-land. So just wind up with... And I think one of the nice things about these mnemonic approaches is that they get students thinking at a beat level and not at a micro sub-divisional level. And they get them there very quickly.
0:11:45.5 DN: That's super important. And I did the... I realized I did the same thing. In 2011, I made a video that ended up going a little bit viral with... Using food words that we had come up with in my class for simple meters. It wound up on a t-shirt somewhere.
0:12:06.2 GR: And this is... I think, especially anyone who's had training in Orff is saying right now, Oh yeah, this is what we do. This is just very, very central to the Orff approach to teaching music education is thinking in these words. And there's that connection as well with Gordon and I think a lot of music education philosophy of... That allows doing a lot in sound before actually moving to musical notation.
0:12:40.8 DN: Yeah. Which is another great advantage of it. Although I regularly see memes being shared on Facebook with words attached to various rhythms and there's always one that's wrong. [chuckle]
0:12:56.9 GR: Yeah. Where the stresses just don't work, right? Yeah.
0:13:02.4 DN: Yeah.
0:13:02.4 GR: Yeah. We'll talk more about various strengths of these. But one of the challenges of, if you're assigning a word to each pattern, is sometimes, the way these patterns line up in music, they don't all begin... The musical idea could begin before the beat, not necessarily on the beat. And then, how does that change the words you might wanna say?
0:13:30.9 DN: Right.
0:13:31.3 GR: The danger of, sometimes, these patterns, is that they always... You wind up with words that always stress the first note of the pattern, which may not be where the stress actually falls, musically. So yeah, so we have the mnemonic or pattern-based approaches. And, generally, people who use those tend to call them approaches rather than systems, because there is this idea of, let's find words that match and maybe one class will have a different set of words because that's come out of the students ideas in another class. There are also note syllable systems. We mentioned Kodály. Leah, do I remember that you taught with Kodály?
0:14:14.0 LS: I did, I did. And, although I have my Orff levels, I drew on a variety of approaches based on what we were working on. And even in my own circle of music education peers and colleagues, there were some discrepancies between what the actual syllables are once you get to the 16th note level. Some may disagree but...
0:14:37.3 GR: Can you talk us through the basic syllables? Can you talk us through the basic syllables for Kodály?
0:14:42.6 LS: The quarter notes are always ta and a pair of eighth notes is ti-ti and 16th notes are, either, ti-ka-ti-ka or ti-ri-ti-ri, or I've even heard, ti-ki-ti-ki. So, the disadvantage being that you're not necessarily distinguishing where the macrobeat is versus the microbeat. Like, an eighth note isn't ta-ti, it's always ti-ti. But it does make it very easy for students to identify types of notes from a very early age and understand that, oh, it's a pair of eighth notes and that's a beat that's divided into two sounds.
0:15:26.9 GR: And because of that, there's not... You don't have to make this determination early on are we in... When Looking at music, is this in simple time or compound time? 'Cause you can just name each note by it's syllable, or each rhythmic...
0:15:41.9 LS: Yeah, so much so to the point that students in kindergarten through second grade, may not even know that that's a quarter-note. That's a ta and that's a ti-ti. Which is probably a challenge. [chuckle]
0:16:01.1 GR: Good, so yeah. So, okay, so we've talked about analytical or metric subdivisional approaches, mnemonic approaches, note syllable systems like Kodály and then kinesthetic approaches, the Dalcroze approach is, probably, the most famous for this, where... Most Dalcroze teachers will connect rhythmic patterns to particular rhythm motions. And one of the things that I do a lot, when teaching basic rhythms, is, I'll do an echo canon with students. So I'll say, okay, I do what I do, four beats later and I'll tap my nose as I say, tu-tu-tu-tu and then they'll tap it back and I'll, with my right hand, left hand, tug gently on each ear and say, chk-chk-chk-chk for eighth notes, to a little raising arm motion, ou-ou for half notes and do a clap, with a long, kssss, for whole notes and you can spin that out in a bunch of ways to get to reading and things like that. But that is... You're connecting sound to different motions and in the Dalcroze approach, I think similar to Orff, it's not that there is one approved motion for a particular rhythm pattern, but there's a real emphasis on having these movements, these sounds, these words, be drawn out of the students as they learn to feel the different patterns. Leah, you've got your Orff certifications, would you say that's parallel in the Orff approach?
0:17:35.7 LS: Yeah, absolutely.
0:17:37.3 GR: Yeah, great. So, with that overview of counting approaches, what are our shared goals of using counting systems? Why do we use them?
0:17:48.6 DN: Accuracy [chuckle] but also understanding. But they all do encourage different ways of understanding.
0:17:54.5 GR: Yeah, for sure. I think some of them are definitely geared towards helping us to get quickly between sound and notation, they're very notational-based approaches, especially those... The metric subdivisional ones, but I think... And, Leah, what you were talking about with the Gordon approach, right? That maybe there's more of a focus on oral analysis.
0:18:15.3 LS: Right and exposure. Exposure to rhythm patterns and meters and giving students, even young students, an opportunity to build a rhythmic vocabulary and to, down the road, then, have a deeper understanding of rhythm and reading it and writing it from notation and also just facilitation for ease of imitation and repetition and everything that comes with sound before note.
0:18:50.4 GR: I think it can also really reveal if there is some rhythmic issue happening. Adding syllables or words to it can help you, as a teacher, diagnose what's going wrong. Let's say you have a student trying to perform two sixteenths and an eighth and they're performing it wrong, you say, "Okay, we'll try it on rhythm syllables," and they say, "Okay, 1-&-a" then what you've discovered is they've misidentified looking at it, visually, where the 16ths were versus where the eighth was, right? And so it can help you get to understanding, Is this a visual theoretical misidentification, a misrecognition of a pattern, or is this an issue in the actual accounting of it? And if you're doing mnemonic words then that becomes very apparent right away, yeah.
0:19:42.3 DN: I'm also reminded of a student that I had where they just couldn't do rhythms, they couldn't dictate rhythms properly. And I finally figured out that they were trying to figure out how long each note was, instead of figuring out where it happened within the framework.
0:20:00.5 GR: Yeah.
0:20:01.6 DN: So, that is another...
0:20:03.8 GR: David, I think this is... You've touched on something that I think is really huge and that maybe a lot of us aren't aware of, but I think there... I would say, there's a good 20% of students out there, at least that I see at the college level, who come in and they believe rhythm is about the addition of short and long notes together and not about orientation within a metric grid of some sort. And especially, I do... There're a lot of things I love from the Kodály method. But especially students whose only approach to reading rhythm has been Kodály and a ti is this long and a ta is this long and a to is this long, can fall into that trap. So I think it does go back to if you're using an approach like that, it's important to combine it with another approach where as we've been talking about, where they understand where they're fitting within that metric grid, because students who think of rhythm as the addition of long and short notes, the minute inaccuracies that add up each time they perform a note, get bigger and bigger. And what do those students do if they get lost in the middle of a measure? There's nothing to help them find their way back in, so I'm so glad you brought that up, David.
0:21:21.6 GR: So let's talk a little bit about how we use these when we're teaching. And I guess the classic things are... We're generally either going from notation to sound in some way, whether that be performing on an instrument, or we're going from sound to analysis or sound to notation, right? We hear something, we wanna be able to play it back, we hear something, we wanna be able to write it down, we hear something, we wanna be able to say, "Yeah, that's a du-ta-de." So yeah, maybe let's talk about reading rhythms and teaching rhythm reading. Leah, I think you probably have the most recent experience teaching this at the most basic level of, "Oh, my God, I'm facing a class of elementary students and middle school students, etcetera." Can you talk with us a little bit about how you would work with students in that context?
0:22:14.5 LS: Sure. And it also... It does depend on, not necessarily what system you're using, but it does with young learners, you have to have a very clear objective and outcome. And for example, with a teacher who's teaching with the Gordon learning sequence, you're looking at whole-part-whole instruction in most cases and the rhythm solfège really plays into the part of that, where you've shared a song and now you're breaking it down into parts and you're isolating the rhythm patterns from the song. And that's where you're chanting rhythms using the du-des. And then putting that back into the big picture, again, back into the whole for students to have learned to sing a song or to perform a song versus using Kodály syllables that more quickly transfer to notation, that could be something as simple as looking at the rhythm on the board, labeling the notes with ta and ti-ti and then having the students chant that rhythm, first together and then until they're able to do that individually on their own.
0:23:31.7 LS: So it really depends on what you're working on and we don't even possibly have time to get into all the ways to go through that. But as just a quick overview, most of the time it's just working with a whole group of students, having them chant together as a group, maybe slightly older students then are able to work in small groups and be doing that on their own, especially with Orff, coming up with their own words for the rhythms that are presented to them, drawing on either a book that was just read or a song that was sung. So, the options are endless.
0:24:10.4 GR: Yeah, they are. One of the things that you love that I forget about a lot, especially working at the college level, is this idea of, maybe first learn something by rote and then figure out what's in it. And that can be really, really beautiful to do, yeah. And I think it's generally our default when we're working with younger students, especially at the elementary level.
0:24:31.9 LS: Absolutely and that depends on teacher's philosophies too. But generally, if you are someone who has Orff levels or has gone through the Gordon Institute of Music Learning, then you're probably gonna be doing rote teaching and whole-part-whole instruction.
0:24:50.7 DN: Even at the college level, I think Cynthia Gonzales recently told me that she never makes them do a rhythm or a melody by dictation that she hasn't already done with them in class, that they haven't already defined in class.
0:25:09.4 LS: And it doesn't mean that your students can't independently do this. Again, Gordon's whole point is, that your students are able to audiate rhythm patterns. So you're gonna get to a place with your students, if you do enough chanting and if you're teaching an appropriate sequencing, that your students can look at a pattern and think, audiate how it's going to sound or be able to chant it in tas and ti-tis, or... Like I said, come up with words that fit. So, they can also read it, we're not... I'm not talking about only teaching by rote at the elementary level, but that's definitely a big part of it.
0:25:50.8 GR: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about... Actually, if we did wanna focus now on teaching the reading of rhythm, ways that we might use these systems. Let's talk metric analytical systems, so these are the Gordon, are Takadimi, are Eastman or American traditional systems. I think the two most common ways would be you're looking at a rhythm and then you either count aloud all of the subdivisions at whatever subdivisional level you need, while clapping the rhythm, so that might be something like 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, 3, kind of a thing, or you speak the rhythm using just the syllables that begin each node of the rhythm. So if you take that same rhythm of... If that was 1-e-&-a, 2-e-&-a, 3, if I were speaking or chanting or intoning, people often prefer so that it's a bit more vocal, becomes 1-&-2-&-a-3, kind of a thing. Yeah, does that match with how David, Leah you do things when using these approaches?
0:27:05.3 LS: Yeah, I think to add another layer on to that when you're teaching instrumentalists though, that you're also teaching them to be constantly having whatever system is running in their head because they're not clapping and counting aloud when they're playing their instruments, they're pulling their instruments. So, constantly being able to have the... If you're counting then you've got the 1-e-&-a's running in your head while playing, so. There's a whole host of techniques that come up with instrumentalists, so now we're sizzling on mouthpieces the rhythm, or we are just T-T-T, the rhythm, because that's how we're gonna articulate it on the instrument source of... [chuckle] I don't know if we're trying to go down that path right now, but... [chuckle]
0:27:55.2 GR: No, I think that's beautiful, yeah.
0:27:58.3 DN: That really emphasizes how important it is to have that inner metronome going and whatever we can do to reinforce that inner metronome with inner subdivisions. [laughter]
0:28:12.4 GR: Yeah. This takes me... I wonder... We had a doctor beat in the end which is this metronome that probably a lot of us experience that will actually count aloud the 1-&-2-& and 1-e-&-a and you can turn up or down all the subdivisions, probably with that goal of getting... Leah as you were talking about, that constant sub-divisional line running in your head as you are performing.
0:28:45.0 LS: Right.
0:28:45.0 DN: There's also the... If you're reading music, there's a visual component and then there's a, "What does it sound like?" Component. And so I know that in the Musicians Guide series, they encourage written exercises where you just write in the syllables that you're using, so that you've dealt with the visual component, so that's again one of those assessment opportunities where you can sort of figure out whether there's a problem understanding what you're seeing versus understanding how it sounds.
0:29:23.6 LS: Right. And again, when you're working with middle school level students, for example, you're not always just picking one way and sticking with that, you're trying a whole bunch of different ways to get at all the different learners in the room, so. Just like David said, yeah, sure, I would have students write in the counts and then sometimes we would also... They came to me with knowledge of ta's and ti-ti's, so let's go ahead, write in ta and ti-ti. And then we would go through and we would chant them a couple of different ways and then however the students were thinking in their head when they're playing, they've had an opportunity to vocalize that and reinforce that. And this kind of leads me to a point. I think it is so important to have two frameworks for the students, especially if they're coming from something like ta and ti-ti or just using words connected to rhythm patterns. It is so important then to be connecting that to something analytical so that they have a means for figuring out what the rhythm is independently.
0:30:31.5 GR: Yeah, this seems to be a theme that's come up on just about every episode so far, this idea of using different ways of thinking about things with Solfege systems, something to name the letters, the actual pitch space versus something to name its function in relation to a scale, to a key. I'm 100% with you on that Leah. I think we need something that does let us do that subdivisional analysis, but we also need something that gets us to that pattern level thinking where we're not looking at every rhythm as though it were a totally new thing that we had to analyze, but we recognize a lot of what's within it.
0:31:11.5 LS: And I'm not saying that there's any right or wrong way to do it, I think it takes a variety of approaches. Like David said earlier, there have been times out on the football field, that I was shouting words just to get the students to bring the rhythm together so we could get it lined up and you are like, "Whatever works." [laughter]
0:31:30.0 DN: I love whatever works. [chuckle]
0:31:33.0 GR: Especially on the football field, oh my Lord.
0:31:37.3 DN: Oh, gosh.
0:31:38.4 GR: Something we choir directors pretty much never have to do.
0:31:40.8 DN: Yeah.
0:31:41.7 GR: Yeah. So yeah, reading, that's great. And then dictation is really oral analysis and Leah you talked about with the whole-part-whole approach, the idea of taking a song we know, a piece we know and then breaking it down, what are the rhythmic patterns in here, what's going on? And whether we write that down or not, that's a kind of dictation, right?
0:32:10.9 LS: Mm-hmm.
0:32:11.8 GR: And very related to what... Say, if we were at the college level in an aural skills musicianship classroom, the kind of thing we'd be doing there, if we're using analytical methods there... If students are familiar with them and have used them a lot, then they can often go straight from sound to, "Oh, yeah, that's a 1-&-a," or that's... Whatever in the system we're using. One of which I think is probably worth mentioning is what some people call the box approach, which if you're using a sub-divisional or analytical system, or let's say that you're just starting off with beats and rests, so you have... Say, we're working three/four, you have three boxes, you have a rhythm, ta-ta and the students mark, "Oh, there's one in box one, there's one in box three," and learn how to translate that to notation. If you break it down to the eighth levels, here we're still on three/four then now you have six boxes, a box for one and two and t-& and the students mark down where the notes begin and translate that to notation. And actually, for students who've used a drum machine, this feels very natural to them, 'cause drum machines and things like Ableton or Logic, wherever you see all your subdivisions spread out and you turn on or off different sounds on different subdivisions. Do you all use the box approach? I use it very early on and I try and get away from it as quickly as I can myself. [laughter]
0:33:50.5 LS: I used... It's basically the same thing, I call them beat sheets, where there's literally a picture of a heart because we're feeling the beat. So maybe a four/four, then there's four across and it's a four measure patterns, you've got four across, four going... It's the same exact thing.
0:34:09.8 GR: Are the four down the subdivisions of the beat for you or is that four measures?
0:34:16.6 LS: So four measures, but we can easily subdivide the beat by drawing a line right down the middle of the heart.
0:34:22.7 GR: I love the heart, that's so great. And beat sheet, that's so much better.
0:34:26.6 LS: It's very, very popular, but it's... I've stolen that from many other educators, that's not something I came up with by any means.
0:34:35.6 GR: And now I'm going to steal it from you. These will forever be beat sheets when I teach now, it's great. [chuckle] Yeah.
0:34:42.4 LS: You don't have to stick to heartbeats, you can get creative, but... [chuckle]
0:34:45.3 GR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose drums work too, there's something nice about a heart, although a heart's really hard to divide in four.
0:34:52.0 DN: I've used both, spatial... Spatial analysis works really well for me, but for a student who has trouble with spatial awareness, that isn't gonna work really well necessarily. I've also used beat level systems like piano roll notation and also symbols symbolizing what happens within each beat.
0:35:16.7 GR: So yeah, beat sheets or whatever we wanna call them, these are kinds of protonotation, there are things that provide an intermediate step between Western musical notation and sound and there are lots of different ones. Jenine Lawson Brown just published an article on one in Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy and actually we'll be talking with her about that in an upcoming episode. And yeah, those can be great for helping smooth that transition between our aural recognition. One of the things that I think is really useful that certainly those of us who have a Music Education Degree were taught to do is probably a lot of call and response kind of things, where I'll do a pattern aurally for students, I'll perform aurally O and students will respond with whatever approach we're using. So if we're using a Kodály approach, I might go... I'll choose intentionally not to use Kodály syllables, I might go boom-boom-boom-boom-boom and they go ta-ti-ti-ta-ta, that kind of back and forth and all of these approaches enable doing that sort of real-time aural dictation. I think one of the things I found teaching aurals was at the college level, is maybe some of us tend to go too soon to let's write down what we're hearing, that maybe we skip sometimes that first step of do we actually have these rhythmic patterns in us for each beat before we're trying to write down an eight bar rhythm?
0:37:04.6 LS: And on the complete other end of that with the youngest learners, that often looks like picture notation or just for example, where your students are... Maybe not even dictation, maybe this is even more composition but your students are composing rhythms using pictures of strawberries and blueberries and squeaky shoes, 'cause I'm drawing from a Pete the Cat lesson that I used to teach and they're writing these wonderfully complex rhythm patterns without any notes, not even stick notation. So again, maybe this is... Maybe we consider this a protonotation, but...
0:37:46.0 GR: Absolutely.
0:37:46.7 LS: We've got patterns of strawberries and blueberries and they can look at it and they can chant it and so now they have a means for dictation as well.
0:37:56.3 GR: Leah, I think when you said the importance of combining two different approaches, can we circle back to that? Can we talk a little bit about why that's so important? In other words, what are some of the strengths and weaknesses of say, analytical subdivisional approaches versus mnemonic pattern approaches and why might we need to combine both things?
0:38:21.2 LS: Right, so like I was just saying, the younger students before they're even, maybe even reading words can be dictating rhythm and composing and using symbolic notation if you're using a word-based approach or even a pattern-based approach. But then if you continue to just, to only do that, then when they're in an ensemble or they start taking piano lessons or whatever it is that they're doing, they're looking at this notation going, I don't know this, but then they hear it and they know it. So helping them make that connection is going to allow them to be independent musicians much sooner than just down the line, suddenly, okay, now we're gonna count this instead. And they're not realizing that it's something that they already know, they think they're learning something new versus if we had introduced it much earlier than they've already got the skills.
0:39:19.1 GR: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, so if we're talking about mnemonic, or pattern-based approaches, one of the things that I found working with students who've learned primarily or exclusively using this system is sometimes those students really think at the beat level. And for instance, an example of poor performance might be Cherry Pie, watermelon, apple, right? Where that's like you can hear the thought of the time in between that it takes them to get to what each mnemonic is. And of course, right, that's something that we have worked to smooth out and you might get that as well in an analytical subdivisional system. But in the mnemonic approach there's nothing that specifically says, here is the underlying metronomic subdivisional flow to it. And so, usually when we're working in these mnemonic systems or pattern-based approaches, we're doing something else to encourage that. And so that's... It might be something kinesthetic with students patting the beat or swaying the beat or conducting to help build in that flow and that understanding of it. Certainly, another thing about these pattern-based approaches is... And Leah, this goes to exactly what you were saying of so I know these patterns in experiments, orally I have this protonotation, whether it's drawing ice cream cones or whether it's... You know. But then...
0:40:54.3 LS: The options are endless. [laughter]
0:40:55.8 GR: The options are absolutely endless. I've done so many little compositional activities with, you know, ice cream, ice cream. Yeah and yes, absolutely, right. And ice cream cones are very easy to draw quickly, which is helpful for little kids. But yeah, as connecting that to the analytical side of things, so that students can eventually... Well, wait a second, I don't know this pattern. What is this? This isn't... This is a less common rhythmic pattern that maybe I don't have a word for. And how do I count that? Yeah. I find the mnemonic approach leads itself to a lot of creative kind of work, those compositional activities you were talking about. But it may not engage... It makes it a little harder sometimes to engage with on an analysis of the music.
0:41:48.7 LS: Right. If students know that this is a macrobeat and this is a microbeat and they have a way to apply that to writing or reading, then they know that they can figure out how rhythm is gonna go, is this du-du-de-du-du or this is ta-ti-ti-ta-ta. But they probably aren't gonna look at notation and go Oh yeah, that's a watermelon and... [laughter]
0:42:20.5 GR: Yeah. But you know...
0:42:23.1 LS: And that's how they've been taught consistently. Again, I'm not... Nothing is off the table.
0:42:28.1 GR: Yeah. I'm actually down in Colorado right now, covering a maternity leave for a Dalcroze friend of mine, who runs this wonderful community music program for kids ages four through high school. And they have five levels of Dalcroze classes that they go through. And they learn all of their rhythmic patterns, like, just about everyone you could think of on color names. And it is the most complete mnemonic pattern-based approach I have ever seen. And to the point that, you know, I will put the rhythm on the board and I'll say, What's this? And they will say, that's a neon lemon yellow. [laughter] Right? They just... That is how they hear those.
0:43:19.3 LS: So I'll make my point again, that it really depends on the teacher and the sequence and what the learning objectives are.
0:43:26.6 GR: Totally, totally. Yeah, you know, but I have had like, oh, I wish... You know, especially with the upper levels of those classes. And like, oh yeah, we need to also start layering on to this a rhythmic analytical system because it's not enough to see them in little blocks of patterns. Yeah, one thing we haven't talked about so much is some of these approaches lend themselves to helping us know where we are in a measure better than others do. Like the traditional American counting system, one and two and the Eastman system, where they name the beats. You can hear right away, Oh yeah, okay. That's where I am in the measure. And that's important, right? The relative stress shape of the measure tells us a lot about how to perform music, so if we're not working with the Eastman or traditional American system, how can we get students to feel that, to internalize and know how to translate measure shape into performance?
0:44:41.2 LS: Conducting.
0:44:42.5 DN: Even at the middle school, elementary school level?
0:44:47.1 LS: Yeah, absolutely. Especially for students who are in an ensemble. I started out teaching them conducting, 'cause otherwise they don't know what I'm doing in front of them.
0:44:56.6 GR: Awesome.
0:44:56.9 LS: They have no idea. They need to know that, like, if they're not sure, for example, where we are in the music, how do they find the downbeat again, they need to know what a downbeat looks like in conducting, because if somebody doesn't teach them that they probably don't know.
0:45:15.0 GR: Right.
0:45:15.6 LS: And if you're not counting using numbers, then if they're just thinking in their head and in another system that is not giving them numbers, they're just thinking, du-u du-u du-u and everything's quarter notes then they're gonna be so lost.
0:45:35.3 DN: We do also, at the college level teach... Just to have them conduct with it. And we definitely did that when we were doing Takadimi, so that we knew where we were in the measure, just required conducting. But I have also taken my students and had them dance to something, [chuckle] step, clap, step, clap and just show that there is a meter that is so common, we call it common time and that they already know how to conduct it with their feet and their hands. So, yeah.
0:46:12.3 LS: And my other answer was gonna be Dalcroze. [chuckle]
0:46:14.8 DN: Yeah. [laughter]
0:46:17.4 GR: Yeah and for listeners who don't know, I come from a real Dalcroze background, I do a lot of teaching using approaches from the Dalcroze method and I also teach teachers to teach the Dalcroze method. And David, when you asked, even at the middle school, elementary level, I'm about to teach a class of 4-year-olds in a couple of hours. And on our lesson plan for today is we're going to be doing a game where we're in two/four and we're patting, touching our head, back and forth. And then on three/four and we're patting, clapping and touching our... Excuse me. No, we're patting, we're in a circle and then we clap our neighbor's hands for a side and then we touch our head one, two, three and then when we're in four/four we go pat, clap, touch our neighbor's head, so it's pat, clap, neighbor's head. Right, so it is... And that is of course, right like that, so that it's the traditional conducting gestures.
0:47:16.3 DN: Gotcha.
0:47:17.5 GR: And then as the students... When I'm working with slightly older students, say I'm working with 7-year-olds where they now have the dexterity to be able to bounce and catch a ball, you can translate into... Yeah, you just build all those things in through various conducting like motions and sequences.
0:47:38.9 DN: That's brilliant, I love it.
0:47:39.9 GR: It's great fun and you're having students... You give students... Let's say we're in four/four, right and so we might be doing, bounce, catch, toss, catch and walking around the room, or we might be in place. A great classic Dalcroze game is I play a rhythm, a measure later you translate that rhythm into movement in your feet across the floor. So, they're moving with their ball, doing their bounce, catch, toss, catch the hair, di-da-da-di-da-da and they're still bouncing and catching, but now they're also walking it across the floor doing that. We've assigned specific things, so quarter notes are steps and eighth notes are step touches or you can do... You make them up and change them. So yeah, yeah, movement, it's great if you have the space to move across the floor, but yeah, certainly, we can all think of any patterns, movement patterns to get a sense of where we are in the beat. And the classic one of course, if you have instruments in your hand, it seems really basic, but tapping the foot, it's just... It doesn't help us know where we are on the meter but it certainly does help us know where we are in the beat. Yeah and then eventually teaching students to just squeeze their toe and then just feel it and... [laughter]
0:48:56.9 LS: I was just gonna say or just tapping toes because telling smaller children to tap their foot becomes a whole stomping fiasco. [laughter]
0:49:06.3 GR: Yes it does, but it can be really helpful actually to see... I certainly, in piano lessons have had students just tap in a way that I can see it so that I can identify are they aware of where the note falls in relation to the beat?
0:49:23.5 DN: And I suppose with all of these, then we have to make sure that we leave them room to unlearn that behavior when they're performing. [laughter]
0:49:33.8 GR: Yeah, yeah. Oh, in this... And if we go back to episode one on solfège systems, this idea that we want to learn a solfège system so well, that at the end of the process, we don't actually have to think about it, I think applies here for these rhythmic approaches also. We wanna learn them so well so that at the end, I don't have to be thinking my du-ta-de-ta's or my 1-e-&-a's or my watermelons. I know so deeply how these rhythms feel, how meter shape feels that I can just perform it, hear it and if I need to, I can go back to analyze it or figure out what the patterns are. Yeah, but that's that last stage, fluency. Certainly, fluency is the goal, speaking music as a language, hearing music as a language, reading music as a language, are the shared goals of solfège and rhythmic counting systems.
0:50:35.1 DN: I love hearing from both of you that a combination of techniques is helpful. Because I think I've thought that too, but I feel obligated to commit to a system and I think maybe for an analytical system, it's useful to commit to one system so that students aren't trying to embrace multiple analytical systems but having multiple approaches sure gives students a lot of avenues into understanding.
0:51:09.9 GR: Yeah and I've certainly found for some students an analytical system is like oh yeah, this is me, I want this, I love this. And for other students, a mnemonic pattern-based approach is what really speaks to them and so it can be... Leah, you mentioned as well speaking to the different ways that students in your classes learn really, yeah, yeah.
0:51:34.4 DN: Plus there are problems with the analytical systems that you might want another method to supplement and we should talk about what some of those drawbacks are.
0:51:46.4 LS: I think we've touched on some already, but they can be very mathematical and maybe this plays into knowing where you are in the measure but it lends itself to being unmusical since the students are literally looking at it, maybe even like a math problem. They're going through and they're counting and writing in subdivisions and now it's become this complex thing on paper that is not music they're performing, but it's this problem to be solved.
0:52:20.6 GR: Totally. I think also with these analytical subdivisional systems, if you start thinking about patterns, they sound really similar like du-te-ta versus tu-te-de. The actual sounds tu-te-de versus du-te-ta, there's nothing there that makes the whole thing different from the other whole thing. Whereas if you're working with mnemonic things like cherry pie or pineapple, they have a very different sound from the first moment in a way that these... The Takadimi, du-ta-de-ta, 1-e-&-a don't have a different sound from that first syllable for each pattern.
0:53:06.9 DN: Although I noticed that within the analytical systems, there's also some that are stronger in that department and some that are weaker. It's always bothered me that that's one of the weaknesses of Gordon, is that all of the syllable sound so similar. But it was only recently that I had read and I don't know if this is true or not, that it was actually designed to help young students articulate well and that's why they all have that same sharp consonant at the beginning. So, it's a flaw, but it's also an advantage, so it just depends on what you feel is important to reinforce.
0:53:49.6 GR: Great, well, this has been a great discussion and have we... Would you agree we've covered everything we wanted to cover, have we missed anything?
0:53:57.4 DN: I think we got to a lot of things. [chuckle]
0:54:00.6 GR: Yeah, great. So lots of resources to be found in the show notes also our sheets on rhythmic counting systems at utheory.com/teach/resources. Great, well, David, Leah, thanks and for all our listeners, if you've enjoyed this episode, if you wanna hear more things like this, let us know what you'd like to hear, write us at notes@utheory.com.
[music]
0:54:28.5 DN: Subscribe to notes from the staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts and check us out at utheory.com/notes.
0:54:36.4 LS: Notes from the staff is produced by utheory.com.
0:54:38.7 GR: UTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
0:54:42.6 LS: With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
0:54:52.9 GR: Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
 

