Michael Joviala

Musical Subjects

  • Becoming More Yourself

    Dawn Pratson, Michael Joviala and Michele Herman in Conversation

    For about 2 years now, Dawn Pratson (dance and choreography) and I (piano and composition) have been meeting every week through Zoom to improvise together. Dawn usually leads us both in a physical warm-up. Eventually I wander over to the piano and start to play. We go wherever it leads, and sometimes end up with (or start from) a composition of mine. As part of our pilot artist’s residency with the New York Chapter of the Dalcroze Society of America, we decided to open our rehearsals once a month during the spring of 2023. We’ve done two so far (the next one happens on May 6th, Saturday, 1-2pm NYC time. Details on how to join here.) Both times, exactly one person has showed up! But that’s been enough to influence our process in interesting ways. Last month, writer Michele Herman attended, and stuck around for a short discussion afterword.

    In the rehearsal, Dawn left and re-entered several times with changes of clothing. Michele had some great questions for us about that and about our process in general that got us all thinking about the many moment by moment decisions that go into the artistic process.

    Dawn: There were a number of possible endings, and I know you were aware of them. We usually don’t think about it so much, but when we have somebody watching I worry about it a little bit more. Are we making it go on too long? Should we stop here? So I’m curious, Michael, when I was here [performs movement], I really enjoyed this moment. It was like a recap from where we started. Did you feel that as a possible ending?

    Michele: Being a writer, my creative process is very different from yours. I’m by myself with words. You, Dawn, have all of the parts of your body that you can move. I was very curious about how much the conscious part of your brain is working away and how much you’re able to just let it go and not care.

    Dawn: That’s the dance. I’m confused about it all the time, but I think that’s OK. I’m starting to work with masks. Michael’s connected me with this great mask teacher in New York, Peggy Lewis. But I don’t have any masks, yet. She has a developmental process which I really like, and putting on different kinds of clothing and costumes is a starting point.

    Michele: That was fascinating for me too. Each time you disappeared for a minute you came back with new clothes and the flavor was different because of whatever you were wearing. It grew freer and freer with whatever you had on, and that was really fun to watch.

    Michael: I enjoyed that, too! That’s the first time she’s done that.

    Michele: Really? Did you have fun doing it?

    Dawn: Yes! What was it like for you Michael seeing that for the first time?

    Michael: I was expecting it, but, yes, that was the first time I had seen it. It created very clear demarcations between sections, so it made me very aware of our transitions. When you would come back with something new on, we really had to find out who we were and where we were going next. Without the costumes, the transition phases are more ambiguous. In fact, we might not even both be experiencing a transition at the exact same time. It’s not necessary that we do in that case. But when there’s a costume change, we are both aware that we are in a transition. I can feel us both waiting to see where it’s going to settle.

    Dawn: For me it was about deciding when to