Demystifying Perfect Pitch with Elizabeth West Marvin

What is perfect pitch and why do some people have it when others don't? How does it work and is it possible to learn it? In this episode, Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin (Eastman School of Music, and an author of the Musician's Guide series of textbooks) answers these questions and more.
Links:
Elizabeth West Marvin's Faculty Page at Eastman
Musician’s Guide to Theory and Analysis 
Marvin, Elizabeth West. Absolute Pitch Perception and the Pedagogy of Relative Pitch
Ross, Gore and Marks. Absolute pitch: music and beyond
Van Hedger, Heald and Nusbaum. Absolute Pitch May Not Be So Absolute
Show Notes:
00:20 Introductions
00:50 Guest introduction: Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin
03:20 What is perfect pitch?
04:28 Is absolute pitch (AP) the same thing as perfect pitch?
05:20 How did you become interested in studying absolute pitch?
06:55 Working with students with absolute pitch in an aural skills classes
08:40 How do people acquire absolute pitch?
10:25 Do animals have absolute pitch?
11:10 Can you train young children to acquire perfect pitch? (Eguchi Chord Identification Method)
13:04 Vowel colors/overtones and absolute pitch
14:40 What's the relationship between absolute pitch and timbre? Are there people who have absolute pitch for only a particular instrument?
16:18 Can I acquire absolute pitch as an adult?
19:28 How common is it to have a musician who has absolute pitch who did not begin study at a young age?
22:27 To what degree is AP valuable as a musician?
24:53 What is relative pitch (RP)?
26:33 Is there a relationship between AP/RP and choosing a solfege system (relative vs phenomenological systems)?
29:56 Why does absolute pitch change with age?
31:00 Ross, Gore & Marks's research on two kinds of AP: Heightened Tonal Memory (HTM) vs Ability to Perceptually Encode (APE)
33:27 How do people with AP and RP hear differently from each other?
36:50 What can people with AP and RP learn from each other?
40:08 Latent AP/AP without musical training
41:45 AP as a continuum and not a binary
43:50 What research is being done now on AP?
46:55 Van Hedger, et. al., research on flexibility of AP
48:57 Can you talk a bit about the Musician's Guide series of textbooks that you've authored?
55:35 Thank you and wrap-up
 
Transcript
0:00:21.9 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.
 
0:00:35.1 Gregory Ristow: Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
 
0:00:41.5 DN: And I'm David Newman, and I teach voice and music theory at James Madison University, and I do programming and content creation for uTheory.
 
0:00:50.1 GR: Our topic for today is perfect pitch, and joining us to help demystify it, is special guest, Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin, professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music. Dr. Marvin's research interests are broad and encompass especially the areas of Music Cognition and Music Theory Pedagogy. She's known to many of us as a leading author for the popular Musician's Guide series of theory and ear training textbooks, now in its fourth edition. Betsy, thanks for joining us.
 
0:01:18.1 Elizabeth West Marvin: You are absolutely welcome. It's a pleasure to be here.
 
0:01:21.4 GR: It's great to have you. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?
 
0:01:25.6 EWM: Well, as you said, I'm a professor at the Eastman School of Music in the Department of Music Theory. I was also a student there, so I've been at Eastman for a very long time. I grew up as a choir kid, I played piano and organ and sang, but I do not have perfect pitch, so that's important to know going into this conversation. I always knew that I wanted to do music of some kind, but I flirted with all different majors until I got to Eastman and found Music Theory, and then I was really sort of hooked. And flash forward to today, I've been on the theory faculty at Eastman for over 30 years, and I have a textbook that's been out for 15 years in its fourth edition, as you said. But the Music Cognition part came right at the end of my graduate studies. I became very interested in how we perceive music, and I started taking courses over at the University of Rochester's River campus, and again, I was sort of hooked, I found the whole thing really fascinating, and it's developed into that whole area of music cognition that was sort of in its infancy when I was a student, but now is really a big part of music theory.
 
0:02:35.1 GR: And the University of Rochester, Eastman is part of the University of Rochester, which some of our listeners may not know. And you now have a connection there, you do research together with the Brain and Cognition department over there. Is that right?
 
0:02:48.6 EWM: Yes, Brain and Cognitive sciences, I have a secondary appointment over there. For many years, I taught a course called Music and the Mind, which was attractive both to Eastman students and to Brain and Cognitive Science students, and linguists and audio engineers, and it was a really, really diverse group of students. I'm not teaching it anymore, I've handed it over to a new hire that they have in their department, but that was a very interesting and fruitful teaching experience.
 
0:03:18.2 GR: Great. Well, shall we dive into our topic for the day?
 
0:03:21.4 EWM: Absolutely.
 
0:03:24.8 GR: So...
 
0:03:24.8 DN: Let's get into the nitty-gritty.
 
0:03:27.8 GR: Yeah.
 
0:03:28.8 DN: What is perfect pitch?
 
0:03:28.8 GR: I feel like this is... None of us really knows, because we either have it or we don't, and we can't know what it's like to be the opposite, so yeah, so Betsy... Yeah, sorry, what is it?
 
0:03:41.1 EWM: Yeah, so I'll try to demystify some of that. Some of my recent research actually involves interviewing people with absolute pitch. I've interviewed about 50 kids between Eastman and some work I've done in Hong Kong, so I can tell you a little bit about their stories, but the official definition of absolute pitch is that it's the ability to recognize and name a pitch that's heard, or to produce a pitch when it's named, without any reference to an external standard like an instrument. And I would say, Greg, you were saying either you have it or you don't, but I actually believe that AP is on a continuum, and that people can have degrees of absolute pitch, so that's one of the more recent findings in research.
 
0:04:29.7 GR: You talked a little bit about the music cognition side, how did you get interested specifically in absolute pitch? And also maybe... You've been saying absolute pitch. What's absolute pitch versus perfect pitch? Is there a difference?
 
0:04:40.6 EWM: Oh yeah, I use absolute pitch partly because of my experience with students. If I ask them, "Do you have perfect pitch?" They'll hesitate and they'll say, "Well, it's not always perfect," they'll have good days or bad days, or it's not perfect enough for them, they can't tell the difference between A442 and A440, so it's not perfect. But absolute pitch is the term used in Music Psychology, so I tend to use that more. But my interest came out of teaching, so when I was first hired at Eastman, I was hired to run the RR Skills program, and I did a big re-write of the whole curriculum. I got in there and started teaching, and realized that in the same classroom, I would have two kids with absolute pitch, and all the rest with relative pitch. And from my own experience of having been a student myself, I remembered that teachers would do things like have the absolute pitch kids take all the melodic dictation in alto clef or tenor clef, or they would hear it in F-major and have to write it in C-sharp Major, things like that.
 
0:05:57.4 EWM: So as a new teacher, I started doing the same stuff, and I realized that the kids were feeling persecuted or punished for having absolute pitch, and I also realized that there were some things that they actually could not do very well, not as well as the relative pitch kids, like naming intervals. You play a perfect fourth, and they would write F, B-flat, and then they would sit and figure out, "Oh, that's a perfect fourth." It wasn't an immediate relational thing. And similar with dictation. So I started spending time thinking about ways to teach function instead of just absolute identification, and I can get more into that later if you want.
 
0:06:47.2 DN: I do, I want. [laughter] I have made it a... I don't think that my perfect pitch students feel persecuted, although some of them may, but I never play any melodic or harmonic example in the key that it says.
 
0:07:07.0 EWM: Well, do you wanna talk about that now? I could tell you what I do.
 
0:07:09.9 DN: Sure.
 
0:07:11.7 EWM: What I do, I try to not single out the AP kids, and so what I do is I try to avoid announcing a key or writing on the staff at all. So I do a little bit like what Gary Karpinski does with protonotation. So say for a melodic dictation, they would write out... They would take dictation of the rhythm, and then they hang on to that rhythm, so scale degree numbers. Everybody, not just the AP kids, so that you're forced to think in a relational way. And I'll wander around the classroom, if I see those AP kids writing down letter names or notes or anything, I stop them, and I say, "I want scale degree numbers." And then at the end, you can have them transcribe it onto the staff, which helps the relative pitch kids gain facility with dictation, but it also forces the AP kids to think in a relational way. And I do that with harmonic dictation too, soprano, scale degrees, base scale degrees, Roman numerals.
 
0:08:13.4 DN: I love that. Yeah.
 
0:08:14.9 EWM: I think it works really well, and it's good... As I say, it's good for the RP kids too, relative pitch kids.
 
0:08:21.0 GR: And for any of our listeners who don't know, Gary Karpinski is the author of Acquiring Aural... Or Aural Skills Acquisition, I guess is the easy title?
 
0:08:26.5 EWM: Yeah.
 
0:08:28.3 GR: And also has a sight-singing text manual for sight-singing and ear training. So absolute pitch, I don't have absolute pitch. I maybe have the ever slightest shade of it, where I can usually tell if I'm hearing a white note or a black note. How is... How do people...
 
0:08:47.7 EWM: That's a thing.
 
0:08:49.3 GR: Yeah, how do people get absolute pitch?
 
0:08:54.9 EWM: There are many theories of how people acquire absolute pitch, and I think that... I can run through various theories, but one has to do with heredity, so maybe you are born with it. Another theory is that you're taught music at a very young age, say you began at age four to six, and somehow you have what's called a critical period, similar thing for language acquisition, where your brain is perfectly tuned to learn this association of letter names with pitches. So if you begin your music lessons at that early age, you're more likely to have absolute pitch. There's even a theory that all babies are born with absolute pitch, and that as we learn relational processing, we discard that strategy and take on the relative pitch processing. And then the question is, why do some people keep the AP whereas others discard it? And in cognitive science, it's kind of interesting that development of relational processing is true in many domains, not just pitch, so little babies recognize faces by recognizing a mouth, or the hairline, or the eye, and it's not till they get older that they put all that together in a relationship to make a face. [chuckle] So, it's an interesting thing.
 
0:10:25.7 GR: I was re-reading your, I guess, your 2007 article in Journal of Music Theory Pedagogy this morning, Absolute Pitch Perception and the Pedagogy of Relative Pitch. Was it there that, I think, actually it was mentioned that maybe some animals have forms of absolute pitch?
 
0:10:42.2 EWM: Yeah, birds. There are certain birds... Well, there are certain animals that have what's called vocal learning, which means they learn their... Like a bird learns its song from its parents, and vocal learning is necessary for things like rhythmic entrainment and so on. But some of these animals, or birds in particular, I'm thinking, sing their songs at an absolute pitch, rather than a relative pitch, so sort of always in the same key. I wanted to say something else about the early learning hypothesis. You would think that if starting music lessons at age four is all it takes to get AP, why not just take a bunch of little kids and train them up, and then you would have shown that. And in fact, there is a researcher who did that. Her name is Sakakibara, she's a Japanese researcher, published in The Psychology of Music. She took 24 little kids, ages 2 to 6, so these are toddlers, and trained their parents in something called the Eguchi chord identification method, and it's sort of a game for little children in which they'll hear a chord... This chord is, you raise the red flag. And when you hear this chord, you raise the green flag, and when you hear this chord, you raise the blue flag.
 
0:12:01.2 EWM: And then after they're good at the chords, you narrow it down to single pitches, raise the flags, and then after you're good at the single pitches, you take away the flags and add note names. So these parents trained their two-year-olds, two, three, four-year-olds, every day, multiple times a day for about two years. Okay. So this is like maybe bordering on child abuse, but maybe it was also... Maybe it was gamified and fun. But these kids, two kids dropped out of the 24. At the end of the experiment, all 22 of them had absolute pitch.
 
0:12:37.0 DN: Wow.
 
0:12:37.6 GR: Wow.
 
0:12:37.7 EWM: So that's kind of interesting. Yeah.
 
0:12:42.8 DN: I'm curious...
 
0:12:44.4 EWM: But is it worth doing that?
 
0:12:45.8 DN: Yeah, I wonder why she started with chords before notes.
 
0:12:52.4 EWM: It's apparently easier, because maybe there's more overtone information or something like that, but the chords for little children are easier to discriminate between.
 
0:13:03.6 DN: I have... I don't know if you've seen the work that Ian Howell has been doing around vowel... Picking out vowel colors. And as he has refined his ability to identify specific vowel colors, he has also developed a kind of absolute pitch where he can recognize it by the vowel color that it inspires in his...
 
0:13:28.6 EWM: Well, that's interesting. No, I haven't followed that, but it's similar to synesthesia maybe, where there's a pretty high incidence of synesthesia in people with absolute pitch, that being an association between most commonly color and pitch. So I could see vowel sound in pitch. But the color and pitch is interesting because it's not just a color, but it's often a color and a texture, like brown corduroy or red velvet, or something that you see. So I would believe what you're telling me about the vowel sounds.
 
0:14:09.5 GR: From a physics perspective, it makes sense, because the overtones that give the vowels their color tend to be at a relatively fixed pitch level across different voices, regardless of what note you're singing. So it could just be that Ian started to actually hear the kind of interval between the fundamental and the fixed vowel formants above it. For those who don't know, Ian Howell's a Professor at the New England Conservatory, who leads their voice pedagogy, voice sciences area there.
 
0:14:43.3 DN: But it kinda led me, what you were saying, to wonder about the relationship between absolute pitch and... There are some students who seem to have absolute pitch related only to one instrument color. Is that something that you've seen, or is that... Am I making that up?
 
[laughter]
 
0:15:01.8 EWM: Nope. That's very common, actually. And it has to do with that early learning hypothesis that I was talking about, so if a student acquires AP through lessons on a piano, or lessons on a violin, say, they're better and faster at identifying pitches on that piano or on that violin, and in the range of their instrument. So, like a violinist has trouble in the low registers because their instrument doesn't go down that far. So that is in fact very common, and it's continent with this early learning hypothesis. And also what Greg said before about white keys and black keys, that is also consistent with the early learning hypothesis, because if you think about your piano lessons when you're a little kid, you're mostly playing those little five-finger patterns, C-major, G-major, white keys, and that's when your critical period is maximally available to you. But as you get older and the black keys come into play, then that window is closed and you're doing quick half-step displacements from the more familiar white keys into the less familiar black keys, and so it's slower and more prone to errors.
 
0:16:17.5 GR: So you've been talking about this early learning critical period hypothesis theory. I sort of, I think as many of us, have often thought, wouldn't it be great to have absolute pitch? Wouldn't it just be super handy to know, "Oh yeah, I'm hearing this and this and this and this," without having reference to anything else? YouTube, I think, targets me on this, 'cause I can't tell you how often I see promoted courses to teach me perfect pitch. Can I at this point learn perfect pitch? Or is it too late?
 
0:16:53.9 EWM: This is an active area of research. There was a time when I would have said, "No, it's too late, time has passed you by." But there are some researchers now who are developing training regimens, probably different from the ones that are on the internet for you, but we'll see, in which the AP drills are gamified so that it's fun and you're trying to beat levels and... Just like some kind of video game. And it inspires people to spend many, many hours at it, and I think it does take many, many hours to acquire any new skill. That said, this is new research, and I'm still a little bit skeptical about it. I wonder whether that kind of adult acquisition is really as fast and immediate and effortless as the true absolute pitch of people who've had it since childhood. For them, some of them, they can't turn it off, it's just completely immediate and always accessible, whereas, I suspect that the adult-trained people have more cogitation that goes into it. Have you ever clicked on those things? Do you know what the courses are like?
 
0:18:14.5 GR: They tend to be like, "F-sharp is red. Listen to this and imagine that F-sharp is red."
 
0:18:21.4 EWM: Exactly, I... Before there was clicking on the internet, I sent off for the David Burge method, David L. Burge method, and it was... It started with F-sharp and E-flat, and it said... And you only had to tell those two apart, and E-flat was mellow and full and rich, and F-sharp is brittle and biting, and so it was teaching affective qualities of each note, and then once you got those two under control, then you'd add a third note and then a fourth note, and each one had a little affective character to it. So it's interesting, but I'm skeptical. And I think, again, for true AP people, it is just instantaneous, like you would see the color red and say red, or the color green and say green, it's instantaneous, and no effort for AP people. And I imagine that there's effort to it, if you've had adult training.
 
0:19:25.0 GR: Some of your research has looked at the correlation between the age that someone begins study and whether they have absolute pitch or not. What is that correlation?
 
0:19:38.0 EWM: I don't know the answer to that, Greg. [laughter]
 
0:19:39.0 GR: Sorry, that was a really specific question. Or I guess I should say, how common is it to have a musician with absolute pitch who didn't begin study at a young age? Say before age six.
 
0:19:53.0 EWM: Yes. Let me back up and just say that I think that there is... AP exists on a continuum, as I said at the beginning, and I think there is something like good pitch memory that people have, that's not AP or not fully AP because they don't have the labeling function there. So this is a roundabout way of answering your question, I realize. But somebody with really good pitch memory might be able to acquire AP later in life because they already had that good pitch memory, and there are ways of testing that that don't involve naming. So they might, for example, play you a pitch and then do all kinds of interference noise, music, words, etcetera, and then you have to remember that pitch.
 
0:20:44.2 EWM: Some people are very good at that, so perhaps they could learn AP later in life, whereas other people might not be able to. And there are also people who can sing pop tunes in the right key without prompting, it's a different kind of AP 'cause it doesn't have the labeling, but I'll just say, going back to the choir kid thing, when I am in church and open a hymnal, I will look at the hymn and I'll often imagine it in the right key. The organist comes in and there I am right with them. So I think I have some kind of long-term pitch memory associated with familiar repertoire, and that's been shown in experimental settings too. There's an experiment in which pianists are played movements of the Well-Tempered Clavier, which are in every key possible, each prelude and fugue.
 
0:21:42.8 EWM: And if they're played the C-major prelude in C-sharp major, they don't see notation, but they can tell the difference, so they have some kind of long-term memory for these pieces without actually having AP. So in terms of your question about age, I think there's so many factors involved, like do they have this kind of inherent enhanced pitch memory? If so, maybe they can acquire AP later in life. Or were they born with some kind of genetic predisposition for AP? In which case maybe they have it right from the get-go. So it's a difficult question to answer.
 
0:22:26.5 DN: I have a couple of questions related to the value of acquiring, or the value of having AP. Because I think my thinking changed on this at that first Music Theory Pedagogy conference when... I can't remember who gave the talk on meditation as a way of helping AP students get through oral skills, and I thought, "Why would AP students need help getting through oral skills?" But of course, it's a different kind of challenge, it's a different way of interpreting sounds coming at you. I guess my question is, to what degree is AP valuable as a musician? Does it make you a better musician? Should we... Is it something worth acquiring?
 
0:23:14.5 EWM: I don't think that AP makes you a better musician. I think a kind of mythology has arisen around absolute pitch, because there are famous musicians who are said to have had AP, like Mozart, like you can go hear a piece, and because you've got absolute pitch, you can go home and write it down, and then this is a great mark of musicianship, or you can go home and play it. But in fact, there are many fabulous musicians who don't have AP, but we just don't talk about that, so I don't think that it is a mark of the child prodigy or the great, great musician. It's just that there are certain things that they can do, they can give the pitch for the choir or they can play really well in tune, or they can take dictation easily unless their teacher is punishing them. [chuckle]
 
0:24:13.3 EWM: But I do think that there's a kind of mythology, and that's why we have this persistent idea that the person with AP is a better musician, but as I said earlier on, there are some tasks that AP musicians are not very good at, and those have to do with relational hearing. And I think that if they are able to acquire both the absolute hearing and the relational hearing, then they've really got a good toolbox as a musician.
 
0:24:48.1 GR: Maybe we should just take a moment. You use the term RP, relative pitch person. Can you just talk about relational hearing and relative pitch a little bit?
 
0:24:57.8 EWM: Yeah. It's interesting, I'm actually on a team of researchers right now who are doing a study on relative pitch, 'cause there's so much research out there about absolute pitch and people just automatically say, "Oh, relative pitch is the other thing." [chuckle] It's not very well-defined. So, some people... And so I guess I'll say that there are different definitions floating around out there. For me, relative pitch is relational hearing, so that you hear dominant to tonic function, you hear leading-tone to tonic, you hear intervals as opposed to pitches, so it's all about relationships of notes. Every key sort of sounds the same. So it doesn't matter. For people who have difficulty with white keys and black keys, AP listeners, it might be harder for them to process music in F-sharp major than C major, but for a relative pitch person, it's all relationships, so it doesn't really matter which is which.
 
0:26:00.2 EWM: But there are some people who have very different definitions of relative pitch. For example, some people think that relative pitch is having good pitch memory for one note, like A or C, those are the two most common ones, and then everything else is a relationship from that, and I would say that's sort of on that AP continuum. If you can always remember A or always remember C, then you've got one level, one degree of absolute pitch and then you're using relative pitch skills to figure everything else out.
 
0:26:32.2 GR: This brings back to mind a previous episode we did on Solfège systems, and it makes me think a little bit about movable "Do" versus fixed "Do" and functional systems versus phenomenological systems. Maybe can you talk a little bit about that and how AP, RP influence one's choice of a Solfège system, and... Yeah.
 
0:26:53.6 EWM: Yup. So, in the broadest possible terms, fixed "Do" is a... Advantages people with perfect pitch, and in some ways it sort of helps to develop perfect pitch. Relative pitch is more facilitated by movable "Do", where the tonic of the key is always "Do". Fixed "Do" means the C is always "Do". So if C is always "Do", and every time you hear or sing an A, it's "La", and every time you hear or sing an E, it's "Me", then that reinforces a kind of absolute pitch way of hearing. As you said, a phenomenological system which focuses on associating a name for a note. If you have a relative pitch system, it's bringing to the fore that relationship T to "Do" is always a half step ascent functionally resolving to "Do" no matter what key, so it could be F-sharp to G and G-major, D to E-flat, and E-flat major so you're thinking functionally.
 
0:28:08.4 EWM: So the message I want to convey is, that I think it's not a good idea if you end up with a student in your class who has perfect pitch and has had fixed "Do". I think it's not a good idea to try to convert them to movable "Do", because it's very hard for them to have one system in their head, where Do is C and another system in their head where Do is all kinds of things depending on the key. So in that case, I would try to get that student to think, to keep the fixed "Do" for the note names, and to learn movable numbers of scale degree one, scale degree five. So Karpinski, whom we've just mentioned, says that it's a good idea for all students to have two systems, one that is note identification and one that is functional, so some people prefer fixed "Do" plus numbers, that gives you the note naming and the function. Other people prefer movable "Do" and note names, so the note names give you the naming function and the movable "Do" gives you the relational function.
 
0:29:21.0 DN: Yeah. That provides a challenge when we get students from countries where Solfège is the note names. [chuckle]
 
0:29:31.7 EWM: Exactly, and that's why I think they really have to go to numbers at that point because it's really confusing for them. And again, they feel punished in another way, "Here I have to learn something completely nonsensical to me," it's very, very hard. And their perfect pitch is kind of turned against them.
 
0:29:48.3 DN: And they're already trying to learn a new language maybe... [chuckle]
 
0:29:51.9 EWM: Yeah, yeah, it's hard.
 
0:29:55.2 GR: So I've also heard that absolute pitch can change with age, that the pitches can seem to sag. Is that true? And do we know why that happens?
 
0:30:05.6 EWM: It has to do with your basilar membrane, which curls around in the cochlea in your inner ear. As you age, it becomes less flexible, so it's interesting, sometimes you hear that the pitch creeps sharp, and sometimes you hear that it falls flat, but at any rate, is no longer true, and it has to do with your basilar membrane, which is where the pitches are sort of located in the inner ear, and then that sends a signal to the brain to identify the pitch. So it could be that that has to do with the kind of test that's being given, whether it's a produce the pitch or an identify the pitch, but at any rate, it's very common with aging. I'm sorry to say, for our listeners with absolute pitch, it's probably coming. And it drives some people crazy.
 
0:30:58.3 EWM: Now that we're talking a little bit about physiology, I'll say something else about theories of absolute pitch, which is that there are these researchers named Ross, Gore and Marks, who have the theory that there are actually two kinds of absolute pitch, one they call HTM and one they call APE. An HTM is heightened tonal memory. An APE is ability to perceptually encode. So HTM, heightened tonal memory, is what I was talking about this enhanced pitch memory with a template from early childhood, so people with HTM, they have AP, but it's associated with a template that's clarinet timbre in a particular range. So they have trouble with high and low, they have trouble changing timbre, they have trouble with none A-440 tunings, like people who learned on piano, if you get into Baroque tuning or some other kind of tuning system, it can throw them for a real loop.
 
0:32:06.0 EWM: People with APE, ability to perceptually encode, the theory is that they actually are encoding pitch in a different way in their brains, and that they have the ability to encode all frequencies, not just the A-440 template that they learned in childhood, and so they're more flexible, they can do all kinds of timbres, they can do really high, really low, they can do different, they can quickly adjust to other temperaments and tunings, because they're processing it in a little bit different way.
 
0:32:36.4 DN: That explains so much about several people that I know. [laughter]
 
0:32:42.0 EWM: It does, and it explains why there are conflicting findings in the literature too. You read something in one article and something different in another article, and you say, "Well, how can that be?" Well, it could be that they just have two different flavors of absolute pitch. They're processing it slightly differently and they learned it in a different way. One of them, the APE is the hereditary inborn one, those kids can't ever remember learning AP. They just kind of always had it. In fact, they think that everybody has it, sometimes it's not till they get to college and they're in some ear training class and the teacher says, "Oh, you must have perfect pitch." And they say, "What's that?" They just thought, everybody heard music that way. It's interesting.
 
0:33:25.0 GR: So I guess that actually leads to a question of... We've talked about a bit how people with AP and RP hear music differently. What can we learn from each other?
 
0:33:36.5 EWM: Let me go back to the hear differently first, because there are a couple of things I'll just throw in that I haven't said yet. One of them, I mentioned that I had been doing some research in Hong Kong with a Eastman alumna who teaches there now, Su Yin Mak, and we interviewed a lot of AP listeners there who specifically spoke to listening to Western music and listening to traditional Chinese music. And they have a real hard time with the traditional Chinese music, because it's not in the same temperament and tuning as Western music, and so some of them are able to adjust, so one or two of them even play a traditional Chinese instrument, but some of them are really turned off by it and cannot listen to it, or really cope with that music at all, they just find it really aversive. And the same, as I mentioned, Baroque tuning, instead of A-440, it's often A-415.
 
0:34:38.4 EWM: Now, some kids can adjust to that, it's almost like being bilingual, they have one way of being in the world of A-440 and one way of being in the world of A-415, but others cannot abide it, and we heard story after story of people having to take melodic dictation from a Baroque recording and just freaking out, going into sweats and crying and just... It's like their AP has been taken away from them, and it's part of their identity and suddenly it fails them, it's really difficult. It's kind of funny, but it's really difficult and challenging for them. So that's one way in which AP listeners are different from RP listeners. Another way is that some of them told us that they have a constant string of Solfège syllables going through their head as they listen to music or note names. So one of them sort of illustrated a melody singing it on this really fast Solfège, and he says he can't turn it off, it's just constantly these little syllables going in his head, and again, I think that's probably an early learning thing, just like we attach a timbre or...
 
0:35:47.9 EWM: Well, in your case, that sound, but he's attached Solfège syllables, and so he was talking really eloquently about having problems with phrasing and musicality and large-scale gestures, because everything is very note-y to him, because all these little words are going through his head, so that's another way of hearing differently. And then the synesthesia, the people who are hearing colors as music goes by, that's almost hard to conceptualize for somebody with relative pitch. And some of them, in addition to colors, will have emotions associated, the E-flat heroic and the different emotions that might be associated with keys. We read about that in history of theory, but key color and affect and so on, but for people with absolute pitch, for some of them, it's a very real thing, these different affects associated with keys.
 
0:36:50.0 EWM: So what can we learn from each other? I think that, as I said before, the relative pitch skills can really add to the absolute pitch student's experience of music, if they get both the affect and the key and the precise tuning and all the things that AP gives them, but then if they also learn to hear the function and the harmonic progression and so on, I think that just gives them a 360 degrees or something of how to perceive music. It's more challenging the other direction to think about what can AP listeners teach RP listeners. I was thinking about that a little bit, and it's a hard one because for relative pitch listeners, absolute pitch seems so unattainable and it's kind of mysterious about whether you want it or not and does it make you a better musician and so on. So, I don't know whether... I don't know exactly what we, relative pitch listeners learn from AP listeners. I don't know. Do you guys have thoughts about that?
 
0:38:07.3 DN: Well, I just did a gig in December where I really wished that I could have a tuning fork, an A tuning fork just implanted [chuckle] in my skull, just above my ear so that I could stay on pitch through long, long acapella sections.
 
0:38:28.9 EWM: Yeah, absolutely, and singing atonal music too, for another thing. That's a different thing, that's a relative pitch person just wishing they had AP, but in terms of...
 
[laughter]
 
0:38:39.9 EWM: In terms of what can RP listeners learn from AP. Maybe precision of tuning is one of them, but I think relative pitch listeners tune via relative pitch, they're tuning in relation to the piano, or in relation to the choir around them, rather than to some absolute sense of where A is or C-sharp is.
 
0:39:07.5 GR: I was gonna say, I've done some gigs with people with very, shall we say, precise absolute pitch. Singing gigs where they could be inflexible about, "No, no, no, A is here." But if that A is the third of the chord, maybe it needs to be a little bit somewhere else, so yeah, I can see...
 
0:39:28.4 EWM: Yes, I agree, there's some AP listeners have inflexibility about pitch, and so they sometimes have trouble with ensemble music, chamber music, because they have a sense that I'm right and you're wrong with regard to tuning and intonation. But then again...
 
0:39:48.9 GR: Definitely not, definitely not all AP listeners, right? It's...
 
0:39:52.0 EWM: Correct, and maybe that's part APE versus HTM, part just personality, part socialization and how they were brought up, and all kinds of factors probably play into that.
 
0:40:07.6 DN: So I have a student, this is a tangent, but it's totally relevant. I have a student who does not have, at least typical AP. But if he learns a song in one key and then I say, "Hey, you know, I think this is a little high, let's transpose it down a step," he has to completely relearn the song, he can't name the pitches out of the blue, but once he's learned a song, it's in that key, has to be in that key, and learning it in a new key is a totally new thing. Do we have a name for that?
 
0:40:48.8 EWM: I think that's part of AP on a continuum thing, so I think he has probably some kind of AP without labeling, that idea that you're singing the hymn in the right key, or singing the pop tune and the right key, you've learned it in a particular place in your mind and your voice, and for these, especially kids without a lot of musical training, he does... He's in your program, but it may be that he has not learned to... The relational bit though, and so he's learning in an absolute way, so that a new key is a new thing, that's really interesting. But I think it's probably that AP without labeling kind of thing.
 
0:41:33.4 DN: If you want another subject to study, I can connect you.
 
[laughter]
 
0:41:39.3 EWM: There are so many incarnations.
 
0:41:44.3 GR: It's just fascinating for me to hear about these varieties of absolute pitch and these sort of different kinds and the different ways that, something for so long I thought of as just being like a binary, you have it or you don't. It's one thing and it's not. It sounds like there's really a lot of variety there. It's very individual.
 
0:42:00.9 EWM: Yes, and I thought the same thing, Greg. I don't know if I was taught it, but I really thought it was an on or off switch. Either you have this or you don't, but just even from my own personal experience, I know I don't have absolute pitch, I can't pull any pitch out of the air with a letter name or whatever, but I do have this good long-term memory for keys of pieces I've sung or played. If I sit down to sing something that I've sung a million times, it just comes out in the right key, or music notation is sometimes that way too. I remember once when I was running the sight-singing Program and I was singing a lot... Lots of Otman tunes. I would audition people to be a teaching assistant, and if I would start a tune like I was asking them to coach me or something, I would just start it in some random key that was comfortable for me, and I had people say to me, "Well, don't you know that's the right key? You're singing in the key in the book." But I had not given myself a pitch or planned on it, it's just... I don't know, I think I had some kind of long-term memory for it, or a long-term memory for queer notation, and the stuff sits in my voice or something like that. But I don't have the out of the blue, acontextual labeling, a note kind of AP at all.
 
0:43:21.0 GR: Yeah, I had to experience... Re-reading your 2007 article this morning. There was a harmonic dictation example in there written in A-major, and I just started listening to it in my head, and I was like, "No, that's the wrong key, and I just stopped, and then I was like, "Oh there," and then I listened to it in my head, and I was like... And I just know that's the right key, and I went over to the piano, I was like... And sure enough it was, and it's just, it's so weird and fleeting and bizarre, and yeah. So, you mentioned a little bit when talking about, can I acquire absolute pitch at this age? Some current research, what research is being done now on absolute pitch, what might we know more about in the future?
 
0:44:03.0 EWM: Yeah, one thing I haven't talked about very much, but there are people doing it, is not the cognitive side, but the physiological side, so there are people who do that genetics. Is there a gene for absolute pitch? And in fact, I worked for a little while with a genetics researcher and he was very excited because they were finding some similarities between synesthesia genes and AP genes, but that is such a huge field and genetics is so complex, that there has not yet been found an AP gene though AP runs in families. So there probably is some kind of genetic component, there are people who do brain imaging with absolute pitch, so pretty robust findings. A number of people have reported that people with absolute pitch have asymmetry between the two hemispheres of their brain, so we don't know whether people born with asymmetrical brains are more likely to acquire AP or whether the process of acquiring absolute pitch somehow creates an asymmetry as your brain is growing, but that's there. So those sort of physiological and brain imaging kinds of studies, I think there's also more connectivity in certain parts of the brain for AP listeners, maybe different things are connected up.
 
0:45:31.2 EWM: One area that hasn't been studied very much at all is cross-cultural aspects of AP, so we are so attuned to Western classical music or western pop music too, which has that A-440 standard, but what of other cultures in which there is no standard in which maybe every ensemble has its own tuning, or every village has its own tuning, or something like that. Can AP exist in that environment? And if you have the genetic part of AP, like you have this predisposition to acquire AP, can you without a consistent [chuckle] tuning system? So that's interesting. And then the work that I've been doing recently is this qualitative research where we collect the personal stories of people with AP. Do you remember when you first discovered it? Do you remember being taught AP? When is AP difficult for you? Those kinds of things that we've been talking about today, those personal stories, they are interesting, really interesting and entertaining, but they also tell us some clues about AP, and then we might develop more experiments to follow up on those, like the intonation and tuning part.
 
0:46:56.7 EWM: Oh, incidentally, I meant to tell you about this interesting study by a researcher named Van Hedger et al. He has shown that AP can be kind of flexible, so that he played a bunch of listeners who have absolute pitch a Brahms Symphony, but unbeknownst to them, the Symphony was being slowly, slowly, slowly lowered, so slowly that you could not tell the difference that it was being lowered, it was over the whole course of a movement, and at the end of it... So they tested AP, sorry at the beginning for truly tuned pitches, A-440, and then quarter tone sharp, quarter tone flat. Then they lowered this whole Brahms Symphony and once it reached the new standard, you heard the other movements, and then they re-tested them for AP and they discovered that people had adjusted where A was, now it was a quarter step flat.
 
0:47:57.0 EWM: So maybe absolute pitch isn't so absolute, maybe we are constantly having that AP reinforced by using pianos and A-440 tuning, so every day you hear that A-440 over and over and over again, it's reinforcing and re-learning and so on. But if everything in the world were slowly detuned, I think they would adjust to that. [laughter] It's kind of an interesting experiment. So there's lots still being done. I think it's an endlessly fascinating topic for teachers and for musicians and for lay audiences, there's a whole new area of public musicology where people go out and speak to non-musicians about music, and I've done this several times with absolute pitch talks, and they find it absolutely fascinating. So there's still lots to be done, I think.
 
0:48:56.4 GR: Yeah, so turning the page a little bit, as many of our listeners know, you're also an author for the Musician's Guide series of textbooks. I wonder, could you just talk a little bit about that side of your life, maybe tell us about the series, who it's target audience is, and what's unique about its approach?
 
0:49:15.9 EWM: Target audience is everybody. [laughter] When I teach my theory pedagogy class, I often talk about a sort of dichotomy in theory teaching between horizontal approaches and vertical approaches. So a vertical approach is one that sort of salami slices music into verticalities, then you can slap a Roman numeral on each verticality. And a horizontal one is one that deals more with counterpoint between lines and prolongations of harmonic areas and so on, so sort of Shankar influenced, and we tried to position our book in the middle. So that we use a phrase model approach where harmonic progression is taught tonic, predominant, dominant tonic, and that each of those areas can be expanded, so the expansion idea is the linear approach, but we also do things like complement that with teaching about progression by root motion, ascending fifths, descending fifths, descending thirds and ascending seconds and so on, which is a more vertical approach. Then the idea is that if a teacher on either side of that divide is dissatisfied with how things are going with their textbook, it's kind of an easy journey to us in the middle, and we try to help teachers through that adjustment with lots of online materials and like our textbook workbook has a complete answer key.
 
0:50:52.0 EWM: Every single exercise has been part written for you, every single interval spelled, every bar line put in a rhythm, so that teachers who are making an adjustment have an answer key, there they have kind of authoritative response, and so that it can help the situation in many schools where the choir director or the flute teacher or someone else's teaching theory, and it may not be that these are professional theorists, but there are other musicians who are teaching theory. So we try to help supply materials, also recording, so now we have the internet, thank goodness, but once upon a time we had to run to the library in the morning and find recordings of everything you were gonna use in class, we have a really robust... Every single thing in the book is recorded, we have an anthology that goes with it, all recorded mostly by Eastman musicians. The entire book is also an electronic book, so during that quick switch to remote teaching that happened in 2020, it was pretty seamless for users of our book because the whole thing, when you buy the text, you also get access to the electronic book, which is all click and play every example, you can hear it, and it's exactly formatted like the textbook. It has a note slide-enabled workbook, so they could do all their homework online and turned it in online.
 
0:52:23.1 EWM: So all of that I think is really helpful for teachers. The other thing we've tried do since the very beginning is to have diverse repertoire. Since the beginning, we've had black composers and women composers in there, we also tried to diversify to have band music in there, choir music in there, and solo flute and solo cello, and so that every student can see himself or herself in the book in the instrumentation and so on. But we've really ramped that up in the fourth edition, so now every single chapter has at least one piece by a woman featured, that's 40 chapters of pieces by women, and we've increased the number of black and Hispanic composers in the book and the anthology. We have art songs in Spanish as well as French and German.
 
0:53:13.7 EWM: So we're really trying to be more inclusive, I guess, is the way we say that. And not to forget, it's all coordinated with aural skills books, so our colleague, Joel Phillips and Paul Murphy are the primary authors on that, but chapter by chapter, each concept in the textbook is reinforced with a sight-singing and dictation book that I think is just wonderful, and it uses a lot of these techniques we've been talking about like writing out scale degrees or Solfège instead of going straight to the staff. And those books too have lots and lots of music by underrepresented composers and women. So we're very excited about the fourth edition, you would think that after going through revising a textbook multiple times, it would get old. It is a lot of work, but it's exciting each time, because we solicit input from teachers across the country, we have things in our own minds that we want to change, like in this edition, we have two full chapters on popular music analysis, that's different for most books. So a lot of books sprinkle popular music throughout, and we do that too, but we have two focus chapters on popular music. So again, it's exciting to be able to keep tinkering with a product and make it better and better each time, so that's exciting for us. Thanks for asking.
 
[laughter]
 
0:54:43.6 GR: As in yeah.
 
0:54:44.6 DN: Well, I used your fundamentals book right into the pandemic, so... [laughter]
 
0:54:50.0 EWM: Oh, good. Yeah, and the fundamentals book has self-grading homework too, so you can assign these things that the computer will grade for you, which is nice.
 
0:55:01.7 DN: It's vital.
 
0:55:02.9 EWM: Yeah. We're about to do, not a new revision of the fundamentals book, but a re-working that pulls out some controversial repertoire. There's been a lot of talk in the Music Theory discipline about using music by Stephen Foster who started out in the minstrelsy tradition, so we're doing a new reprint edition now that pulls all the Stephen Foster out and replaces it with music mostly by women and minority composers. So look for that. [chuckle] Next year I hope.
 
0:55:34.4 GR: Great. Look, Betsy, this has been just an absolute delight. I've learned so much from this. Thank you for joining us.
 
0:55:42.8 EWM: Oh, you're welcome. You've asked great and probing questions, it was fun for me to think about answers, and to think about applications to teaching and to future research. So thanks for inviting me.
 
[music]
 
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0:56:07.3 GR: Notes from the staff is produced by utheory.com. uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory, with video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing. uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of Music Theory, Rhythm and Ear Training. Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
 

Choral Sightsinging with Denise Eaton

Veteran music educator Denise Eaton shares a plethora of tips on how to teach sight singing in choral rehearsals, gleaned from her nearly thirty years of leading high school choirs. She's written down this approach in her SMART, STEPS, and InSIGHT sight singing books, which she created to help high school choral conductors like herself overcome the challenges of building independent musicians.
Links:
Denise Eaton's website: www.deniseeaton.com
SMART, STEPS, InSight series, and choral textbooks: https://www.deniseeaton.com/media.html
 
Show Notes:
00:20 Introductions: For nearly thirty years, Denise Eaton taught high school choirs, including building one of the top choral programs in the country at Spring High School, north of Houston, Texas. Her approach to teaching complete musicians is remarkable, and it’s one she’s shared with the world in her SMART, InSIGHT and STEPS series of sight singing books. She’s also taught choral methods on the faculty of Sam Houston State University, served as president of the Texas Music Educators Association, and is choral editor for Carl Fischer Music.
02:00 How do you build an ensemble of singers who read well? It takes an intentional, systematic approach. It can't be done at the last minute. The beginning of learning skills is glacially slow, and it takes time.
03:00 What does that look like in rehearsal? Clear objectives for the rehearsal, and a precise lesson plan. An "Order of Events" on the board helps students to buy into just how much we have to accomplish.
04:00 A rehearsal should be a crescendo, not a checklist. I avoid the term warmup, and prefer to say vocal technique. From vocal technique training, to sight singing or singing the repertoire, everything is reinforcing what happened during the vocal technique time.
05:30 Moving from solfege to the page, from sound to sight. The importance of building in visual orientation to singing in different keys.
07:50 The SMART and STEPS books are broken up into chapters by key, and arranged by difficulty within each chapter. What's the philosophy behind that? A lot of people feel compelled to start at the beginning of a book and go in order. But, what if you don't need to sight sing in F-sharp major? The idea is to see a scale and a tonic triad in the key, and to sing through some fundamental exercises to get visually acclimated to what you'll see in the music, and then to sight sing. The fundamental skills are singing steps and thirds, and singing intervals from the tonic triad, and that's what you get in the SMART books and STEPS books. If students can do that they can do anything. Every key is a new language for young singers, it just looks different.
12:50 This approach was purely practical. If I'm going to teach a piece in A-flat, then three weeks before we start that piece we're going to start sight singing fundamental drills in that key, we're going to sight sing in that key so that students can be successful when they eventually get to the piece we're singing. InSIGHT Singing has fundamental drills around I, IV and V chords, they can see how those chords look.
15:30 If I'm working on a piece with a choir, and I want to help prepare students in advance by pulling out basics. What else, besides key, should I look at as I study the score, and how do I turn those into basic practice? This is what score study is about: identifying melodic patterns, harmonic patterns, and rhythmic patterns in addition to form. My sight reading will be the melodic contour of the patterns throughout the piece.
With some of these sub-non varsity treble pieces, there are only really three melodic patterns in it. Instead of looking at the music right away with students, write these out in whole notes and practice the pitch content first, after they've seen a scale and a tonic triad. And write out the most common rhythm patterns on the other side of the page.
17:35 Can you talk about the philosophy behind each of the books? The SMART books started off as a tool that I needed for my teaching. Each melody is written in both treble and bass clef. It was written for key orientation, so that teachers could give students material to sight sing in the keys of the music they're singing. SMART minor was self-serving, because when you go to contest with your varsity groups in Texas, the form will be Major-minor-Major, so this will help prepare. Minor's challenging because you have the altered notes to deal with. You have to teach it from a diatonic standpoint, I'll have them sing "Mi-Fi-Si-La is the Sol-La-Ti-Do of the minor key."
 
22:45 What are the fundamental exercises? A scale based on the range of melodies in that level, a tonic triad, and written out patterns (like Do-Re-Mi-Do) that move through the scale. The tonic triad should reflect the range of the melodies, if you don't have a low Sol you don't need to sing that. But you might need to sing a high Do. The books have each key in two chapters, a level 1 and level 2 chapter. The fundamental drills get harder, as do the melodies. 
27:00 Should students write their solfege in music? Not in their sight singing work, because then it's not sight singing, it's letter reading. It depends on the level of your students. Maybe from time to time in repertoire, especially at pivot points of key changes. It depends on the level of the group, with a varsity group, for instance, I might say, "Ok, it's the third time through, if you're still making the same mistakes mark your solfege." Or, with a more beginner group, when I'm working with another section I might say, "Ok, write in your solfege, use your SMART book p. __ for the scale if you have questions on what a note is." It all depends on their skill level, your skill level as a teacher, where they are in the learning process, how much time you have, and how fast they learn.
29:00 How do get from a rehearsal plan that's about checking off the boxes--warmup, check! sight singing, check! etc...--to something more organic? We have to reinforce good singing--including vowel shape, posture, tone, breath--through the warmup into the sight singing. We have to let creating a beautiful sound be a unifying thread throughout the rehearsal.  Not all warmups have to be at the beginning of class. And sight singing can be closer to the repertoire it's preparing students for in the rehearsal process, not necessarily at the start of rehearsal. And build the warmup patterns around the musical challenges they'll see in the rehearsal. Integrate one idea in the vocal technique that comes from something you're singing in repertoire. I like to keep exercises for at least a few days, not just once in a rehearsal. And I ask them, "Do you know why we're doing this warmup?"
34:05 How do you make sight-singing fun? It's a mindset. They love to be successful, and whenever they go to contest, festival or all-state auditions, there's always a sight-reading element, and they love working towards a competition. Turn patterns into a game: sing a fundamental drill, but audiate the note on the third beat instead of singing it. Or I'll sing measure 1, and you sing measure 2. It teaches audiation, but also rhythmic breathing. I like to play "ping-pong" with them, back and forth. Your only limit is your own creativity. Sing backwards! For middle school (and some non-varsity high school) choir directors, the hardest thing is to actually get them to just look at their music instead of looking at the director and memorizing by rote.
And there are books out there too, like Making Sight Reading Fun! or SOS Sight Reading by Mary Jane Phillips or the Snap Cards by Theresa Pritchard. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, go steel ideas from other people!
39:15 Tell us about the STEPS book. In the STEPS book the focus is intervals from the tonic triad, Do-Mi-Sol. Everything is tonic based, and there are flash cards that all begin on a note of the triad, you can make games out of the flash card by rearranging them. These are unison because this elevates the skills of the weakest singer. And in the STEPS book the two 4/4 melodies on each page can be combined to be sung at the same time in parts. Plus there are "Read Ahead Funs," two measure patterns written at various places on the page. You can call them a number to jump quickly to go between them. Let someone else be a caller, etc...
45:00 Read the preface to any sight reading book you buy. They'll tell you how to use the book, why the book is arranged the way it is.
46:00 What about rhythm? They need to isolate pitch and rhythm. I start with any sight reading melody by having them chant the rhythm. Then I have them sing the rhythm on counts. Students are less precise rhythmically when singing, so, they need that step to bridge the gap to singing the notes in time. Make it a game: count-sing an eight-measure melody, every time you cross a bar-line, go up a scale degree. Or sing it on a pattern of thirds. If it's easy, up the ante. Then finally let's sing it.
49:50 Why prioritize the teaching of reading in music education? My dog can speak for her treat. But do I want a choir like that? Did they learn twelve songs this year and get a I at contest? Maybe, but I want them to have a thought, an understanding, to see how it all ties in at the end when they look back on their musical career. Maybe high school will be the pinnacle of that, or maybe they'll go on to sing in church, community, or barbershop choirs. I want them to look back and know they learned something about music in this music education class, not just how to sit and bark.
52:13 What else should we talk about? If you're a teacher that's struggling with sight singing, find a process, find a mentor who does it well, find out what they do and how they do it. Have a plan, there's no winging it. Have 17 ways to skin that cat, depending on the level of the ensemble in front of you. Have a barometer, and know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em. It's choir, not cancer. It should be fun, joyful, and we can laugh and have fun when we sight read. Get help if you need it, find a mentor.
Transcript:
 
Theme Song: These are the notes from the staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're going to do, and we hope you're learning something too, cause the path to matering theory begins with you.
Leah Sheldon: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.
Greg Ristow:Hi, I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Associate Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
Leah Sheldon:And I'm Leah Sheldon, Head of Teacher Engagement for uTheory.
Greg Ristow:With us today to talk about coral sight singing is music educator, extraordinaire, Denise Eaton. For nearly 30 years, Denise taught high school choirs, including building one of the top choral programs in the country at Spring High School, north of Houston, Texas. I learned of Denise when I started teaching at Lone Star College–Montgomery, a nearby community college where I got to work with many of her former students, all of whom were solfege masters. Her approach to teaching complete musicians is remarkable. And it's one she's shared with the world in her SMART InSight and STEPS series of sight-singing books. She's also taught choral methods on the faculty of Sam Houston State University, served as president of the Texas Music Educators Association and is choral editor for Carl Fischer Music. Denise, thanks so much for joining us today.
Denise Eaton:Well, thank you. I'm honored to be with you all. That's a very, very nice introduction. I think we could sum it up in just a few words. I just simply love the act of teaching. I love the grind of teaching, which is something I think a lot of people don't, but part of that is successful sight reading can really build strong musicians. So I'm very passionate about that, but thank you for having me today.
Greg Ristow:So I think what we all really want to know is can you teach us how to build an ensemble of singers who read well?
Denise Eaton:I think it's possible. But sight singing and reading and rhythm readiness are all skills and skills are only developed if they are practiced daily and with intentional systematic approach to them. I think people that wait till the last minute have choirs that site read like they've waited to the last minute. I think the beginning of learning is incredibly, it is glacially slow. And the same as with skills. Pianists did not just start off playing scales in time, and sight singing is a skill. So yes, it can be done, but it must be really well thought out. I don't think there's one book. I don't think there's one method. I think it's knowing what works with your students.
Leah Sheldon:So what does that look like in a rehearsal for you? Let's say I'm a singer. I walk into the rehearsal and then what happens?
Denise Eaton:Well in my rehearsals, gosh, and I was thinking about it. It's been 11 years since I was the head choir director, but I certainly am in rehearsals all the time. In fact, I just left a rehearsal this morning. I always had objectives on the board. I'm a big lesson planner. I used to not be, but from frustration and winging it, it led to very precise lesson plans. And I learned that when I was not the only person in the room that knew what was expected of them, rehearsals were much more productive. So objectives are on the board and I used to call them the order of events, not just objectives. This is what we're doing today. I think there's something psychological about seeing number one through 17 on the board, like, oh my gosh, we've got a lot to get done.
Denise Eaton:Each activity is not something that you want to just check off the list. We warmed up, check. We did fundamentals, check. The whole idea to me is that a rehearsal, and I hate the word organic, maybe it's not organic. Everything is crescendoing throughout the rehearsal. Everything from the beginning of the rehearsal has a function as it takes you towards your repertoire. I don't call warmup, warmup. I call it vocal technique. I think that's one of the most important parts of the rehearsal, even if it's not very long, but to get kids engaged with their mind, their body, their vocal mechanism. And that, then, as you go on to, say, sight reading or singing the repertoire, you're still reinforcing what you did during the vocal technique.
Denise Eaton:I think warm up is an overused term. It is used in academics, usually for the teacher to check role. In math, there's a warmup activity and it's just something to keep the kids from talking. Or, and I think that too many teachers teach, treat warmup like it's that. Same with sight reading. They go through drills, perhaps they're teaching a third drill and the kids sound fabulous on it and they can do it ascending, descending, in thirds, whatever, but the problem is if you give them that same drill written out in a key, they can't sing it. So I agree with sound before sight. I agree with rhythm sound before sight. I agree with teaching everything sound before sight, but sight is the next level of proficiency.
Greg Ristow:Could you give us an example of, maybe, take the classic Do Mi Re Fa Mi Sol that people just rattle off?
Denise Eaton:That's it. That's the one.
Greg Ristow:How would you go from that to the page?
Denise Eaton:I would write it out in whatever key that they were going. Let's say it's my treble choir and we're singing in the key of E. E is not a common key to them. F, G and C are the most common to, I'm thinking of middle school trebles, F, G, and C. They see that the most. Middle school boys, oh gosh, that's just, you know what that is. But high school, they get to high school and they feel good about F, G and C and then you give them something like E or B♭. You write that out in the key of E and they're befuddled. So I like to do things like Do Mi line line, Re Fa space space Mi Sol line line Fa La space space, for the key of E because it's a visual orientation into what that key looks like, and they haven't seen that before.
Denise Eaton:They've seen G on the line, but it's on the second line. I think they need to see it. And I'll write out solfege letters on the board to introduce, like a warmup. I would always teach it on solfege before I'd go to the vowel sequence. But then a lot of times I would write those patterns out just on a sheet of paper, it'd be warmups, but they would have to sight read the patterns first. Anything to integrate it into what we were going to do. So sound before sight, but then sight. And then the sight has to be talked about. They have to make the visual connection that Do Mi and Sol live here, so high Do and low Sol live here. And it has to always be driven home.
Greg Ristow:One of the things that I've noticed about your books that I think is really wonderful and interesting. If you take this SMART Series, each chapter is in its own key. And then within each chapter, things progress from easier to more difficult. And you've kind of already been talking a little about the philosophy behind this, but it's very different from, for instance, a lot of the sight singing texts that I've taught with at the college level are arranged from beginning to end, easiest to hardest. And the keys are put in, I don't want to say willy-nilly, but it almost seems like the goal is to have lots of keys throughout the book. Can you talk maybe a bit more about the philosophy of the sight element of separating keys like that?
Denise Eaton:Well, for one thing, I think that, because, like the books you're referring to, a lot of people feel compelled to start with the book and go in order. Well, what if you don't need to sight read in the key of F# major? Of course, that can also work for F major. I used to always say, "Cover up the key signature. What key could it be in?" You can certainly make your sight-reading materials non-disposable. You can be very creative with them, but the keys that are in the SMART book and the Steps book and Insight Singing are the keys that you can most likely integrate using your repertoire.
Denise Eaton:But the idea behind them is to see a scale, an atonic triad in the key, and to sing through some fundamentals, fundamental exercises. Again, it's a visualization, in order to acclimate what you're going to see in the music. I learned from a masterful teacher, Norris Blevins. I was his assistant for 12 years. He was a guru of sight reading and he used to say, "If they can identify steps and thirds, know what to call them and know what they sound like, they can sing any interval." Because what's a fourth? It's a third and a step. What's a fifth? It's two thirds.
Denise Eaton:So the fundamental drills all came about, and I'm not kidding you, when I first went to Spring High School... Well, actually it was before then. I'm going to back up. I was teaching non-varsity treble, mainly freshmen. I threw at them a Nacht Lied. It's Beethoven. I know it's in B♭. I think it's acapella. Very sight singable, SSA.
Denise Eaton:They were really struggling. And again, these were mainly freshmen. So I stopped and said, "Can you tell me why you're struggling?" And of course, an alto, it's always an alto, isn't it? I'm an alto, raised her hand and said, "Every time I get to Sol, which is F in the key of B♭, I want to call it Do." I said, "You know what? Put that up."
Denise Eaton:So I went home and I wrote out intervals from the tonic triad in B♭, and that's the fundamental in the Steps book, is intervals from the notes of the tonic triad. Well, the fundamentals from the SMART book are steps and thirds with varying degrees of rhythm difficulty between level one and level two. Because it's another visual, for lack of a better term, drill and kill for what you're going to see, but the more you're aware of every time I come to this, this is Do, this is Mi, this is Sol, you don't have any Slas. I used to have Slas all the time. That was a cross between Sol and La. What do you call that? Sla.
Denise Eaton:I used to say, "Are we going to have barbecue?" It was a joke, but everyone knew what I was talking about. I'm like, "How can you call that Sla, because we've just been singing all these lines?" So it takes time. Every key is a new language for young singers. And, by young, that's their senior in high school. And some college, I'll just be real honest with you. It just looks different. The intervals don't change, but where they live do.
Greg Ristow:I have an interest in historical solfege pedagogy and when I first saw your SMART Series, which I think were the first of your books that came out, I remember thinking back to the old French solfege des solfege system that was used at the Paris Conservatory for many years, which, like many sight singing books from the late 1800s, early 1900s, works key by key. So you start with just C major and then you get F major and then you get some D minor, right? It just gradually brings them in. I think it was really insightful of you to bring back that kind of structure, which I haven't seen much elsewhere.
Denise Eaton:Well, I really did it from a practical standpoint. Like, I'm going to teach a piece in the key of A♭, well, we're going to start looking at that scale. We're going to look at those fundamental drills, some of the fundamental drill. I can play all kinds of games with those fundamental drills. I can teach audiation through the fundamental drills. We can play ping pong. We can do all kinds of things and have fun while we're learning and visualizing.
Denise Eaton:So I kind of did it self-servingly, because, like I say, when I went to Spring, I was teaching the Palestrina: Alma Redemptoris Mater. It was in E♭. I had very weak young SATB choir. So I would hear every morning the band kids outside of my room, practicing off their... They would have to do their marching stuff and play their little scale patterns. And they go [sings classic brass warmup pattern: 1231 2342 3453 1231 2342 7127 1321 2432 1]
Denise Eaton:And I went, "That steps and thirds." So I was starting to write out fundamental exercises in E♭ that we could sing in class before we looked at the Palestrina. And then my friend Sally Schott said, "We've got to make this a book." And then it was born. So I have sheets and sheets of all this kind of stuff that I would use for teaching before I would introduce a piece. So they're successful, then. We want our students to be successful. And if we're going to sing something an E♭, well, three weeks before we start introducing it, we start sight reading in E♭.
Denise Eaton:And they start getting the feel of what that looks like. The InSight singing has one, four and five chords. They can see why the key is the key, how the one, four and five chords look for the more advanced singers. You can do all kinds of things that way. See, I'm more pedagogical about sight reading, I think, as I'm talking, aren't I?
Greg Ristow:Mm-hmm (affirmative). Which is great. How many of us really learned, were ever taught the whys and hows of teaching sight singing? Very few.
Denise Eaton:Well, you know, you really can't. You have to be in the classroom and go, "Okay, they don't know anything. Where do I start?" Sometimes you use the music for sight reading. It just all depends on where they are. First you teach them by rote, a lot of times, and then get them to start reading. But they have to make the connection from pitch to pitch in the interval. And that's what sight reading is.
Leah Sheldon:So you just talked about key as an example. Let's say I'm working on a piece with a choir and I want to help prepare the students, like you mentioned, in advance by pulling out some of the basics. What else should I look at as I study the score so that I can use those in advance and how do I turn those into more focused practice?
Denise Eaton:Well, you're really talking about score study, which is sometimes a very dirty word for people because they always say, "I don't have enough time." And I always say, "How can you not make the time? Because, with score study, you are going to find all of your melodic patterns. You're going to find your harmonic patterns. You're going to find your rhythmic patterns. And that's, of course, after you determine your form."
Denise Eaton:Many times my sight reading is the melodic contour of the different patterns throughout the song. I mean, you teach some of these sub non-varsity treble pieces, it's three melodic patterns, is all it is. So instead of looking at the music and looking at all those rhythms, I write them out in what I call place markers, whole notes. And I control the rate of speed. So we'll say two snaps per pitch. And just sing from note to note, after they've seen a scale and a tonic triad, and use that for sight reading before we ever look at the music.
Denise Eaton:And perhaps on the other side of that sheet, I would have some of the rhythm patterns or breakdowns to get them ready for the rhythm patterns. So score study to me is everything. And that's why I would use three and four sight-reading books when I was teaching. It would just depend on the song and the needs of the class, so I have class sets of everything.
Greg Ristow:That's great. And we've started getting into a bit, sort of the philosophy behind pedagogical approach to sight singing. In particular, you mentioned, if they can sing steps and thirds, and if they can find all the notes of the tonic triad, then they can basically do everything. Certainly, I see that in your SMART books, and you started talking about your InSight books, as well, working largely from tonic triad. Maybe, do you want to just talk a little bit about the philosophy behind each of your books?
Denise Eaton:Well, yes, I'm very happy to. The SMART books started off, like I say, as a tool, I think, more than anything, for teachers that they could integrate it in their teaching and build fundamental skills. It's written in octaves.
Greg Ristow:And just to clarify for our listeners, when you say it's written in octaves, actually every melody in there is written in treble clef and bass clef, so that... Yeah.
Denise Eaton:And bass clef, exactly, so that a mixed choir can use it. A tenor bass choir can use it or a treble choir can use it. I know that the ranges don't work well. They don't work well for middle school boys, but again, that's kind of its own animal. That's a whole nother inservice, as far as that goes. But the SMART book was there for the key orientation. And a lot of teachers use it where they go through each key, all of C major level one, all of C major level two. And they go through each key like that and they don't tie it into their music. And to me, they're really missing a bonus round for their music. And someone said, "Well, the minor book's too hard and you don't have anything in F minor."
Denise Eaton:I say, read the F major melodies in F minor. The only thing you don't have is altered notes. Do still lives on the same place, you know? That's how those came about. So the fundamentals are really good exercises that they can get better and better at, at identifying. Then, out of that, came SMART Minor, and I'll tell you, it was self-serving for my colleagues in the State of Texas, because in Texas, when you go to a festival or contest or assessment, whatever it's called out there, the sight reading process for the varsity groups is major, minor, major. So you're going to sight read in minor, and a lot of repertoire is in minor.
Denise Eaton:So how do you get to minor? The Minor book is hard. The visualization is hard because students, I mean, it's great for them to learn the scales and then they can put the altered notes into context. But I think, to teach kids altered notes, you've got to teach them from a diatonic standpoint so that they already have in their ear something they can relate to.
Denise Eaton:My first day of my varsity mixed choir, these are kids that sang Whitaker and Palestrina. We would sing Mi Fi Si La is the Sol La Ti Do of the minor key, first day of class. I would make up these stupid La Si La is the Do Ti Do of the minor key. Why? Because, otherwise, they would see something go Mi Fi. They would just go into orbit. Do Ti. So we'd sing, like, Sol Fa Sol sounds like Do Te Do.
Denise Eaton:Something diatonic that they know they can sing Sol Do Sol in their sleep. They can wake up and sing it. But they can't necessarily sing Do Do Te because they're not pianists. They don't see that interval. They don't see a C to a B♭ relationship as a whole step, but they know what Sol Da Fa sounds like. So again, this is kind of a sound before sight thing. And if you do that, then the SMART Minor might be a little easier for you, but I'm telling you, the visualization after singing three minor scales feels like you've run a marathon.
Denise Eaton:I remember one night with a varsity tenor bass choir, we sang all the scales and the visual orientation. And I felt like I had been sucker punched. I was exhausted, getting them through that. And I was like, "We don't need to read any melody. We need to do this again later and then we'll go onto the melodies." Because everyone, their brains were just churning because of that. So the SMART Minor, and something I used to do is we'd have our SMART book and our SMART Minor out, and we'd read two melodies in the major and then one melody in the relative minor, and then go back to two melodies in the major, just to see how they were making that association.
Greg Ristow:That's great. You've been talking about the fundamental exercises that are in these books. Can you maybe just, for people who haven't seen the books, like when I open a chapter, what are the first things I see in that chapter?
Denise Eaton:Well, for each key center, you're going to see a scale based on the range of the melodies in that level. So let's say the key of F, you're going to see your scale because level one F goes from Do up to La and Do down to Fa. So the melodies in level one of the key of F major have a range of a sixth up or a fifth down, maybe not all of them go up to high La and down to Fa, but that's what you're going to see in level one.
Greg Ristow:We didn't talk about that earlier when we were talking about key, but that's such a huge thing, right?
Denise Eaton:It is.
Greg Ristow:That the different keys sort of have a different natural solfege range, that F major tends to live between that low Sol and the high Sol. Whereas, A♭ major is going to tend to live between a low Mi and a high Mi.
Denise Eaton:Oh yeah, exactly. And that was something I was talking about to a colleague of mine that wrote the sight reading for the Allstate Choir audition in the key of D. And I said, "Well, they're used to hearing Do Mi Sol Mi Do Sol Do, and their starting pitch." Well, they didn't get to hear, Do Do Do Do Do Do Do [1 3 5 8 5 3 1]. They didn't need a low Sol, they needed a high Do. So the range of the melodies, I always think, needs to be reflected in the scale and the tonic triad. Of course, I could always tell if my kids were looking at the scale, as well, because someone wouldn't go up high enough or someone wouldn't go up low enough. And I'd go, "Let's do it again and let's look at our music."
Greg Ristow:Because most of the scales in the chapters go up to a high Re or down to a low Ti, for instance.
Denise Eaton:It just depends. Yes. So what the scales are based on is the range of all the melodies in that. So the key of F, level one, if you look at all the melodies, you're going to find at least one that goes up to La and at least one that goes down to Fa. That's why the scale is written that way. It's the same with the InSight Singing book, as well. And the tonic triad should reflect the range of the melodies. If you don't have a low Sol, there's no reason to sing low Sol. If you have a high Do, though, you need to sing high Do.
Denise Eaton:So, yes, every key is that way. That's how it's set up. And then the fundamental drills of level one for each key center are easier rhythmically than level two. Level one, a lot of them are just stepwise motion. Level one might have a third, but it'd be a quarter note third. Level two, it might have Do Re Mi Do Mi Re Mi Fa Re Fa, a fast third, which is hard to sing and tune. A third's hard to sing and tune anyway.
Denise Eaton:So that's kind of the premise behind just the SMART Major book. The SMART Minor introduces, it's got, I think, five or six keys, but it introduces the natural harmonic and melodic minor for every key that it has. So they're starting to see those accidentals and then of course it outlines the tonic triad, but what's hard is the visual orientation. The visual orientation, you're going to see everything, every sharp or natural, and the naturals mess up kids, too. They don't know what to do with them sometimes.
Denise Eaton:So everything that you're going to see in those melodies, in that key center section, level one or level two, that's what you're going to see in the visual orientation of that. That's why I think the visual orientation is so hard, because it's crammed with all the hard stuff, all the visual things you're going to see. So that was the premise behind that.
Greg Ristow:So, along those lines, a quick question aside, how do you feel about students writing their solfege into their music?
Denise Eaton:Well, I don't like it in their sight-reading books ever, because then it's not sight reading. Then it's letter reading. They're seeing the Sol. They see the S so they sing a Sol. I think, in classes, it depends on the level of the degree of music and it depends on the students that are in front of you. With a varsity group, a lot of times I would have them third pass through. If you're still making the same mistakes, mark it.
Denise Eaton:I might mark a few places. Like if I'm going to pivot to a new key, I might put Do equals Ti and then write in a few solfege syllables. Or sometimes, just for ease of learning, I would say, "If I'm not working with your section today, right in your solfege, use SMART book, page, blah, blah, blah, for your scale. So if you have any question, you can write it in." It just depends on how much time you have for each given piece and where they are in the learning process.
Denise Eaton:Gosh, we all just want these clear-cut answers and there really isn't one, because it depends on their skill level, your skill level as a teacher, the materials you have at hand and how fast they learn. Some kids can just sight read through everything and they only have to make a couple of reminders to themselves. Some kids can't do that at all. They can't do anything unless they've written it in. But you have to start somewhere and I'm not saying there's a right or wrong to anything. It's what's right for your kids to learn and be successful. But never in books would I allow them to write in anything.
Leah Sheldon:Our conversation just a bit ago brought back some memories for me. Although I'm a band director, in my first few years of teaching, I directed an elementary children's choir and I felt very limited by their range and the keys that I had to choose from because they were young learners. It definitely turned into, like we talked about, a situation where we have a warmup and then, okay, that's done. We check that box. Now we're going to go to the real music. And, thinking about this now, we've also talked about score study and pulling from skills right from the music to use instead. So how do we get from that idea of, I have a warmup, I check the box, how do we move beyond that? Or do we need to?
Denise Eaton:Well, I think it depends on the level of the singer, like for an elementary group you're teaching them to stand still. You're teaching them to stand with good posture and, I don't care, if you're still doing high school, you're still doing those reminders, but talking about where the breath comes from, where it should be centered. You're doing a lot of other things in the vocal technique/warm up portion. You're working on vowel shapes. To me, everything comes from the vowel shapes.
Denise Eaton:Sadly, there's not an ooh vowel in sight reading in the Do Re Mi system. There's not an ooh vowel. And I wish there was because my vocal tone has two strands and they both begin with ooh, but ooh to oh is my big one. We can reinforce good vowels through the sight reading. So sometimes, I mean, I've watched choirs warm up and I thought it was the biggest waste of time because no one was engaged until the teacher got to the sight reading. And then all of a sudden they were going, "I need your best oh. Do." I'm going, "Well, why weren't you asking for that during the technique part of the warmup?"
Denise Eaton:So, back to your original question, what do you do? I like to take something from the warmup, and now I'm going to be a rebel here. Not all warmups are at the beginning of class. You might just do something to get the voice going and then just go straight into sight reading, because then you have a fabulous exercise you want to use that they can visually see. Say it's a song that's laden with fourths. So you sing exercises, you write them on the board, you write them out so they can see them on the staff, or they see what a fourth looks like.
Denise Eaton:Like the Koepke, "I will praise the name of God with a song," is a fourth-fest. "I will praise the name of God with a song." It starts off with all these fourths. So what does a fourth look like? Well, it's a space to a space with a space to align with a space in between, or aligned to a space with a line in between. They need to see what that looks like, as opposed to a fifth, which is two spaces or two lines. You can always integrate one idea in the vocal technique that's going to apply to something you're going to sing. Always. It could be a pattern. It could be a vowel glide.
Denise Eaton:You have a lot of E vowels in something and you're trying to avoid this bright spread eee. Well, you sing something that goes ooh to eee to ooh to eee to ooh to eee, and then, all of a sudden, hopefully they're not going to go ooh-eee [with an overly bright eee[ and Do Re Mi [sung with the same bright eee]. They're not going to do that, hopefully. Hopefully. And of course nothing happens overnight. It's a day-to-day thing. And I like to keep things for at least a couple days, if not the whole week, for young singers. Say you're doing this concept from song, you don't just do it one time because, as we know, in a large group of young learners, the first time you say something, if 30% of them got it, it's time to celebrate.
Denise Eaton:Hopefully, by the end of the week, everybody's hooked into the concept of what we're doing. And to tell them or ask them, "Do you know why we're doing this?" Because I think, as educators, it's real easy, like I said earlier, to be the only person in the room that knows the game plan and the why, but they're the singers. So I think them knowing... You say, "Does anyone know why we're doing this warmup?" "Yeah. Because there's that section of that song that has all those thirds and da, da, da." Good. Good. So now let's get out that song and let's see how we can apply that.
Greg Ristow:You talked earlier, you said, "I have tons of games for teaching these things." How do you make all this fun? So often I think, okay, let's do our sight reading, and I fear the choir going, "Oh, do we have to do that?" How do we make it fun?
Denise Eaton:Well, when they say that, I go, "Let's try that again. [Very cheerfully:] Let's do our sight reading," and they go, "Yay." Because that is a mindset because they do understand. Here's the thing, they love to be successful. And when they go to festivals or assessment or contest, whatever it's called in whatever state you live in, there's always some component of reading. And a lot of all state auditions consist of reading. So it's part of the game, I like to call it, but it's also part of your mind going.
Denise Eaton:I like to play things like, we'll audiate. I like to audiate, of course, but you have to teach them how to audiate. So if I go back to, let's go to an easy, fundamental drill in the SMART book. The very first level one C major is Do Re Mi Do Re Mi Fa Re Mi Fa Sol Mi. So it's mi step step step third step step step third. Okay. Well maybe we just sing beats one, two and three and I'll sing beat four. So they'll go Do Re Mi Do Re Mi Fa Re Mi Fa.
Denise Eaton:They're leaving out something so they have to start using their inner ear to hear where it is, to go to the next note. Or I'll sing measure one and they sing measure two. What is that teaching? Well, it's teaching audiation, but it's also teaching rhythmic breathing, because they have to breathe on beat four. If I sing Do Re Mi Do, they have to breathe when I sing Do. And that's a whole nother inservice, rhythmic breathing, onset of sound. These things that they just kind of go "Bah," just open their mouth and sing, but they have to learn they have to breathe in time, as well.
Denise Eaton:And I like to play ping pong with them. And you can do it between sections depending on how you can split. You can count off one two, one two. You can count a me versus you. Sopranos versus altos. Bass tenors versus soprano altos. You're limited to your own creativity as to what you can do, but I like to go backwards. I love to go backwards. It teaches them to think and look ahead in a different way. The STEPS book that I hope to talk about has a reading ahead fun exercises.
Denise Eaton:First of all, if you talk to any middle school choir director and probably a high school, non-varsity choir director, the bane of their existence is getting kids to look at their music. They look at the teacher and the teacher's talking about the music and they are not looking at the music. And I used to say, "I know I look really good today and I'm having a great makeup day, but would you look at your music please?"
Denise Eaton:It was ridiculous. And I know it's gotten worse over the years because I'm in classrooms all the time. And I can do that now as a joke, because the kids think I'm funny and cute because they don't see me every day, but I'll go, "I mean, I know I look good today, but can you look at your music since we're talking about it?" "Oh my gosh." And I am not above having students track. "Put your finger on measure one and I want you to track. And when I stop, tell me which measure and which beat I'm on." See if they're even following along. Because when you take a sixth grader, you're probably using an Elmo or an overhead for them to look at the music before they get to music.
Denise Eaton:So a lot of middle school teachers are the best at that. I never taught middle school and there's a reason why. But they are the best at getting them from making that transition from the overhead and just all by rote to actually reading. But I'm not against it with high schoolers at all. But fun, I mean, there's some great books out there. Mary Jane Phillips has written some on sight-reading fun games. The SOS Sight-Reading book, the snap cards. They have the flashcards. There's all kinds of games that are listed. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Go find out what other people have done and steal it, baby. That's the art of good teaching is being a good thief.
Greg Ristow:That's great. I love those Read Ahead exercises in the STEPS book where basically it's you have these little couple of measure or even one measure cells, a bunch of them, spread out across the page. And, related to that, the STEPS books also have cards that you can get. Can you tell us about those?
Denise Eaton:Yeah. So the STEP book is kind of like the SMART book, except... Of course, I was teaching when I wrote the STEPS book and then I went to work for Carl Fisher and I said, "How can..." I couldn't promote the SMART book anywhere I went with Carl Fisher because we didn't publish it. So they said, "Well, write one." And I went, "Okay," but I wanted it to be different and I wanted it to offer something different than the SMART book for people that were ready for maybe an additional book.
Denise Eaton:And the fundamentals in the STEPS book are intervals from the notes of the tonic triad from Do, Mi and Sol. So everything is tonic based, so the STEP Further flashcards all begin on a note of the tonic triad, but of course nothing's written out. So you could literally have five kids standing there with two cards and get them in order or put them on the board on a sleeve or however you visually do that, depending on the sizes of your room, or an Elmo, however you do it. You can make games out of the flashcards and they're sight reading, but they're just saying all those intervals from Mi. So maybe you pull all the cards that start on a Mi and you do something, and so you make it a sight-reading exercise.
Denise Eaton:The STEPS book, I was constantly asked, with the SMART melodies, "Why don't you write parts?" Well, I'm going to go back to what I said at the beginning. I don't believe in sight reading in parts until the second semester. Because, if you're elevating the skills of your weakest singer, and that's what unison singing does, it elevates the weakest singers to get better because they're hearing just that one part. It also helps teachers here. Young teachers sometimes can't tell if things are out of tune or what's wrong. I couldn't hear the tenor part for five years in an SATB choir as a young teacher. I was like, I can hear the alto because I am one. But the tenor part eluded me.
Denise Eaton:So, if you're singing in unison, you can hear everything. You can work on vowel unification and you can elevate weaker singers to get better. That was the premise behind that. So the STEPS book has two four-four melodies on every page, and one three-four melody on every page. The SMART book has no melodies in three- four. There are a ton of songs out there in three-four. And, if I'm teaching to my curriculum, my song, it would be nice to have something in three-four to sight read with so I could teach them to sing strong, weak, weak, strong.
Denise Eaton:Because a lot of times in three-four young kids have a very, very, very hard time learning three-four, to sing musically three-four. Because they end up always kicking beat three. So there was that. There was three-four melodies. But each of the four-four melodies on each page can be combined, they're duets. If they're ready for it. If they can't read both melodies really well, you don't want to put them together, but if they can, you could.
Denise Eaton:And one of them is a little bit more rhythmically active than the other. So there's a little bit of a challenge, more challenge in one of the two four-fours. So that was the idea behind that. And then the Read Ahead Funs so that you could play some games with them, because it is fun. My kids used to love to do Read Ahead Funs.
Greg Ristow:What are some of the ways that you use those Read Ahead Funs?
Denise Eaton:Well, you can go column, down each column, which would be one, three, five, seven, nine, odds, evens. You could go in numerical order. But the favorite game we used to play is when they get to measure two, so it's just two-measure patterns, and all of them end in either a whole note or a half note. So when they would get to measure two, whatever the long note is, and I loved it when it's a half note, because then I would call out the next number and then they'd have to hold the first pitch of the next one. So if they're on one and I said 12, they would have to find 12 first and then they're identifying what is it? What is it? What is it? Hold it. And then they would sing. Then I'd say, "Ready, set, go," and they'd sing 12 and they'd get to the second measure and I'd go, "Five," and then they'd hold that one.
Denise Eaton:And then when they really got good, I'd say, "Five," they would sing all of five and we'd play games. Stand up, sit down when you make a mistake. And then I'd let someone else be the caller and it would be fun. They would just love it. And if they weren't very challenging, then I would photocopy it and add in some altered notes and pass it out and we'd do some altered notes in there. What the Fa. What the Fi. That kind of stuff.
Denise Eaton:And the book has challenge Read Ahead Funs. You can download the common keys of F, G and C, and we put D and B♭ in there, the challenge exercise. There's also some other teaching materials in there, as well. So it's a good resource. It has a lot to offer. But, along those lines, I'm going to just encourage any teacher out there that is listening, and thank you for listening, to make sure that you read the preface to any textbook, sight-reading book that you buy. I can't tell you how many classrooms I've been in, they're using my materials and they're not using them properly.
Denise Eaton:It says, "The effective guide for the use of this book," and it tells you what to do. That means there was an intention behind it, if you're working with beginning singers, to increase their skills, make sure you know the intention behind it. I think that's very important. I know this is shocking, but teachers don't always read or follow directions, but we do expect our students to.
Greg Ristow:We can all get so busy, right? It's sometimes like-
Denise Eaton:I know. Faculty meetings, whatever. We're as guilty as they are.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. We've talked a ton about sight-reading pitch. I wonder, rhythm. Where do we even begin to help students learn rhythm?
Denise Eaton:Well, I think that they need to isolate pitch and rhythm. The very first thing I do with any sight-reading melody is chant the rhythm. And then I changed a lot, years before I retired. We would sing the rhythm because I found that students are very percussive when they're chanting. They'll go, "One and a two and Ti and four." And then you say, "Now sing that," and they go, "One and a two and Ti and four." They're not rhythmic. So I like to chant and I like to sing the rhythm. "One and two, Ti, four."
Denise Eaton:And I like to play games with that. That's kind of boring. So you've got an eight-measure melody. Every time you cross a bar line, you go up a scale degree. One and two Ti four, one, two and Ti four." Or you do thirds, "Do do do do do do do." I mean, I used to play all kinds of games like that. And so for those smart kids that go, "I can do this," you're like, "Okay, well try this then. I'll up the ante." Make it challenging yet functional for them so they don't feel like it's so baby, but it's amazing how just singing numbers, and you have to teach them how to sing one, which is through an ooh, ooh ahh. One. One. One and two and Ti and four." With the tall vowels that you want, and then to be precise.
Denise Eaton:So I like to chant the rhythm first and then, my kids, we audiate it. I said, "You get to cheat." Hum Do. Think your starting pitch. Here we go. And I just snap the quarter note or, if it's a dotted quarter note, three-eight snaps, and I'm just keeping the beat and they're hand signing and lip syncing. To me, audiation must be hand signing and lip syncing because it's like they're singing and any time they could just break forth into song. So I like to do that. We've already covered the rhythm, we've audiated the solfege, and then let's sing it. So very systematic in that regard.
Greg Ristow:I love how you just-
Denise Eaton:So a system, yeah.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. One of the things that you said is how these ways that it sounds like you're constantly listening to your ensemble and saying, "This is too easy for them. This is too hard." And it's not that you're changing what you're working on, but you're immediately changing the way you're working on it to match their level.
Denise Eaton:Exactly. So you have to know your target audience. I did a session years ago and that title has stuck with me, Through The Lens of the Learner. Who are you teaching? And to always have a barometer in your class. You're watching that sophomore tenor that has a great throat, that's in the varsity choir, but he labeled the piccolo syllables of a piece. That's how much he knows about where his part is. I mean, "Are you tracking with me on that? Great throat." And that's all I can say.
Denise Eaton:So I'm watching him to see if he is negotiating it, having success. If he's not, I've got to bump it back a little bit, but I've got to also challenge the other kids that maybe are better. And that is the beauty and the challenge of being a good teacher, all those learning styles and all those abilities and try to hit the mark with everybody at least once or twice a week.
Greg Ristow:Music is so all encompassing, recognizing that we couldn't possibly learn, let alone teach, everything that we want to, why do you personally feel it's important to prioritize teaching reading?
Denise Eaton:Well, I think about my dog, Pebbles. She's adorable and she sits and she can speak for her treat. Do I want a choir of people that sit and speak for their treat? Did they learn 12 songs this year? Did they get a one at contest? Yeah, I want to get a one at contest, but I don't want them just to sit and bark. I want them to have a thought. I want them to have an understanding. I want them to see how it all ties in, in the end, when they look back on their musical career. And it might just be the pinnacle might be high school. But let's say they go on and they're singing in church choirs, community choirs, ensembles, barbershop quartets, whatever, I want them to understand that they learned something in this choir class that was music education, not just how to sit and bark.
Denise Eaton:And so that's a philosophical thing for me. I want them to have an understanding of how 16th notes work. I want them to tie in math to music, because you can and they can, and they can get better. Some of the weakest math students can be some of your best rhythm readers, but maybe no one ever explained it to them in a way that made sense. I don't know.
Denise Eaton:But they can be successful and they can be a part of something that is so much bigger than themselves. And the only way they can really do that is to learn along the way. And I want to learn. I learn every time I do anything. So that's my philosophical thing. That's how I feel. I want them to walk away, having an understanding of what they did for four years in that high school choir program. And reading's part of that, for me.
Greg Ristow:So let's see. Yeah, it's beautifully said. Anything else you want to talk about? We have just a couple of minutes left. I feel like we've covered a lot of ground.
Denise Eaton:Well, we have. I just think if you are a teacher that is struggling with teaching sight reading, that you find a process, find a mentor, find someone that does it well, find out what they do, how they do it, have a plan. There is no winging it. That never works well for anybody. That's what I used to do. And then I changed, and I really started doing more score study and that led to even better teaching of sight reading because I was seeing how it could all tie in together. But have a plan, have 17 ways to skin that cat, depending on the level of the choir, that ensemble in front of you. Have a barometer and know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Some things won't work one day and they'll work another day.
Denise Eaton:I used to say, "Clearly, I'm not getting through to you today or you're not trying hard. I don't know which one it is, but we're going to come back to this tomorrow and I'm going to think about it, and maybe you think about it." It's choir, it's not cancer. It's fun. It should be engaging. It should be joyful. And we can laugh and have fun when we sight read. We can. Especially when we know it's going to be tying into the song we're going to do. It's like, "Woo-hoo, we're going to knock this song out of the park and be successful."
Denise Eaton:But get help. Help is the best prayer I know. And don't be an island. And if you want to email me, email me. My website will be in the notes and there's a way to contact me. I'm a mentor to many and I just don't think we need to ever feel like we're alone in this profession. There's too many fabulous people out there that can help. And they might just say that one thing that triggers you to make a little bit of a change and that one change could make a change with your students' learning. So that's about it. I'm very honored to have been here with you today and I appreciate you including me.
Greg Ristow:What a treat. Yeah. Really, it's been a delight. As we wrap up, you mentioned your website. What's your website? Where can people learn more about you?
Denise Eaton:It's www.deniseeaton.com.
Greg Ristow:Great.
Denise Eaton:The publications are there and there's also a way to contact me, so feel free to. I'd love to hear from you if you have questions or if I can help in any anyway.
Greg Ristow:Excellent. Well, thank you so much.
Denise Eaton:And if you're a Fixed Do person, two of the books that we mentioned today are for Fixed Do.
Greg Ristow:Yeah, that's great.
Denise Eaton:Because a lot of colleges do Fixed Do, so that's helpful, as well.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I'm a Fixed Do plus scale degrees person, myself. That's what I think and hear in.
Denise Eaton:Well, I think when our ears are more refined, we can move on in those areas. But I think, for the non-varsity tenor bass choir, I can't even imagine them saying, "We're in the key of Fa." I just can't even go down that path. Or Me. "Okay, we're in the key of Me," and you sound Me. So anyway, I don't know.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I will say, Denise, that I use your SMART books with my students at Oberlin in our one-on-one sight-singing work because they're so good for... When you're working in Fixed Do, you have to learn your tonic triad and all the keys, and it has different words in every key and those SMART books are so good because they give the students a chance to get used to what that tonic triad feels like in all the different keys.
Denise Eaton:You should see the STEPS book in Fixed Do. It's all the fundamentals from the tonic... So you're in the key of Te and you see Te Do Te Te Re Te Te Me Te. Oh my gosh. I did that because my friends that teach in Hurst-Euless-Bedford in Texas, it's in the Fort Worth Dallas area. I was doing a workshop for them and I said something and they said, "Well, we don't have to worry about that because we're Fixed Do." And I went, "What sight-reading materials do you use?" And they said, "Well, it's hard to find them." So we made that happen for them.
Greg Ristow:That's great. That's really great.
Denise Eaton:But colleges use them, too, so that's good.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks so much. For our listeners, join us next time when Dr. Elizabeth West Marvin from the Eastman School of Music joins us to demystify perfect pitch. Until then, we'd love to hear from you. Send us your questions, comments or show ideas at notes@utheory.com.
Leah Sheldon:Notes From the Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
Greg Ristow:uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
Leah Sheldon:With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
Greg Ristow:Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
 
 
 
 
 

Preparing for Contest Sight Reading with Dr. Andrew Machamer

Dr. Andrew Machamer joins us to talk about how to teach and build the skills students need to be successful sight readers, not just for contest, but for life.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro
0:26 Welcome/Introductions
0:30 Introducing Andrew Machamer, Asst. Prof. of Music Education at Baldwin Wallace
1:45 What do you teach at BW? Band music ed. faculty, teach instrumental methods, woodwind methods, oversee student teaching placements and supervision. Great opportunity to be connected to teachers in the area and how everyone's managing in this time of the pandemic.
2:30 Preparing for Contest Sight Reading. What is contest?
Opportunity to get outside perspective on how your ensembles are progressing, important to do because otherwise you might just be getting feedback from administrators who aren't necessarily well-versed in musical arts. Great way to create a goal and motivation for students, as well.
3:50 Why do we do sight reading at contest?
Because it's fun! (Haha.) It deepens the experience of context, certainly. And it gives us a baseline measure of where our musicianship is. When else are you going to do sight reading and have it be as meaningful as it is when it's at contest?
5:10 Why is sight reading specific to contest? Should it be?
You can't wait to last minute to start getting ready for it. It has to be a part of your daily routine, whether that's teaching students a counting system, teaching them to break down the and's and ee's, etc...  Sight reading at contest is not the end, it's a point of reference along a journey.
7:00 What does sight reading at contest look like, compared to a normal day in band rehearsal?
New music, new space, new outfits, everything will feel new. And there are time limits, 3-4 minutes of silence where everyone works on their own music. 3-4 minutes where the conductor gets to go over things, you can't play, but you can sing, etc... So, that process needs to be practiced before the day of contest.
Teach students what to look for when they first see a piece, what to do in those 3-4 minutes of silence:
Look for key signatures
Look for time signature changes
Find difficult rhythms
Expression markings: Do we know what this word means?
Always good to invite people to come in and adjudicate or clinic before contest.
And the environment may be totally different -- students might normally rehearse in a cafetoriumnasium, and at contest they're in a performing arts center, and suddenly everything sounds different. So anything we can do to get them ready for all of the other things ahead of time, the better.
9:37 And how can you prepare students for the logistics of coming into the sight reading room, getting music distributed, etc...?
That's part of the process to work on in rehearsal. Section leaders distribute parts. Especially percussion: one person responsible for assigning the different percussion parts, and getting the instruments setup so you're ready to go.
10:40 Greg: When I was a student in HS band, we practiced rep for a really long time, and worked much less on reading skills. Has that changed in the 20+ years since I was in high school?
Andrew: You've got your prepared pieces, which you want to be extremely polished. Sometimes sight reading is more of an afterthought. Plus, it takes a lot of work to get sight reading pieces ready to play for an ensemble. Practicing 3 hours before a concert isn't gonna do it, but if you spread those out, it can make a big difference.
12:30 Why teach sight reading in general?
Creates independence. They feel confident, they can get a sense of what it sounds like through audiation, or dissect the rhythms, or look at the terms and know I'll be able to perform it. The general musicianship of the player comes up through this.
13:40 What tools and skills are needed for students to be successful at sight reading?
You can think of building a heirarchy of skills, from most basic to subtle:
Counting
Notes and fingerings
Blend and balance: who has the melody?
Intonation
And these all affect each other. So, for instance, with intonation, can you hear the beats when you're out of tune? Do you know how to fix it? What do you do with your embouchure, on your instrument?
15:17 Can you talk about counting systems?
Whether it's the Gordon du dude, the Kodaly, or Takadimi, or 1e&a these systems are really useful for dissecting rhythms.
16:04 Long term strategies
There are lists of what types of meters you'll see in the sight reading, depending on what class you are, then you can plan to expose students to those rhythms, that music, etc...
The Gordon method is so great because you get the 2/4 and 6/8 right away, recognizing the difference between macro and micro beats, helping students feel the difference of the subdivision between the two.
19:20 And working on ties, take the ties out, then add them back in to help students master those rhythms.
Rhythm is the most important thing, it's paramount.
20:20 How do you build fluency in the fingering/notes side of sight reading?
Scales. They're the building blocks of music. Then it's not just a fingering, but part of a scale, part of something else. All the major scales, start to get into the minors. It will also help you identify where the fingering deficiencies are.
21:55 Where can directors turn to find resources for teaching sight reading?
If you're working with high school, pull from the middle school library. Use state lists, if you're playing grade 4 repertoire, look at the lists and get some grade 2 and 3 pieces to practice.
23:05 What is sizzling? It's performing the rhythm on ss-ss-ss. It forces musicians to engage their abdominal muscles, which prepares them nicely for playing. Also helps them to get the front of the note to sound, which, in the band world, is where we need to line things up.
That silent time, it can be so easily overlooked, but the students need to know what to do before they experience it: accidentals, key changes, tempo changes, ritardandos, dynamics. They won't know to look for those unless you practice it.
25:10 Singing with bands. As a conductor it's often the best way to model. Having students sing their own parts is such a powerful things. Working with drones: put a drone on and sing a pitch, bend down or up to manipulate the beats. Singing is great because in band we all make sound such different ways, reeds, buzzing, percussion -- but singing we all produce sound the same way, makes a base for working on pitch and melody, then applying it to the instrument. If you can sing it, you can play it.
To get students comfortable with singing, play it first, then sing what they just played. Give them a chance to hear it, then echo it. Then gradually, let's try to sing this without playing it. Now let's play it. Were you close? With or without solfege.
I've heard so many times, "I'm not in choir I'm in band, why are we singing in band?" It's huge, it's such an important part, even at the very highest level.
Singing as an instrumentalist is about being able to hear what the music should sound like without having to resort to an instrument to create that sound. Can you audiate this?
28:30 Intonation of notes within chords and pitch bending for tuning practice
30:00 How do you get from tuning with a drone to a point of knowing where I am in a chord in real music?
Match pitch first to a drone singing. Then build chords from scales, each person singing their part of the chord. Then alter them chromatically, to gradually lead them into feeling how quality can shift and how roles change with different harmonies. And, you can even talk about just intonation and put the different cents on the board for the different parts of a chord. And take whatever we do in singing then straight to our instruments.
31:45 In choir, we can see everyone's parts and what part of the chord we're on. How do you get instrumental students who are looking at only one line to know where they are in the chord?
Pick important chords in the music -- cadences, or starting chords -- and pause on it, have the students figure out where they are on the chord. If they're not getting it, everyone play the root, walk up the scale to your note.
34:50 Balancing teaching group's strengths vs individuals' strengths. You have to know your students, pick appropriate rep to work on that, maybe bringing in people to do sectionals with weaker sections. Some will take private lessons, some won't.
38:00 Solfege systems (briefly!)
43:30 Solfege, sight reading, etc... is all about giving them the skills to be able to make music independently well beyond their years in school music programs.
44:20 What are your thoughts on sight reading during a concert?
I love it. What a great way to impress your parents, administrators, audience -- it's like a magic trick, "we're going to perform this piece we've never seen before!" The weirdest thing is the four minutes of silence for the audience. But it's great, to let parents understand what we're doing. Makes it more than just an exercise.
47:30 What are great sequential resources to build up sight reading, and rhythm, especially?
Successful Habits method books for middle school and high school band especially.
Darcy Williams, Teaching Rhythm Logically and their podcast After Sectionals. Includes rhythm charts to project on the board. It's very sequential, lots to practice from.
uTheory's rhythm reading exercises -- students get immediate feedback, can work on their own.
49:20 Using Recordings -- recording and playing back to students, can be really powerful in allowing students to decided what we need to work on.
50:00 Where can listeners find you, Andrew? BW faculty page. 
51:02 Wrap-up.
Transcript
Theme Song: These are the Notes from the Staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're going to do, and we hope you're learning something new cause the path to mastering theory begins with you.
Greg Ristow:Welcome to Notes from the Staff, a podcast from the creators of uTheory, where we dive into conversations about teaching music, music theory, ear training, music technology and more to students of all ages. I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and a professor of conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.
Leah Sheldon:And I'm Leah Sheldon, head of teacher engagement for uTheory. And with us today is a special guest, Dr. Andrew Machamer, who is assistant professor of music education at Baldwin Wallace University. He's here to talk with us about preparing band and orchestra students for contest sight-reading. Andrew, welcome.
Andrew Machamer:Thank you so much, happy to be here.
Leah Sheldon:And, why don't you tell us just a little bit more about yourself?
Andrew Machamer:Sure. I'm from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. And I went to my undergraduate degree at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, which is a small state school outside of Pittsburgh and there I earned my bachelor's in music education. And then for graduate school, traveled to University of Minnesota in the Twin Cities, and I earned my master's and doctorate in bassoon performance. During that time, I taught many different marching bands, pet bands, concert bands, private lessons, anything to just stay in the education world and kind of hone my skills. And then moving here to Berea with my wife, starting at Baldwin Wallace about five years ago, have really enjoyed being a part of the community here.
Greg Ristow:So, tell us a bit more about your role there at Baldwin Wallace. What do you teach?
Andrew Machamer:So, I am the band music education faculty member. And so, I instruct the woodwind class. I also teach Instrumental Music Methods, which is an upper level method course for our music education majors on how to be a band or orchestra director. So I co-teach that with my string colleague, it's a really fantastic class. And then, I also oversee student teaching placements and supervision.
Andrew Machamer:So, I get a really great opportunity to go out into the schools and meet directors, and watch our students interact with their students, and kind of see what is going on in the area, and how people are managing the pandemic and their programs and where the trajectory of things are going here in Ohio.
Greg Ristow:So we're going to talk specifically about preparing students for contest sight-reading, and being the one person in this conversation who hasn't taught in the public schools and isn't so connected to that. I wonder, Andrew, could you just start us off with what in the world is contest, and when is it and just give us some background?
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. Contest is an opportunity for directors to take their ensembles to a place to be adjudicated. I think just to get some outside perspective on how their ensembles are progressing to get some objective numbers from experts in the field that they can use to then inform their instruction as they move forward with their program. I think that's such an important thing to do. Otherwise, you're just getting kind of feedback from administrators who might not be as well versed in the musical arts.
Andrew Machamer:So to get really specific surgical feedback about blended balance, and intonation and things like that from people that know, I think can be really valuable. So, I think that's why we do it. I think it's also a great way to kind of have something to work towards with an ensemble, to get the students excited and engaged and hey, we're going to work towards this goal, we're going to go play in front of some really great people and we're going to get some feedback. So, I think those things all combined can make contest a really valuable thing for both the students and the instructor.
Leah Sheldon:So, I think a lot of teachers would probably like to know why do we do sight-reading at a contest?
Andrew Machamer:Because, it's fun. Why not, right? Because it's enjoyable, and everybody loves to be put on the spot and try something brand new in front of new people. Right. I mean, I really do think we do it at contest because I feel like it deepens the experience for the players. We're already there, we're in our uniforms, in our outfits and we're playing already, like why not do something that is going to kind of give us a baseline idea of where our musicianship is as an ensemble? And, let's play some music that we've never seen before and let's put our musicianship to the test.
Andrew Machamer:And so, I think at contest, it's a really great time to do that. And then again, to get that feedback from the experts. I mean, when else are you going to do sight-reading and have it be meaningful in that way? Like, you're not going to do site reading in a concert, although we'll come back to that, I have an idea, but I guess, when else are you going to do site reading and have it be as meaningful as it is when it's at contest?
Leah Sheldon:Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about that. So I mean, why is it specific to contest? Should it be specific to contest? I think back to when I was in the classroom and it became so important at that time of year, but it could also be important the whole year round.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. Yeah. You can't wait until the last minute to start getting ready for sight-reading right before you do it. It has to be a holistic approach. I think what you do in rehearsal every day should then be applied to a sight-reading exercise. So if you're rehearsing and breaking down notes and rhythms, and you have a counting system that you have your students use, maybe put the rhythm on the board and break it down the ands, and the e's, and the ahs and have them participate in that. Kind of teach them to teach themselves almost, so that when they're confronted with a new rhythm in the sight-reading, they can then apply that. But that needs to happen year round, like every day in rehearsal, maybe you have a warmup routine where you put a difficult rhythm on the board and you break it down and then you play it as part of a scale.
Andrew Machamer:Or in rehearsal, you ask the question who has the melody here? Who should we be hearing? Who should we be listening to? Who's the most important part? Like, those are things that I think should just be part of your rehearsals every day. And then again, the sight-reading will then test your musicianship and the ability to make decisions as an ensemble, but you have to give them permission to do it and rehearsal and you need to let them try it multiple times before they have to do it for a contest. Which is just like a point on the path, sight-reading at contest is not the end, it's just like a point of reference to get some feedback to then move on to the next part of your growth as an ensemble. But I agree with you, it can't just be right beforehand. I think it has to be baked into everything that you do in your rehearsals.
Greg Ristow:So just coming back to my naivete, imagine that I'm a ninth grader and I've never been to contest, what's the day going to look like? And, how is that site reading going to be maybe different than site reading we do in the band room normally?
Andrew Machamer:Right. Yeah. So, what is going to be different? And, I think that's the big thing. When things are new and different, it shakes our confidence a bit. And especially in the wind world, when we don't feel confident, we don't take a good breath and we don't take a good breath, it's going to be hard to create a good sound. So, how can we make that newness or those things that are different commonplace? And, we can train them to do that. And so, they're going to be wearing their outfits, their tuxes or whatever concert attire. They're going to have new music in front of them for the first time. They're going to be in a new space, so it's going to sound different and look different. And, they're going to be playing in front of somebody new. Okay, so all of that, and we're not even talking about the music, all of that is new. So, how can we get them comfortable with that?
Greg Ristow:And there's going to be a time limit probably, right and sort of various rules around that?
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. There's usually, I mean, in Ohio, it says three to four minutes, where there's a silence and everyone's working on their own music. And then three to four minutes, where the conductor gets to go over things. Nobody plays, which you can sing, you can clap, you can... So, that process needs to be practiced. So again, like that can't be a new experience on the day of site reading. So, we need to go through that process. What is the process of getting ready to play a piece for the first time? And so, you need to say you were going to open your music, let's look for key signatures changes. Difficult rhythms, expression markings. Do we know what this word means?
Andrew Machamer:I mean, all of those things need to be addressed in our practice sessions, so that when they sit down and they open their music for the first time, they can start to look at those things and they're comfortable doing and dissecting those things right off the bat.
Andrew Machamer:But I think with this newness, like having people come in and adjudicate or clinic before that, like getting comfortable playing in front of new people is going to be such a huge help. The thing that's really interesting out here is there is some cafetorianasium, like some schools don't even have auditoriums, so they go to a performing arts center for an adjudication event, and everything sounds different, and it looks different and it's very intimidating. So, anything that we can do to make them feel more comfortable is going to translate to a better performance. And so, realizing and identifying what those things are and giving them a chance to try it out beforehand is going to be key.
Leah Sheldon:So thinking about the logistics of sight-reading, Andrew, how do you make sure that the students know exactly how they're going to get that music passed out and divided up without eating into that preparation time?
Andrew Machamer:Right. I think that's part of the process as you're rehearsing it in rehearsals. And so, "Okay, can we identify this is the section leader who's going to hand out the parts to the other members of the section." And particularly percussion in the back of the room, who is going to be in charge of assigning the different percussion parts to the different musicians in the back? And getting those instruments set up, so that you're ready to go when the time comes, that can't be a day of decision. That needs to be something that's baked into the experience of practicing site reading in a rehearsal. So, I think having some student leadership set up and having those responsibilities clearly define before that moment, that's going to lead to some success there.
Leah Sheldon:And, letting them practice it.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely.
Greg Ristow:I remember thinking way back to like middle school, high school band myself, playing French horn. I remember just being so shocked by the sight-reading experience, because generally in our band program, we would work on the same pieces of music for a really, really, really long time. And it was pretty rare that we worked on reading skills, and I wonder if that is something that's changed in the 20 plus years since I've been in high school, or if that's something that is still the case in a lot of band programs. I know certainly in a lot of chorale programs that many teachers choose to focus more on certain pieces of rep, rather than sight-reading. Is it true in the band world as well?
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. I mean, you have your selection that is from the list that you are going to be adjudicated. You want those pieces to be extremely polished, so you're sweating it. You want to make sure that those notes and rhythms, that everything is right there. And sometimes, sight-reading is more of an afterthought. And so, we just don't do it very often. And plus, it takes a lot of work to get sight-reading pieces together for the group to play. I mean, to make sure that all the folders have all the pieces and it just, it's time intensive.
Andrew Machamer:So, I think it is something that definitely gets kind of pushed to the back of the mind or swept under the carpet. But again, if we can just like practicing in-general, like practicing three hours before a concert is not going to do it, but if you take that three hours and spread it out, it's going to be much more fruitful. So to your point, I think, yes, it still happens. A lot of directors either don't have the time or the energy to do more sight-reading exercises. But if we want to be successful at it, we got to do it, we got to do it more often.
Greg Ristow:And I mean, I have to think, the point of doing sight-reading at contest surely is isn't just to do sight-reading at contest. But it says that as a community, we value those skills and we want to reinforce the importance of teaching those skills.
Andrew Machamer:Sure, absolutely.
Greg Ristow:And so, I wonder if you might talk a little bit to the value of sight-reading and why we just teach sight-reading in general.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. I think it creates independence in the players, that they feel confident that they can look at a piece of music and get a sense of what it sounds like through ideation, or be able to dissect the rhythms or to look at the terms on the piece of paper and just know that I'm going to be able to perform this music. There's nothing here that I haven't seen before, and I feel comfortable and I'm going to be able to play this. So, I think it's just the general musicianship of the player that we're nurturing when it comes to preparing them to sight-read, so that they feel confident and they're able to perform the music.
Leah Sheldon:Yeah. That's really great insight on the sight-reading as a whole, not just as a specific part of contest, you mentioned something a while back though that I want to kind of circle back to. So you said that, you mentioned a counting system, and this is pertinent because last week we actually were talking about solfege systems and the importance of having one for teaching new music. So, I think that kind of goes right along those lines. Do you have anything else to add on to that about what other tools or skills are really necessary that we need to intentionally give to the students, so that they are able to be good sight-readers?
Andrew Machamer:Right. Yeah. That's a great question. And I think outside of rhythm, I mean, notes and fingerings are going to have to be on that list too. Right? If we-
Leah Sheldon:Sure.
Andrew Machamer:... aren't addressing that in rehearsal, if we aren't giving them the tools they need, the fingering charts to so they can find fingerings themselves. So when we think about the hierarchy of music making, like notes and rhythms, and then phrasing, blend and balance, intonation and all of that affects one another. So when we talk about specific skills, like how can you hear the beats of intonation, that you're out of tune? And, how do you fix it? How do you do it with your armature? What do you move on your instrument? Those are tangible skills that you can absolutely address in rehearsal that will then directly affect the sight-reading performance. But the counting, fingerings, intonation, identifying who has the melody. When you have a long tone, that's probably not the melody, so let's turn our listening ears on and try to find the moving part, things like that, that can be ingrained. But to your point, those tangible skills can absolutely be useful when it comes to the sight-reading portion.
Greg Ristow:Can you talk a little bit about counting systems?
Andrew Machamer:Sure. And, I think it's different... It's what your comfort level is, whether it's the Gordon method, and you're doing Du's/Du De's, or the Kodaly, the Takadimi, that's a little outside my comfort zone, but the one and two, and 1 e and a 2 e and a. Like those counting systems, although maybe not the most musical thing are really clear and you can put them on the board and you can have the students, count and clap and dissect. And this is beat one and beat two starts here, then what part of this beat is this note? I think those can be really helpful and having the students write it in their own music, so that they get comfortable with dissecting rhythms in their own parts can be really helpful too.
Greg Ristow:So maybe let's just think about long-term strategies, so let's say I want to be sure that by the time we get to contest, my students are ready to read whatever rhythm happens to appear in their part. So, what does that look like over the course of the school year in the classroom?
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. I think depending on what that rhythm is, you kind of integrate it into your warmup routine, where you have that rhythm, they're exposed to that rhythm.
Greg Ristow:Or I guess specifically, because we won't know necessarily what the rhythms will be, right? Or are there-
Andrew Machamer:True. Yeah.
Greg Ristow:So, where do you start? How do you build up those skills long-term?
Andrew Machamer:Well, there is a list of what types of meters that you're going to see in the site reading portion of contest, depending on what class you are. So if you're going to be dealing with 6/8, or 3/4, the more the students are exposed to those meters, the more comfortable they're they're going to be, obviously that makes sense. So I guess, just knowing what you're in store for and making sure that you perform, or rehearse music that have those meters in, so that the students are more comfortable when the time comes. I think that's got to be key.
Andrew Machamer:People like, "Well, 6/8 is so difficult." It's like, is it really difficult or is it just different from what we normally play? And, we just need to expose them to that triple feel more, and then they'll be able to do it. So, that's why the Gordon method is so great, because when they're in your jump right in method book, it's like you do duple meter and triple meter at the same time. So you do 2/4 and 6/8, so we're dealing with two macro beats, and then the microbes change, but the macro beats are the same, and understanding that differentiation and the feel and the subdivision of the beat is so great. And, we need to make sure that the students instill that in their rehearsing and in their practicing as well.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I think that's such a great point, especially with compound meter. How often do we find students who, somewhere along the line, got in their head that the number on the bottom of the time signature tells me how many beats there are. And so, I am going to count it one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three, four, five, six. And, it's such a different feel, than when you have those two, as you said, macro beats and the subdivided pulse within them.
Greg Ristow:Statistically, I'm going to fall back on my very nerdy music theory-ness, when we look at music written in 6/8, 9/8, 12/8, there's a much smaller number of rhythmic patterns that are used, than there are in music written in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, etc. Generally, a huge portion of it is just those basic patterns of the 3/8 notes da, da, da, da, da, da. Or the long shorts da, da, or the full beat length. And really, any other pattern is pretty unusual, so.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah, that makes sense.
Greg Ristow:I think, sorry, just to dive off, but we do, I think we get a bit freaked out about 6/8 when we start, because if we're counting it at the eighth note level, we won't notice those macro beat length patterns, there aren't all that many of them.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. You know what else throws musicians for a loop is ties, where we have a rhythm and we introduce a tie. And all of a sudden, there's an obscureness to the beats, or we lose the subdivision and their heads just kind of implode there for a minute. And when we're rehearsing, if we can take those ties out and let them experience what's happening underneath the tie, and then you put the tie back in. So kind of like simplifying the rhythm, giving them a chance to experience it. And then when you add that tie back in, they have a sense of what's happening. But I mean, rhythm is just, gosh, it's so important.
Andrew Machamer:I would argue that is probably the most important thing, particularly when you have a room full of high school students trying to do something altogether. If the pulse isn't there, if the rhythm isn't right, it's going to be very difficult to do anything else on top of that. I mean, even more so than correct notes, which is probably blasphemous to say, but the rhythm is just paramount and eight's got to be there, so.
Leah Sheldon:Well, a correct note at the wrong time is still a correct note, but the rhythm is-
Andrew Machamer:Incorrect note.
Leah Sheldon:Yeah.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah.
Leah Sheldon:So, agree with you.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. I love that. Yeah. And you tell that to a band and they're like, "Oh yeah, I guess that's right."
Greg Ristow:You were talking about also the fingering and getting notes right aspect of things. Beyond just handing out fingering charts, what sorts of things can you do to build fluency in that?
Andrew Machamer:Scales, period. I think scale work is so important on a wind instrument. I mean, they're building blocks of music, so if you want your students to be able to play a G-flat, you need to have keys that have that note in there, and you need to practice those scales and that's how they're going to get comfortable with it. So then, it's not just a fingering, but it's part of a scale, part of thing else. And so, I think all the majors and starting getting into the minors, like that's really going to help the fingerings a lot and it will also help you identify where the fingering deficiencies are. I remember we did a hymn song of Philip Bliss, which is D-flat major. And so, it was really apparent which instrumentalists knew those fingerings and which didn't when we would warm up with that scale.
Andrew Machamer:It's like, okay, we got to work on these fingerings in the trombones, slide positions, or we need to work on this alternative fingering in the clarinets to help them overcome these difficulties. But, I just think scales has got to be it, that's got to be the answer when it comes to fingerings and finger fluency.
Leah Sheldon:And beyond scales and putting rhythms on the board, where can directors turn to find resources? I'll kick it off by saying, I had the opportunity to work with both the middle school and high school band, and so I would often pull from the middle school library to practice high school sight-reading.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah, I think that's... I mean, any music selling website is going to have lists of pieces by grade. And if you are going in as a class A and you know you going to read primarily grade four music, I would go to that list and find some threes and twos that you can put in front of them to practice their site reading. There's also just so many state lists out there of pieces that other states use for their adjudication and Ohio is no exception. So look at those lists and say, "Okay, well, what are the adjudicated pieces that are on the list for the grades below mine?" And maybe, we can practice sight-reading, some of those. But I think any list of pieces are going to be helpful, as you're kind of deciding what would be a good site reading exercise for my ensemble to use.
Greg Ristow:When you were talking about that non-playing time before are playing in contest, you mentioned a couple of things, you mentioned counting, you mentioned singing and you mentioned sizzling. Can you talk about how all of those play into things? And I don't even know what sizzling is, so.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. I mean, it's... You basically like sizzle the rhythm. And why I like that is, it for the musicians to engage their abdomen muscles as they're playing or as they're sizzling. And, which is kind of the breathing apparatus we want to engage with as they're using their air to play their instruments. So not only that, but it kind of has them work a little bit harder to get the front of the note to sound, which in the band world is kind of where we need to line things up. So. The sizzling is a great exercise for them to kind of utilize their breathing apparatus that's going to help set them up for playing. But, I think that that silent rehearsal time, study time is, it can't be overlooked. Just, they need to know what to do. And they're not going to know what to do, unless you go over that with them and kind of give them the clues of things that they need to look for as they open up a brand new piece of music.
Andrew Machamer:Is it accidentals? I mean, the key changes obviously, but is there a tempo change? Do you see a ritardando somewhere? What about these crescendos and they crescendos? Where do they happen? How are we going to do that? All of those clues are going to help them perform the piece better, but they're not going to know to look for those unless you practice it in rehearsal. So let's open up our sight-reading folders, let's open up this brand new piece of music, who can raise their hand and tell me something that they see that we should work on, that we should look at, or that we should pay attention to as we perform this. And I think over time, they're going to be able to refine that list and they're going to get to all the things that you need them to get to.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. And, I love that. I love that there's this individualized silent time, where they are just on their own kind of dealing with the music individually, because again, we want them to take ownership of the music making process. And, I think that's a great way to do that.
Greg Ristow:You mentioned singing also, can you talk about that a bit?
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. Singing. Singing the line, singing the melody, as the director on the podium. Oftentimes, singing in band is the best way to model, because you can't pick up all the different instruments that are going on. So if I want something a particular way, I often sing it for the ensemble, but then to have them sing their own parts. I think that would be such a powerful way for them to engage with the music without having an instrument in their mouth.
Andrew Machamer:I mean, we sing a lot with drones for intonation purposes, exercises. We'll put a drone on, and we'll sing a pitch, and we'll match and we'll bend that pitch down or up to kind of manipulate the beats, so that they can then apply that to their instrument. And I just think for us as a band with all these different ways of making sound, reads, or mouth pieces, or no reads or percussion, let's all make sound the same way. And Let's have that be our base, where we can just all kind of be on the same page and connect with this pitch, or melody or what have you. And then, we can apply it [inaudible 00:26:18]. I mean, if you can sing it, you can play it. And it's just, that's our mantra and it just really does connect you to the music.
Andrew Machamer:But they're only going to be comfortable that if you sing in rehearsals, if you practice that. And a lot of times, if they can't do it, and say, "Okay, well, let's play it first." "And okay, now let's sing that same melody." Let's give them a chance to hear what it sounds like, and then let's sing it, and you get them to get into that routine for a bit and they build their confidence up. And then you say, "Okay, now let's just try to sing this without playing it, let's just try it. There's no wrong answer here, let's just see how it goes. And then, okay. Now let's play it were you close. So not necessarily solfege syllables, but I there's a lot of benefit to that too, but we just do it on a neutral syllable just to, can you find the line, do you know how your part goes? And then, apply it to your instrument. So, it's a great exercise to [inaudible 00:27:10].
Greg Ristow:I did my master's in doctorate at Eastman. And when I started my masters, it was right at the end of the Donald Hunsberger era. And, Mark Scatterday started right there, and then of course was still there when I was doing my doctorate. And, both of them said really similar things about singing, like every band must be able to sing and would use it so constantly as a tool in rehearsal, even at that very high level. I love some of those ideas you've just shared about how to move towards that, even with an ensemble that's maybe a little scared it about singing.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. Yeah. I've heard so many times, "I'm not in choir, I'm in band, why are we singing in band?" It's like, because we're making music, because we're becoming better musicians because this is going to help us play better. There's no disconnect, but it's such an important part. And a lot of bands don't do it, whether someone's uncomfortable or there's not enough time, but even at the highest level like you said, it can be a really powerful tool to help get everybody on the same page.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. And I guess, it probably the reason, I mean we've said singing's great, bands have to be able to sing, everyone has to be able to sing. Probably what we're really after there is the idea that we all have to be able to actually hear in our mind what the music should sound like without resorting to an instrument to create that sound. So talking about like internal hearing really.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. Can you audiate this line? And also, when you have your instrument, you push the buttons down and you blow and the note comes out, but it is not... What's the function of that note? Like, if I'm playing a concert F and it's F major, then that intonation is at a certain frequency. But if that F is part of a B-flat chord, well now that F needs to be just slightly higher. Or if it's a D chord and I'm playing F natural, it needs to be a little bit higher than that. And so, we need to be able to listen, and adjust and hear where we fit in, just pushing the button only gets you so close. And so, that's why we do a lot of pitch bending, the groups that I do, we sing with the pitch bending. And, what does it feel like to be out tune?
Andrew Machamer:Like, let's do it wrong on purpose or let's experience what being flat or sharp on purpose actually feels like. And then, let's bring it back into in-tune, so that we're matching pitch, so that when we're on instruments, we can do the same thing. The analogy I use is, it's like a camera lens, which is turning out to be a terrible analogy because nobody has cameras anymore, that have lenses. But when you want it to be in focus, the first thing you do is you take it out of focus, and then you bring it back in, and then you know it's in focus. And so, it's kind of the same idea when we're teaching intonation and we're using singing in the ensemble is, let's kind of take it out and then experience it, and then we can bring it back in, so that we can compare the two.
Andrew Machamer:Again, differentiation, like if we know when it's wrong, then we'll be able to know when it's right a little easier, I think. So.
Greg Ristow:You mentioned working with a drone when you do that kind of work, how do you get from just tuning that unison to a point of knowing where I am in the chord and adjusting based on where I am in a chord?
Andrew Machamer:We sing it. And so, what I typically do is we'll, you're right, matching the pitch is the first thing, and then we'll sing up the scale with the drone on the route. We'll sing as an ensemble up the scale and back down. And then when we get comfortable with that, then we'll walk up the scale, and then the third will stay put, and then the rest of the group will walk up to the fifth, and then we'll have a chord. And then, we'll take that one chord and we'll walk it to down the scale to a five chord, and then we'll start messing with the third to make it minor. And we'll say, "Okay, the people on the fifth now, we're going to take it sharp on purpose." "And, what does that do to the chord?"
Andrew Machamer:So, there is a way to gradually get them to understand their chord responsibility. And of course, you can talk about just intonation and put the sense difference on the board and all that too, which is helpful, but to get them to experience it and to do it singing, now they're not worried about... We're taking a part of the equation away. We're not dealing with instruments, different sounds like let's just sing it, what does it feel like? And then, okay, now let's apply it straight to our instruments.
Andrew Machamer:So whatever we do in the singing portion, we immediately do right on our instruments, so that we have that direct connection between the two. But it's just the groups that I do that with and the groups that I don't do that with, it's just such a stark difference that it's worth the time. And you can do it quickly once you have it set up, you don't have to talk much about it, you can just do it. But, it's just a great way to warm up and just singing, getting them comfortable with that, so that when you have them sing a piece, now they're all ready. We sing and band, that's what we do and that's going to help us be better.
Greg Ristow:So, I come from the chorale world. And so, usually when we're singing, we can see everyone's parts. And so, if I'm wondering, am I on the route fifth or third, I can always look down and usually see what the chord is.
Andrew Machamer:Sure.
Greg Ristow:But that's not the case, obviously in the band world or orchestra world, where you have just your own line. So then, how do you transfer that over to working on real music?
Andrew Machamer:Right. So, I think you pick the chords that are the most important ones and you kind of lead them to that answer. Let's sing this chord, let's play this chord. Okay, if you think you have the route, let's have you play. And let them kind of lead them to that discovery on their own, but you can't do it for every chord, you would be there all day. So let's pick maybe the first chord or the last chord, or if there's a key change or a transition, or it's the end of a movement or what have you, but I think it's comes through repetition and that type of practice. But because you've done the singing and the warmup, they have a sense of that and now, okay, let's apply it to this particular chord. And if they're still not getting it, then you can do the same process of, okay, everyone play, be flat.
Andrew Machamer:Okay. Now, we're going to walk up the scale. And when you feel like you get to your chord member, your chord tone, you're going to stop and you're going to hold that out. So, there are ways to then incorporate that warmup, and that singing and that playing, all that you did with the drone with that. So, you're right. And, I'm so jealous of the chorale world, because you have that ability to see. And as the conductor, you have all the answers in front of you now, albeit it's transposed, and all spread out and you have the percussion to worry about too. But in the chorale world, you have all the answers right in front of you and what a luxury that is. And then I think about my string colleagues, where they're all playing an instrument that basically makes the sound the same way.
Andrew Machamer:Strings and bows, and they're all concert pitch. And, the homogenous sound that they're able to produce, because they're all in instruments that make sound a certain way. And then, the band world is just completely different and wild with all the different instruments. But yeah, so to answer your question, there is a way to get them there, but you got to kind of scaffold it slowly over time. And then, they'll be able to identify, but you have the answers. And so, you can kind of help lead them to the correct answer, as they're listening to their part.
Leah Sheldon:And, the key there is slowly over time. Again, this can't be started the week before contest. These are our skills that are being practiced all year long.
Andrew Machamer:Right. Which is why sight-reading is such a unique thing. It's like a snapshot out of where you are as an ensemble. And we need to understand that, that's all it is. It's a snapshot and it's a metric that we're going to use to help make the group better. It's not like, if we get a two or a three at sight-reading, that means that we're a terrible teacher or this is a terrible group. It's just a point of reference that we can then use to help our instruction moving forward. We need to work more on 6/8, and we need to do stuff in minor. Or we had a word in our piece that we didn't know what that meant, so we need to make sure that we play pieces that have that, so that we can address it in our rehearsals.
Greg Ristow:When I think about site reading in chorale contexts, I think a lot about the intersection of the group's strength and abilities, and individuals strengths and abilities. And as you're working with students over a longer period of time, how do you balance those two?
Andrew Machamer:That's a great question. I mean, from year-to-year, you're going to have certain sections that just have stronger players than others. And I guess, just knowing where your weaknesses are and making sure that those students get extra help along the way. Picking your rep is going to help that too. Like if I know I have a weak trombone section, we're not going to do Lassus Trombone, I mean, that's just probably not. Or if my clarinets are struggling, like MMolly on the Shore is probably not the answer for this year. But, you're going to know where your strengths, weaknesses are. And I think with sight-reading, that's probably where things get a little dicey is, you can kind of stack the deck in your favor by what pieces you choose to perform. But in sight-reading, you're not choosing that piece. So I guess in rehearsals, just being aware of that and making sure that you get some extra attention to those groups, maybe bringing in someone to work with them as a section, bringing in a local professional and having a pullout sectional every now and then.
Andrew Machamer:Or if you don't have bassoonist or oboist starting in that process earlier in the middle school, see, now we're talking really thinking far ahead, but again, I just think it's just knowing your group and knowing where you are and sight-reading can certainly help give you a sense of where that is. But, individuals versus the group, it's always tricky, because some are going to take private lessons and some aren't. Some are going to be in COYO, and NOYO and... All these great groups and others just...
Greg Ristow:For those us in Ohio, we know those, but...
Andrew Machamer:Oh, I'm sorry.
Greg Ristow:... can you tell us what [inaudible 00:36:49]...
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. Youth orchestras or youth ensembles, so Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra, or Northern Ohio Youth Orchestra or Contemporary Youth Orchestra, extracurricular ensembles outside of the band room, or orchestra room or choir room, they're going to get those experiences. And so, you'll know your group and where the deficiencies are, and then you try to address them as best you can.
Greg Ristow:he other thing I think a lot about in... I'm sorry, and so much of what I know is based on the voice and choral world. Right?
Andrew Machamer:I love it.
Greg Ristow:I'm just curious to ask about these various parallels. One of the things that we do, of course, we do so much solfege work. And one of the things that a lot of us do to connect solfege work to rhythmic work is, we'll set up a pattern within a scale and we'll say, "Put a rhythm," I'll or project a rhythm using the document camera or whatever. And say, "Okay, Hey let's do the pattern, Do, Mi, Re, FA, etc., on this rhythm," and then perform them. Do you do things like that in band as well?
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, especially in the middle school level, you would probably just play like every note of the scale, do a measure rhythm, and then do the next note of the scale on the same rhythm. But, I love that as well. I love that idea. And what I really love to do is I'll put the rhythm up, again, without any ties in it and we'll count it and we'll play it. And then, I'll add that tie and say, "Okay, now what does it sound like?"
Andrew Machamer:All right, now let's count it and play it this way too. But, it's a great way to connect the warmup to the piece.
Leah Sheldon:The music.
Andrew Machamer:And that, I think a hundred percent, that's a great way to do it. Yeah, I don't do much solfege and I love solfege, but in the band, I don't know, we just always do it on a neutral syllable. There's no particular reason why. Maybe because of the transposing instruments, like Do would be different. I mean, Do would be Do, but it would be a different note on the different instruments, and so we don't typically do that. But yeah, I love that idea.
Greg Ristow:But you do play your scales, which I think in effect is-
Andrew Machamer:Oh, certainly.
Greg Ristow:... it's like they know where they are on the scale. And-
Andrew Machamer:True.
Greg Ristow:... I guess, singers, we don't have buttons to push down. And so, it's really nice to have a word to kind of replace the function of the buttons a bit.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. Greg, how do you feel about numbers versus syllables? Do you have a preference between one or the other?
Greg Ristow:You should listen to our last episode.
Andrew Machamer:Okay, all right.
Greg Ristow:So, I love them. No, no, no, Andrew, I love them all. I am just completely...
Leah Sheldon:He's not kidding.
Greg Ristow:I've spent time in every major solfege system.
Andrew Machamer:Wow.
Greg Ristow:And, each of them has helped me to hear different things in music. Anyway, in my own teaching, at Oberlin, we use scale degree and Fixed-Do.
Andrew Machamer:Okay.
Greg Ristow:We want students at all time to be tracking both where they are within the key, and also what note they're actually singing, playing, etc.
Andrew Machamer:Makes a lot of sense.
Greg Ristow:So that if I know I'm an E-flat major and I'm singing three, then I know I'm singing a G. Or if here a four, and I know that I'm an F-sharp major, that's a B right. So, we're trying to make those things very tightly connected. In my work at Interlochen, and we use Moveable-Do with Do-based minor. When I was teaching in Texas, Moveable-Do law based minor.
Greg Ristow:So, I've really been through them all. I think they're all wonderful. I think the main thing is kind of like with what you're saying, you can't, you can't pick it up the day before sight-singing for your All-State audition, you've got to be doing it all the way along and yeah.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. I love all the different systems too and how they, some might work better in one situation or another or... Then you get the 21st century atonal and now like solfege syllables are really difficult numbers [inaudible 00:40:42], all of that is I find it really interesting. And we have a class at BW, it's called solfege, but we use numbers. So, you try to figure that one out, but yeah.
Greg Ristow:Numbers are kind of solfege, that's true.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah, that is true.
Greg Ristow:I have a student at Oberlin, all my life, generally when I've done Atonal sight-singing, I've worked in Fixed-Do and had a first year student, actually not a music major, was a student in the college last year. And, I do actually weekly individual sight-reading meetings with my choir students. And so, they're only like five minutes long, so really super quick meetings. And this kid came in and that first day, I'm just like, open page one of the sight-singing book, just see where they are and nails it, turn about halfway through, nails it. I turn to the end, nails it. I pull out Modus Novus atonal sight-singing, actually I started with some Wolf songs, nailed it, finally pulled out Modus Novus atonal sight-singing and opened it.
Greg Ristow:And he looked, he said, "What key is this in?" I said, "Well, it's not really in a key." And he said, "Okay, I'm just going to call the first note Do." And, just proceeded to nail every atonal melody I could throw at him using moveable-Do and just picking a note as Do.
Andrew Machamer:Wow.
Greg Ristow:And I just said, I was like, "How did you learn through this? He said, "Well, we just did sight-singing every day from elementary school through to the end of high school." And, so.
Andrew Machamer:I'm so jealous, that's...
Greg Ristow:Right.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah.
Greg Ristow:That needs to be everyone. Yeah. No, I think, I would be amazed if everyone who graduated from that choir program could do that, but I think it is a testament to where you can get students, if you do these skills. And so, this kid comes in, studying in the college and singing with the top conservatory ensemble, because you can just read down out anything. It's really...
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. That's so impressive. And I think the flip side of that is, some kids come to college without any background in solfege whatsoever, and then they struggle in the first solfege class and it's like, "Well yeah, I mean, you've never done it before, so you got to cut yourself a little bit of a break and work a little harder upfront to get what you need to do." But yeah, I'm jealous of people that can just do it, because that was never me. I had to grind it out, it was tough for me. Solfege was always a difficult class.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I don't think anyone is born a solfege whiz kid. I mean, I think it's that like, when do you start solfege, how long have you had doing it? It's, I mean, as you said, you don't build these muscles overnight, they have to be built over the long-term. I think the other thing that what you just said triggered me to think about is, when students leave our program, whether they go on to do music in college or life, if we've help them build these sight-reading skills, they're going to be equipped to play music they want to play for the rest of their life, without needing someone to teach them how it goes and what a wonderful gift that is.
Andrew Machamer:Absolutely. Yeah. My favorite teacher would always say like, "I'm trying to put myself out of a job, like I want to teach you so well that you don't need me any more." And, I just thought that was really great. I was like, "Yeah, I appreciate that and I can respect that." And you're right, we wanted them to have the skills, so that they can enjoy music long after they are done taking lessons or studying with us. I mean, we're trying to create lifelong music appreciation people out there, that's part of our job and it's exciting, for sure.
Leah Sheldon:So although all of this conversation has been about preparing well in advance, what are your thoughts, Andrew, I've seen directors do this, on site reading during a concert? This is typically done at maybe the concert the week of, or the week before contest is happening. What are your thoughts on that?
Andrew Machamer:I've seen it done really well and I loved it. And, what a great opportunity to impress your parents and your administrators in the audience. It's almost like a magic trick, like we're going to perform this piece of music that we've never seen before. And to kind of bring them along on the journey, like they're going to get... This is what we're going to do at contest, let them know this is part of the process and they're going to get a folder that they've never seen. They're going to open it, they're going to have four or five minutes to look at it on their own. And, here are the types of things that they should be looking at to help remind the students too. And you kind of list the things, and then the weirdest part is that silent four or five minutes when no one... It's really quite...
Leah Sheldon:And the parents are just looking around at each other side eyeing like, "What's happening?"
Andrew Machamer:The candy starts to rustle. It's a really heavy moment, but it also puts the students on the spot too. Like, how do they deal with the nerves of... Now they're not just playing in front of one person, but they're playing in front of their friends and family. And so then that, the first five minutes happened, and then the second five minutes where the instructor is on the podium and they're singing, and sizzling and counting. And he's pointing things out, and then they play it and everyone is just in awe of the students.
Andrew Machamer:And as directors, the people that are with the kids all the time, we know that they can do that, but the parents don't and to let them experience that, ah, it's such a great thing. Because we have to be advocates for our program, not just in recruiting students, but in kind of convincing the parents that this is a special thing that we're doing. I mean, what math class do you know puts kids and desks in front of a bunch of people and they have to do math problems they've never seen before, like it just doesn't translate, so.
Leah Sheldon:And then, being scored on it?
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. Right. Yeah. And then, get scored. But, I just think it's a great way to prepare.
Greg Ristow:Mathletes, right?
Leah Sheldon:Well, sure.
Andrew Machamer:Mathletes. Were you a mathlete, Greg? I don't know anything about mathletes. Is that a thing?
Greg Ristow:It seems like I should have been, but I was not. But, only because our school did not have mathletes, so.
Andrew Machamer:Got you. So, I love it when that type of thing happens. It's just so much more than just an exercise. I mean, now you're involving the parents on the process and you're informing them on what you do every day in the band room. And it's a great experience for everybody, so I think it's A plus. And not to mention, the students get a chance to deal with nerves and how does it affect how they play. And yeah, it's a great thing to do. If you can, if you have time and if you can work it out, but I would definitely recommend doing that for sure.
Greg Ristow:So we've talked about using like the middle school band library as a resource or easier music. I wonder, I bet we probably all have some ideas for really good sequential resources, sort of methods to build up in particular rhythm and wonder just if we might all share some of our favorites.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah. Successful habits in the middle school band, in the high school band, there's a method book series out, it's called Successful Habits. And, that has a lot of great sequential scaffolded exercises that, not just rhythm, but corrals that students choose. There's four parts and okay, tubas, you're going to play the top part now and flutes, you're going to play the bottom part. And, to give them a chance to try the different parts of the ensemble. But, I really do like that series and I think it can be really useful in the band. So, that's the one I would plug for sure.
Leah Sheldon:And I would definitely plug Darcy Williams, Teaching Rhythm Logically. She's an educator in Texas and they're middle school department also has a podcast called After Sectionals. But a great resource that has, even to the point of having scripted out how to teach new rhythms, I should say it is rhythm specific, but it also includes these rhythm charts that are just wonderful exercises to print out and give to the students, or project on the board and perfect for sight-reading rhythm. It's very sequential, there's lots to practice from.
Andrew Machamer:Nice.
Greg Ristow:And of course, I'm going to shameless self plug uTheory, where students can actually practice rhythms, perform the rhythms, see immediate, real-time feedback on how they're doing on all of those rhythms. And you, as a teacher, can assign particular topics to them as well.
Andrew Machamer:Awesome.
Greg Ristow:Good. Well, what have we missed?
Andrew Machamer:The only thing we didn't talk about is recording the students, and then playing that recording back to them and dissecting. I think that can be a really powerful thing for them and allowing them to decide, what did you hear? What are two or three things that we need to work on. Why don't you write those things down? And then, let's discuss what we missed and what went well and what could have gone better. And now, with that new knowledge, let's play it again, not rehearsing, let's just play it one more time. And if you do that enough, then they start to apply those things on the first go around when they're sight-reading. So, the whole recording and having them hear what you're hearing on the podium can be a really powerful tool. So I would definitely make sure that we don't miss talking about that, because that could be a really powerful tool.
Greg Ristow:That's great. Excellent. Well, Andrew, if listeners want to follow you, get in touch with you, what's the best way?
Andrew Machamer:So they can find me on the Baldwin Wallace website, so bw.edu. My email is A-M-A-C-H-A-M-E@bw.edu. And I'd be happy to field any questions about Baldwin Wallace, preparing for sight-reading, music education in-general. I'm very easily reached and would be happy to converse.
Greg Ristow:Awesome. Well, thanks for joining us. It's really been a pleasure.
Leah Sheldon:Thank you, Andrew.
Andrew Machamer:Yeah, pleasures all mine. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Greg Ristow:Great. So join us next time, as we talk about repairing singers for contest sight-reading and sight-reading in-general. And in the meantime, we'd love to hear from you, send us your questions, comments or show ideas at notesatyouththeory.com
Leah Sheldon:Notes From The Staff is produced by uTheory.com.
Greg Ristow:uTheory is the most advanced online learning platform for music theory.
Leah Sheldon:With video lessons, individualized practice and proficiency testing, uTheory has helped more than 100,000 students around the world. Master the fundamentals of music theory, rhythm and ear training.
Greg Ristow:Create your own free teacher account at utheory.com/teach.
 

Solfege Systems with David Newman, Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow

Solfege systems: why we use them, what their particular strengths are, and why you might pick one system over another. We even touch on that hot-button topic of perfect pitch. If you’ve got strong feelings on the Moveable Do vs Fixed Do debate, this is the episode for you! Join David Newman, Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow for this lively conversation.
 
Show Notes
00:20 - Introductions and what is Notes from the Staff?
Greg: Notes from the Staff as a place to share ideas about how to teach music, music theory and ear training.
David: How we can leverage technology to give really practical advice for those of us teaching music who may have really pressing questions.
Leah: A music education degree comes with lots of coursework, but there's not usually a dedicated course in, say, "How do you teach intervals?" so this is just a great place for that.
02:30 - Topic of the day: Solfege Systems
 
02:50 - Favorite solfege method?
David: I don't initially use one for my own sight singing, but I use moveable Do with Do-based minor for my teaching
Leah: Scale degrees and moveable Do.
Greg: Scale degrees and fixed Do.
04:00 Why use a solfege system?
David: These provide a framework for hearing the music you're studying.
Leah: Without a system, you're relying on pure memorization and rote teaching, and that's very time consuming.
Greg: One goal of musical study is that students can move between sound and the page, and solfege systems are the best tools for helping us gain these skills.
06:30 "Six Stages of Solfege Mastery"
System gets in my way
Oh, yeah, the system sort of helps me, maybe there's something to this
Ok, I've got to go way slower when I use solfege, but I can get things right if I do.
I get it! I never want to sing on anything but solfege again!
Ack! I can't stop hearing the solfege in everything I listen to!
Ahhh, I know the solfege, it's there when I need it, but it doesn't dominate how I think about music.
10:00 Breaking down the systems
Scale degrees
Moveable Do, both Do Minor and La Minor variants
Fixed Do or Letter Names
10:30 Scale Degrees
Numbering the pitches of a scale from 1 to 7.
In minor, the names don't change, so we sing 3 lower, but not without a different name.
Scale degrees presuppose the environment you're living in, be that a Major scale, minor scale, etc...
It's about establishing a heirarchy of where we are in a scale, how everything relates to a central tonic. So that even if we're singing a truly modal tune, we still call the first note of the mode one.
This can even be extended to some of the more colorful modes, phrygian major, octatonic, etc...
The words you sing don't change, this really forces the understanding of the relationship between each of the notes of the scale.
14:00 Moveable Do, and its two versions of minor
Same idea as scale degrees, but we're using the solfege syllables to name the degrees of the scale.
But they also have chromatic inflections
In Major, Do is always the tonic.
15:40 Chromatic scale in moveable Do
16:18 The two ways of doing minor. Do minor, or La minor.
18:00 The method we use will be more or useful depending on the repertoire you're looking at
19:00 David improvises a Hozier tune. Is it in Major or minor?
20:00 La minor works especially well for folk tunes that move freely between relative major and minor.
21:00 Do minor is helpful for recognizing similar harmonic patterns across Major and minor. For example: when using Do based minor, So-Ti-Re-Fa is always a dominant seventh. (If we use La minor, we have to learn Mi-Si-Ti-Re as well as Sol-Ti-Re-Fa.)
21:40 Reasons you might choose La minor or Do minor: Is your focus on melodic reading or harmonic understanding? If on melodic reading, you might prefer La minor. If on harmonic function, might prefer scale degrees or Do minor.
 
23:30 Fixed Do & Letter Names
Fixed Do are the letter names for most non-English speaking countries. For instance, in Spanish, the word for the note G is Sol, regardless of what key you're in.
In this way, it's sort of a non-system, it doesn't tell us anything about the function of the note, but it does tell us where we are in pitch space.
25:25 Greg sings "Do a Dear" (or "Re a Drop") in D Major, fixed Do.
Pedagogies of fixed Do tend to have one of two goals:
To build perfect pitch (especially pedagogies of fixed do that are designed to be started with very young children, i.e., ages 3-6), or
To gradually acquaint students with singing in different keys, so that they know instantly what the notes are associated with each scale degree in each key.
27:30 Can also be useful when you move into less tonal, or atonal music.
28:50 If I haven't taught solfege before, how do I start, what are those first things I should do?
Pick a system and start using it
Mimicry is a great place to start: I sing it, you sing it back to me.
Students who aren't familiar with solfege become familiar with it quickly.
32:00 Kodaly and Orff approaches: Start small, add on when you're ready.
 
Two basic approaches to starting small
Begin with a subset of the scale, e.g., in Kodaly's approach the notes are introduced one by one in the order Sol, Mi, La, Do, Re, Fa, Ti.
Begin with primarily stepwise motion through the full scale, gradually add leaps. (How those leaps are chosen varies widely in teaching approaches, some approaches focus on the size of the leap, others on what harmonic function it has.)
35:00 The Two "Key" Skills for Sight Singing And Dictation
Know the sound of each solfege/scale degree within the context of a scale. This is an aural skill.
Translate notes to solfege/scale degrees (and vice versa) fluently. This is a theory skill.
One advantage of moveable do is that you don't have to think much about the translation between notes and solfege as you're first learning. It allows you to skip past thinking "what is this note in this key," though of course we want students to build up that skill eventually, too, even if our chosen system is moveable do.
 
39:00 Perfect Pitch
Once your six years old, the chances of learning it are basically nill
Three overlapping theories
1. Critical period theory: The brain has enough plasticity up to age 6 to learn things like language and perfect pitch.
2. Unlearning theory: We all start with absolute pitch, but as we learn that things like scale degree function are more meaningful in music than frequency, we unlearn absolute pitch.
3. Genetic component: How do we explain students who did start before age 6 and did not acquire perfect pitch?
Perfect pitch sags with age, around age 40 things tend to start to sound lower. There may be a physical component on perfect pitch.
Some think of it as a mark of genius in the musical community, but if you talk with many professional musicians who have it, they'll often tell you it's not entirely a blessing.
Just knowing the frequency of a note doesn't tell us much of anything about what it's doing musically. But knowing where a note is in the scale tells us tons: how it moves, where it pulls, how to perform it.
Functional hearing, "Where am I in the scale?" can be taught at any age to anyone. Phenomenological (i.e., absolute pitch) hearing can only be learned up to around age 6, and it's possible that not all children can learn it anyway.
46:30 Final thoughts?
Leah: Find something you're comfortable with, and use that.
David: I've learned systems along side my students, and I've been really open w/ my own struggles learning them, and that's great too. Then they feel like you're in their camp. My first year of Takedimi was like that!
48:15 What do you want to hear from us?
Drop us a note at notes@utheory.com.
And of course subscribe on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
And visit us at https://utheory.com/notes.
 
Transcript:
Intro: (singing) These are the Notes from the Staff where we talk about our point of view, and we share the things we're gonna do, `cause the path to mastering theory begins with you!
Greg Ristow:Hi. Welcome to Notes From the Staff. I'm Greg Ristow, founder of uTheory and Professor of Conducting at the Oberlin Conservatory.
Leah Sheldon:I'm Leah Sheldon. I'm a former middle school band director and uTheory's Head of Teacher Engagement.
David Newman:I'm David Newman, and I teach Voice and Music Theory at James Madison University, and I do programming and content creation for uTheory.
Greg Ristow:And we're your hosts for Notes From the Staff. So, yeah. Welcome everyone to episode one. Pretty exciting for me. Maybe we should talk just a little bit about what Notes From the Staff will be or what we hope Notes From the Staff will be. Sound good?
David Newman:Yeah.
Greg Ristow:Great. So I guess the thing that I thought about ... First off, we have to give Leah credit for coming up with the brilliant name for Notes From the Staff.
Leah Sheldon:Thank you.
Greg Ristow:In my own music education training, I wasn't taught all that much about how to teach music theory, how to teach ear training. I learned a lot about how to teach performance, and there was a lot of focus on that side of things. But really there wasn't often all that much space for talking about how do we help students understand the music that they're performing or get to a point where they can create music themselves.
Greg Ristow:So I'm hoping that Notes From the Staff can be a place for us to share ideas around that, to pick each other's brains, to bring in guests and talk with them about that as well.
David Newman:And I know I'm personally really interested in the way that we can leverage technology and the reach of something like a podcast to help give really practical advice to people who may have really pressing needs.
Leah Sheldon:I think Greg nailed it. A degree in music education comes with a lot of coursework. You have your education classes, classes in psychology, method classes. And there's not usually a dedicated course in how to teach for example intervals. So this is just a great way to get the conversation going on that.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. We thought for our first episode, we'd start with a red hot topic, the topic of solfege methods. How do you choose a solfege method? What are the solfege methods? What are they good for? I know this is one that every musician I know has a strong opinion on.
Greg Ristow:So just to get the ball rolling, why don't we each just say what our favorite solfege method is? What the solfege method that we hear music in is? David, do you want to start us off?
David Newman:Well, I could ... I'm going to sabotage myself by saying that I probably don't initially use a solfege method in terms of the way I hear music. But having been teaching aural skills for over a decade, I use Moveable Do with Do-based minor.
Leah Sheldon:And I was taught in scale degrees. So I hear and think in scale degrees. But when I was teaching in the classroom, I mostly taught Moveable Do.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I hear music in scale degrees and Fixed Do. If I know what key it's in, I hear it in Fixed Do. Otherwise, I hear it in scale degrees. And I have at this point taught just about all of the systems, Fixed Do, scale degrees, Moveable Do, Do-based minor, Moveable Do, La-based minor. And frankly, I have found in doing that, that each system has its own strengths and teaches you different things about music that makes it possible to hear music in kind of cool different ways.
Greg Ristow:Well, let's just talk a little bit about each of the systems, or even before that, why would we want to use a solfege system? What's the point?
David Newman:I know that when I'm teaching aural skills, I mean, if we don't use any system at all, there's sort of too much latitude to try and figure out how to convey ideas. So for me, I'm trying to build a framework, and I think that's what all of these provide, is a framework to think about the music that you're hearing. And the reason why I've used Moveable Do, aside from the fact that it's what we already taught at JMU, is that it creates a functional system where you're hearing how notes function in a scale.
Leah Sheldon:Yeah. I think without a system you're relying on peer memorization and rote teaching, and that's very time-consuming.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I think for me, I want ... I think one of the prime goals of musical study is that if a student hears something, they understand what's happening in it. Or if they have imagined something in their ear, they should be able to take that to an instrument or to the page. And they should be able to look at the page and hear what they see on the page. And solfege I think is really the best tool. And when I say solfege, I mean, scale degrees or Moveable Do or Fixed Do, or letter names, ways where we're verbalizing something that you couldn't just hear from the pitch about the note.
Greg Ristow:Solfege helps get us between sound and the instrument or the page. And without it, you're kind of shooting in the dark. If you're trying to figure out how something you've heard goes on the piano, if you're just sort of guessing and hitting notes, yeah, you're eventually going to figure it out. But something, a solfege system gets you there much faster. So for me, that's why solfege.
Greg Ristow:I don't know. Have any of you had this experience of asking a student to sight sing and they do it terribly, and then you say, "Hey, have you done any solfege? Would you try it again?" And they say, "I'm terrible at solfege." But then they try it again and it goes better?
David Newman:Yes.
Leah Sheldon:Oh yes.
Greg Ristow:I feel like that's the classic. I joke with my ... I joke? I mean, it's not even a joke. I talk with my students about what I call the six levels of solfege mastery, where like, inevitably if I'm introducing solfege to a group of students that doesn't know it, the first time we're doing it, they're like, "Oh my God, this is so hard. Why can't ... " Especially if we're reading something together. "Why can't we just sing it on the words? Why can't we just sing it on La, La, La?" And that's level one. That's like, "Oh my God, the system gets in my way. I'm better off without the system."
Greg Ristow:And then level two is this like, "Oh, yeah. Okay. I can sort of tell that that sounds like a Do and that doesn't sound like a Do. And maybe there's something to it."
Greg Ristow:And then level three, is this sort of like, "Oh, okay. I've got to go way slower when I do solfege compared to just La, La, La. But, you know, I actually get things more right."
Greg Ristow:And then level four is like, when the buy-in really happens of like, "Oh yeah. I always want to sing on solfege because then I do it right. Don't make me sing on anything else."
Greg Ristow:Level five is this hideous phase where you can't not hear the solfege. You're driving your car. You've got the radio on. And the pop music is no longer text but solfege.
Greg Ristow:And then level six is fluency where when you want it, the solfege is there, but you don't have to consciously think about it. I don't know. For me, it's just such a joy to help get students from whatever level they are to a level or two farther along that continuum.
Leah Sheldon:And it gives them independence.
Greg Ristow:Totally. Yeah. Do those levels resonate with you, David? You teach so much aural skills at JMU.
David Newman:Yeah, they do. I mean, I guess what's funny is that you get ... you can have a classroom full of students and have people at all of those levels at the same time. And so differentiation becomes a challenge.
Greg Ristow:For sure.
David Newman:And inevitably, I also have experienced the reverse of what you have said, where someone comes and does a sight singing exam and does it on solfege first and then says, "Well, the solfege is messing me up." And I say, "Okay. Well, try it without," and then it's much worse.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. It's much worse, but they think it's much better. Right?
David Newman:Right. Because they don't have any system calling them into compliance.
Greg Ristow:I call it playing darts blindfolded. Or it's like walking a tight rope without a net. It's just ... If you're going to sing something without some sort of system going on, how are you going to know? It doesn't have to necessarily be a verbalized system. I mean, I think there are a lot of people who sing La, La, La just great, but they're totally aware of where they are in the scale, et cetera, so.
David Newman:Yeah. And I have actually found that I've started to use solfege much more when teaching voice, because, yeah, there where maybe the system is more commonly that people learn it on the piano or because no one told them they couldn't. And so they learn what they think they heard. Solfege is really great no matter what system you use for honing in and seeing if you really heard what you thought you heard.
Greg Ristow:Yeah, totally, totally. So shall we dive into the systems a little bit and just talk through them? I think the ones that we would call the major systems are scale degrees, Moveable Do, including Do minor and La minor, Fixed Do, and it's sort of sibling letter names, which are basically the same thing, but in different languages. So yeah, scale degrees. Leah.
Leah Sheldon:Yeah. So scale degrees, quick overview here, are just simply numbering the pitches of the scale from one to seven. So if you're thinking of a C major scale, the first note C would be one, D would be two, E is three, F is four, G five, A six, and B seven. And then instead of going to A to C we would repeat that one again and so on.
Greg Ristow:If we were to sing it, then it'd be like one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one.
Leah Sheldon:Exactly. And what I was going to say is sometimes seven is shortened to sev, so that it's only one syllable. It's easier to sing.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. Now what do you do when you're in minor?
Leah Sheldon:The names of the scale degrees do not change. So three stays three. The challenge is differentiating that major three from minor three. So that is maybe where some teachers prefer the strength of Moveable Do and having a different pitch for a different scale, major or minor.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. Yeah. Cool. David, do you want to take us through Moveable Do a bit?
David Newman:Sure. I was just going to comment on the scale degrees thing though. I mean, I love scale degrees and I think I often do think in scale degrees. And the only thing is, and the useful thing about them is that they presuppose the environment that you're living in. So if you know you're living in a minor key and one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one, or one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one. But you still know what ... And we kind of need to know that as one of the things that we ... if we want to advance in our music theory skills, we certainly need to know what scale degrees we're on.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. So scale degrees really is about establishing a hierarchy of where we are in the scale, of saying where all the notes are in relation to a tonic and whether that tonic be a major tonic or a minor tonic. I don't know about you all, but when I'm doing scale degrees, if I'm doing a true modal tune, I will stay with calling the fundamental note of the mode one. So if I'm in Lydian, one, two, three, four, five, six, sev, one.
David Newman:Right.
Greg Ristow:Yeah.
David Newman:And even if you're in a mode that we don't ... not one of our seven named modes, but if you're in one of those modes, it's still scale degrees, unless you're doing something octatonic or adding extra notes.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. And I mean, I think that's one of the beautiful things about scale degrees is that the words you sing don't change.
Leah Sheldon:Don't change.
David Newman:Right.
Leah Sheldon:Mm-hmm (affirmative). And I mentioned that as a challenge, but honestly it really forces the understanding behind the relationship of each pitch in the scale based on what kind of scale you're singing.
Greg Ristow:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, whether it's major, minor, one of the modes, or as David started to play the friggin' major scale. Yeah.
David Newman:So when we do Moveable Do, we're just using the same thing, but we're using the solfege syllables to name those degrees of the scale. But they also have inflections. And one of the really, one of the things that people love about them is that they're easy to sing, that they all have one syllable and they can help show us some other things.
Greg Ristow:Could you sing a major scale for us on Moveable Do solfege so just so we-
David Newman:Sure.
Greg Ristow:Maybe pick a key other than C major so that we just ...
David Newman:Right. So here's A. And so Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. Do, Ti, La, Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, Do.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. So the Moveable Do we're calling the first note of the major scale Do?
David Newman:Right. Right. So Do is always the tonic. Well, actually it depends. It depends on which kind of Moveable Do you're using.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. But in major, but in major Do is always the tonic.
David Newman:In major, the Do is always the tonic. And that does simplify a number of things. It makes it easier to ask about key signatures. You can just say, "Where's Do?" And you don't have to clarify what mode you're in or whether you're in major or minor. It's just Do is there.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. So David, you talked a little bit about inflections. We have Do, Re, MI, Fa, Sol, Ti, Do. But then would you sing something slightly chromatic?
David Newman:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do, Di, Re, Ri, Mi, Do, Mi, Fa, Fi, Sol, Do, Sol, Si, La, Li, Ti, Do, Sol, Do. Do, Ti, Te, La, Le, Sol, Do, Sol, Se, Fa, Mi, Do, Mi, Me, Re, Ra, Do is how I do the chromatic scale.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. So that we have alterations of the vowel, the same consonant for each of the chromatic notes.
David Newman:Yeah. And so every, at least every common function that you might hear has a one syllable name that you can connect to it.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. So you mentioned already that there are kind of different ways of doing minor. What are those?
David Newman:So the most common ... Well, there are two common ways of doing minor. And one is to use Do-based minor, which means that you'll alter the other ... you'll alter the scale degrees that are different. So you have Do, Re, Me, Fa, Sol, Le, Te, Do. Or if you have melodic minor, Do, Re, Me, Fa, Sol, La, Ti, Do. However, many people advocate also La-based minor where you leave Do as the major tonic and use a rotation of the scale for minor, which would give you La, Ti, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La.
Greg Ristow:Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk 00:17:20] recognizing it.
David Newman:It's sort of stop and think.
Greg Ristow:Yeah, because that's not the system that you live in most often. Yeah.
Greg Ristow:So La-based minor is a lot like ... is closely related to relative minor, right?
David Newman:Right.
Greg Ristow:We're saying that effectively, if we're in C Major and we started on A and sang from A to A, we'd have a minor scale, right? And that's effectively our La-based minor. Whereas Do-based minor kind of is much more like the parallel minor. Where in C major, if we switch to C minor, now we have three flats and we're going to alter those. We're going to alter our Mi, our La, and our Ti to be half step Le, Me, and Te.
David Newman:Yeah. And there are, in some ways I think that the method you use will be more or less useful depending on what kind of music you're looking at. We had talked earlier about how a lot of pop music, really, if it's in minor, you really should analyze it as starting on six. And ...
Greg Ristow:And also, I mean, there's so much pop music that kind of lives in this ... Are we in minor? Are we in major? That's sort of drifting between that relative major, relative minor.
David Newman:We find this phenomenon all the time with this artist, Hozier ... Hose ... How do you say his name?
Leah Sheldon:Hozier.
David Newman:Hozier. So we should write a song alla him that of how to pronounce his name, like (singing). And then we can, yeah. That way we'll remember.
Greg Ristow:And it's like, are we in Do or are we in (singing) or (singing), right?
David Newman:Right. It's this key for two chords maybe, and then you're in this key for two chords maybe, and it just goes back and forth.
Greg Ristow:And you're freely, freely flowing between those within the collection of diatonic quiet notes, yeah. Totally. This is true in a ton of folk music as well. Right? That just there are so many tunes. I think even, here we are just at the start of the new year's and so I've been hearing Christmas carols. God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen is one of (singing). David, why did you put us in A minor, which is very low for me.
David Newman:I'm sorry.
Greg Ristow:So this, right. 155, sorry, switch La minor. La, La, Mi, Mi, Re, Do, Si, La, Sol, La, Si, Do, Re, Mi. La, La, Mi, Mi, Re, Do, Si, La, Sol, La, Si, Do, Re, Mi. Mi, Fa, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Mi, Re, Do, La, Ti, Do, Re, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi, Mi, Re, Do, Si, La. Right? And it's like, you hear those places in there that feel so great singing, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi.
Greg Ristow:It's so clearly this little brief, major turn, and having done that in La-based minor, that little shift to the relative major is totally taken care of for us. We don't have to think about shifting to ... moving our Do to a different note or anything like that. And that's really, really lovely.
Greg Ristow:Maybe a little stranger for where we have more parallel motion. And so I think a lot of, especially Austrian-Viennese School of classical music works a lot more within parallel major and minor. And so maybe Do minor suits that better.
David Newman:You know I've advocated at times for thinking in Do-based minor with things that are, especially when things have similar patterns. I mean, for one thing, Sol, Ti, Re, Fa is always a dominant seven than in any key you're in. And I don't ... I can't even tell you what it is in La-based minor. I'd have to stop and think.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. It's ... Yeah, it's Mi, Si, Ti, Re.
David Newman:Yeah. And I'm sure that if you're fluent in La-based minor, then you already know that.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. So I think, now we're really, now we're starting to get at one of the key differences between La minor and Do minor or reasons you might choose one system or another.
Greg Ristow:And scale degrees is very much like Do minor in that, whether you're in major or minor, you're calling the tonic of the scale the same thing.
Leah Sheldon:The same thing, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Greg Ristow:So we're talking about this choice between scale degrees Do minor or La minor. Then part of the question I think is, is your focus on melodic reading or on harmonic understanding? Because David, as you point out, if your focus is on harmonic understanding, then one of your goals is going to be to acquaint students with each chord within a scale. And the words are going to stay pretty much the same in scale degrees in Do minor, but they're going to change if you're using La minor. So that's one of the things you might consider.
Greg Ristow:On the other hand, if your primary goal is quickness of site reading, then it may not be as much concern. La minor might in fact be the better choice because you don't have to worry so much about those two. And I think that's probably why in my experience talking with teachers at the middle school and high school level versus teachers at the college level, teachers at the middle school, high school, elementary level tend to refer La-based minor. And those at the college level where they're starting to work on harmony and Roman numeral and chord function tend to prefer Do minor or scale degrees.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. So we haven't talked about Fixed Do and letter names. I have to say these are two of my favorite systems. In a way they're kind of non-systems. They're just ... So basically Fixed Do is in many countries what they think of as their letter names, so that if you were in a Spanish speaking country or a French speaking country, then you don't ... they don't say C, D, E, F, G, but they say, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, A, La, B, they actually say Si, S-I. And those are just their letter names.
Greg Ristow:So for someone who's grown up in a culture where those are their letter names, to call a note other than C Do feels really weird. Right? It's like if I said, "Okay, great. Let's all sing a C major scale starting on ... " Let's do this again. "Let's sing a D major scale starting on C." Right? Like it would just feel very weird for us to sit there and sing those C, D, E-
Leah Sheldon:Don't do that-
Greg Ristow:... as we get to F#. Right? So yeah. So Fixed Do as a system is just a system of naming the letters, in the same way that if we were singing something on letter names, we're just saying, it's this letter, it's that letter. And generally in Fixed Do we don't sing sharp or flat when the notes are sharp or flat. We just sing. We just sing Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La, Sol, La or Si. David, would you play D Major just so I get the key?
Greg Ristow:Great. So if I were to sing Doe deer in Fixed Do in D major, right? Re, Mi, Fa, Re, Fa, Re, Fa. If I could do it on words, that would be really fun. Ray, a drop of golden sun, me, a name I call myself, far, a long, long way to run, sew, a needle pulling thread, La, a note to follow sew, tea, a drink with jam and bread, doe, a deer, a female deer, that will bring us back to Re. Right?
Greg Ristow:Which if you grew up in Moveable Do land feels so wrong. But you know, for me, that feels right living in Fixed Do land. And most of the pedagogies of Fixed Do, their goal is either to build perfect pitch or to gradually acquaint students with singing in the different keys one by one. So they grow familiar with what the solfege sounds like in the different keys.
Greg Ristow:So effectively, most Fixed Do pedagogies, like if you look at solfege is solfège, which is the French system, they start, you spend forever in C major and then they introduce one flat, and then you spend a time in F minor or in F major. And gradually they introduce one key after another so that it really, what you're learning is what the notes are for different scale degrees and all the different keys.
Greg Ristow:I think this is often ... when people say, "Fixed Do, that's not ... it's not a system." It's not a system if you just throw everything in right away with Fixed Do. But if you limit the introduction of keys and introduce keys one by one, then in Fixed Do effectively makes very quick that connection between scale degrees and note names.
David Newman:We've also used it at JMU. We use it in our fourth semester of aural skills when we get to non-tonal music. And then we do use inflection names. We use the same inflection names that we learned for Moveable Do. But then we're using it partly, just so that students have a way of navigating our notation system, which is tonal. And if you're navigating non-tonal materials in a tonal notation system, it really helps to have that reminder of where the half steps are on the staff.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I mean, I think when I'm working with my students on first singing atonal music, I often have them, yeah, pick their tonic and literally sing tonic between every note of the melody before they sing the melody sequentially so that they're keeping all those tonal skills they have, those references to a home pitch as they do it. Totally. Yeah.
Greg Ristow:Okay. So those are the basic solfege systems and there are other ones. There are the Guidonian and hexachordal system, which is the old, or kind of the original Renaissance system. Yeah, I think probably not worth chatting about too much at the moment.
Leah Sheldon:Save it for another day.
Greg Ristow:Yeah, I think so. Right? Yeah. But maybe we should just talk about, let's say I've not taught solfege to my students before. How do I start? How do I introduce solfege as a concept, solfege system? What are those first things I should do?
Leah Sheldon:It's a great question.
David Newman:Wow. I mean, I suppose the first thing you have to do is pick a system or systems and start using it. And then we're talking about sequencing and how you ... Any system that you choose, I suspect you're going to find colleagues and sequences already-
Greg Ristow:Can I just toss out a crazy idea that I totally stole from a friend who heard this at a conference? Imagine that our musical alphabet started from H and it was H, I, J, K, L, M, N, right?
David Newman:Yes.
Greg Ristow:So let's ... Can we sing in H major scale together? H, H, right?
All:H, I, J, K, L, M, N, H.
Greg Ristow:And if we came down from there, H.
Leah Sheldon:Oh no.
Greg Ristow:N. Right? You see? And we all cringed.
Leah Sheldon:Go ahead. You do it.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. No, I can't. I can't. Right? But I think about ... I like to think about that idea before I start introducing a solfege system to a group of students or a student, because to me, I can't remember a time when Do, Ti, La, Sol, Fa, Mi, Re, Do felt challenging. But if you're just beginning with-
Leah Sheldon:But it will.
Greg Ristow:Absolutely. Absolutely. It'll be completely confusing. So ...
Leah Sheldon:So you're saying don't dive in and start asking your students to sing full scales?
Greg Ristow:Maybe not, or maybe not without aids. I don't know about you all, but what I like to do first is either introduce a subset of the scale to them and build it up bit by bit. Maybe that's the first few notes of the scale, or to write the scale on the board vertically in solfege from bottom to top and then pointing finger go up and down so they can actually be reading it as they do it. I don't know, what are first exercises you all use?
David Newman:Mimicry. I'm going to sing it to you. You sing it back to me. And mimicking small subsets and then expanding the subsets that you asked them to mimic.
Greg Ristow:Yeah.
David Newman:And I have to say that my experience is that, well, all right, I'm dealing with college students who got into music school. So there's that. But students who aren't familiar with it gain familiarity quickly. But that may be absolutely biased by the level of student I'm teaching.
Leah Sheldon:Right. So if I reflect on my teaching, I also have six years experience teaching elementary music. And what you're getting into are a lot of the methodologies of Kodaly or Orff. And although there are a lot of differences between the two, what's the same is that you're starting with a small subset of pitches. So in terms of Kodaly, we're looking at starting with So and Mi, introducing La, then adding Do. But not rapidly. And we're also talking about much younger learners also. So you're spending a lot of time making sure they are able to understand those before you're moving on.
Leah Sheldon:And Orff, you're starting with Do, Re, Mi, just three pitches, and then eventually adding So. So same idea, mimicry, starting with small stuff. Of course, there are so many songs and so many books and so many activities. We couldn't even possibly begin to get into that now, but the idea is the same. Start small, and then add on when your students are ready.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. And starting small, I think there are kind of two basic ways to start small. There's the sort of introduce a note at a time kind of way, which we find in both the Orff and Kodaly approaches, methodologies where you say, okay, in Kodaly, we gradually build up to the pentatonic scale. Then eventually we add Fa and Ti. Then gradually you start adding chromatics.
Greg Ristow:And then I think the other approach to starting small, which is sometimes more useful if you're working with older students, because they already know what a scale is. They want a whole scale. Why are we only seeing the pentatonic? Another way of starting small is to start by saying, "Okay, we're going to start with just steps in the scale. And then we're going to gradually learn to leap around in the scale bit by bit." And you might do that by doing small leaps first, or you might do it by leaping within particular chords, especially if you're working in a context where you're teaching harmony as well. Right?
Greg Ristow:I mean, I think about even just a lot of the great ... So if we're thinking starting small in terms of building up intervallic content, then we might do things like taking patterns up and down the scale. Like we might just go, Do, Re, Do, Re, Mi, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi, where we're getting used to the idea that the order can go forwards and backwards. And that's a pretty important concept, right?
Greg Ristow:Think about how hard it was for us to try and sing the H major scale backwards. And then building up patterns that have leaps in Do, Re, Mi, Do, Mi, Re, Mi, Fa, Re, Fa, where we're starting to learn as well what little leaps within the scale sound like. And you can gradually build up and make up those patterns to do anything. Or even in the classic one for getting comfortable going down the scale, I think, is the Do, Do, Re, Do, Do, Re, Mi, Re, Do, Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Mi, Re, Do which probably every choral director in America knows and has used at some point.
Greg Ristow:All these things to just ... Yeah, these things that as they become comfortable require almost no thought because the order of the notes has become so ingrained. We sort of defaulted to Moveable Do. But of course we could do all these on one, one, two, one, one, two, three, two, one, one, two, et cetera, right? Yeah.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I think these are good. One of the things that I think about a lot is what are the actual skills that go into sight singing music, or aurally analyzing it or transcribing it, or playing it on an instrument by ear. They're largely two separate skills. Number one is, I've got to be able to translate what I'm hearing to a solfege system, or I've got to be able to translate to solfege system to what I'm hearing.
Greg Ristow:That's sort of the ear component of it. Was that Do, Re or Do, Mi? And then there's this mind component of, "Okay, I heard Do, Mi, and I'm in the key of D major. What notes are those? Ah, that's D/F#. Okay. Now I can play that on my instrument, write it down, whatever." But we have, we have the ear part and we have the mind part that are kind of two separate component skills to it.
Greg Ristow:One of the joys, I think, of Moveable Do a lot of the times is that you don't have to think too much about the actual pitch names as you're getting going with it, thinking more about like where you are on the staff. David, can you tell us about your brick sight singing?
David Newman:Right. So I will just go. We have cinder block walls at school, in the hallway. And I've gone out in the hallway and just said, "Okay, here's our staff. Just choose the height of a cinder block as being the height of a space on the staff. And so we're going to choose these five lines. This one is Do. You don't need to know what clef it is. You don't need to know what key you're in. All you need to know is what I'm calling Do. And then, for me, the great thing is that that reinforces not trying to translate, for example, for students whose first instinct is to look and see letter names. I can get them to bypass that a little bit and to look and see relationships to the tonics. So that they see where Do is. They know that So is going to be two spaces up or two lines up. And it's also going to be a space and a half down. I don't know how to say that. It lets me quickly show where things are within a given scale.
David Newman:And for me, that's also a very quick way to notate something, is to just know where Do is, put the other scale degrees in the right places.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. And this, we see this a lot in the Kodaly approach as well, that written notation in most Kodaly texts starts with just a two line staff where the top line is So, and the bottom line is Mi. And you just learn that So Mi is line, line, or one line, and you could have So just above the line, or just below the line. Right? And So Mi is line to line or space to space. And you're effectively learning the visual relationship of those distances on the staff without having to convert it to or from note names.
David Newman:Yeah.
Greg Ristow:So, it occurs to me, one thing we haven't talked about is ... perfect pitch.
Leah Sheldon:Oh, no.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. Oh no. Oh no is right because there's so many feelings about this.
David Newman:YouTube is-
Greg Ristow:David, looks like you were about to say-
David Newman:Well, I'm just, I'm saying YouTube is littered with people claiming that they can teach you perfect pitch. And as far as I know, virtually, every study says this can't be done. And once you're six years old or something.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. Yeah. I think the real expert on this is Elizabeth West Marvin who's on the Music Theory Faculty at the Eastman School of Music. And Betsy's worked closely with her colleagues at the University of Rochester in the Brain Sciences Department there to do just so many studies at this point on absolute pitch. Absolute pitch is the scientific name for perfect pitch. And basically there are three competing theories for why some people have absolute pitch and some people don't.
Greg Ristow:And the first theory, David, you kind of referred to is what's known as the critical period theory. So we know that as humans, if we don't learn a primary language, if we don't learn to speak before about age six, then it's pretty much impossible to actually learn to speak after that. We know that unfortunately from studies in particular of neglected children, and that in psychological terms is known as a critical period, that you've got to learn it before then or you can't learn it.
Greg Ristow:And there's a super high correlation between the age people start musical study and whether they have perfect pitch. Those who start before age six are much more likely to acquire it. And almost no one who starts after age six acquires it. So yeah, so that's the critical period theory.
Greg Ristow:The second theory is an unlearning theory, this idea that we all start with absolute pitch, but maybe we learn other ways to recognize music that teach us that absolute pitch is not important and so we gradually forget it. And you can see how that's similar to the critical period theory, right? It's a question of, are we adding a skill or are we forgetting a skill we had?
Greg Ristow:And then a third theory is that there is a genetic component to it. Because how do we explain musicians who did start training before age six and didn't acquire perfect pitch. Was that part of the nurture component or was there a nature component to it? The reality is we don't have full answers for these yet, but all three of those competing or overlapping theories basically agree that if you don't have it by about age six, you're not going to have it.
Greg Ristow:Now, what some of Betsy Marvin's recent research has shown is that there are adults who are non-musicians, who have a kind of perfect pitch, which is sort of fascinating. She refers to a study that ... not one that she did, but where this was actually done in the '90s, where in the experiment there was a room full of popular music CDs, super famous CDs. And people were instructed to go and pick their two favorite CDs and then pick their favorite song from one of the CDs, hold that CD up to their chest, think about the song and then sing it. These are non-musicians. These are actually psychology majors in the study.
Greg Ristow:And a full 25% of them sang it in the key it was on the CD. An additional 50% of them sang it within a half step of where it was on the CD. So it's kind of an interesting question. There may be more going on there, but we've talked about all these solfege methods, and we're not talking about building perfect pitch, except maybe with the case of Fixed Do when started at a very young age. And there are pedagogies that are intentionally designed using Fixed Do to train perfect pitch when you're starting at like age two or three and so on.
Greg Ristow:What we're really talking about is building, understanding of where you are in a scale and a collection, and building out from that. Yeah.
Greg Ristow:It's also worth noting that perfect pitch sags with age. Around age 40, it sort of starts ... things starts sounding lower and lower, and people learn to adjust generally and that's fine, as long as they're actively performing and practicing music. But there may be a physical, an actual physical component to perfect pitch that causes that and there are various theories on that. So, yeah.
Leah Sheldon:Interesting.
David Newman:What's sad is that it's become this kind of mark of genius in the music community. But if you ask many professional musicians who have it, they'll all often tell you that it's not a blessing.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. And we're talking about hearing a pitch, a phenomenon versus hearing function. Just knowing the name, the frequency of a note, doesn't tell us all that much about what it's doing musically. But knowing where it is in the scale, what it is harmonically, that gives us all sorts of information about how it feels, how it moves, what it means, how to perform it.
Greg Ristow:I had a friend in grad school who was also ... We were both TAs for ear training at Eastman. And Ilan, Ilan Levin, perfect pitch. I remember chatting with him. And he said, "Yeah, I got here and I had to teach on scale degrees and I hated it for a year. And I had to practice all the homework myself. And then I found at the end of the year, I was suddenly hearing music in a different way. I hadn't realized that I hadn't been hearing all those relationships."
Greg Ristow:These are different ways of hearing for sure. And the good news is that functional hearing of where am I in the scale, that can be taught at any age, but that phenomenological absolute pitch way, really only up to age six at the latest. And kind of hotly debated, should you teach that? Is that worth teaching? Probably a question for another episode.
Greg Ristow:Well, I feel like that's been a good chat about solfege systems. Have we missed anything? Any final thoughts to add Leah or David?
Leah Sheldon:Just find something that you are comfortable with, that you're comfortable singing, teaching, hearing music in, and use that because the students will pick up on it if you're not comfortable with it, or if you're learning it as they are as well. The students are going to know. So be comfortable with it.
David Newman:Although I would also throw out that I have learned systems alongside my students, and I've just been really open with my own struggles, learning them. And that's been great too, because then they feel like you're in their camp, that you ...
Leah Sheldon:Oh, yeah.
David Newman:That you understand.
Leah Sheldon:Yeah, if you're open about it.
David Newman:I can tell you that my first year of Takadimi was that way.
Greg Ristow:Yeah. I still, I tell all my students. For instance, when I teach, at the summers I teach at Interlochen, and there we use Moveable Do. And I just tell my students, "You are going to hear me accidentally switch to Fixed Do at some point. It is just going to happen. I will be in the middle of singing something, and three notes are going to come out in Fixed Do. And it just ... " They're generally really understanding about that and they tend to laugh when it happens. Like, "Ah, you called that So La-
David Newman:It humanizes you.
Greg Ristow:Of course.
David Newman:It humanizes you. It's a great thing for students to realize-
Leah Sheldon:It does-
David Newman:... that you are in fact human.
Greg Ristow:Right. We'd love to hear from everyone who's listening, like what would you like to know about? What would you like to know about in music theory, in music pedagogy, in music technology? Let us know. We have lots of ideas ourself, but of course want this podcast to be a place where we're talking about things that teachers of music want to hear about. Yeah.
Greg Ristow:Any final thoughts before we sign off? Awesome. Well, episode one, go gang. David, Leah, thanks. And yeah, we'll chat again soon.
David Newman:All right. Thanks. Good to see you.
Greg Ristow:Bye everyone.
Leah Sheldon:Bye.
 
 

Coming Soon: Notes from the Staff

Leah Sheldon and Greg Ristow introduce a new podcast from the creators of uTheory.com.
Notes from the Staff features conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, music technology and more. In our first episode, which lands Jan. 15, uTheory team member David Newman joins us to talk about solfege systems: what are they, why do we use them, and which one is best? In our second episode, Leah and Greg talk with Dr. Andrew Machamer, assistant professor of music education at the Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, to talk about preparing bands for sight reading and contest.
Tune in Jan. 15th for the launch of Notes from the Staff!
And follow us at https://utheory.com/notes, or wherever you get your podcasts.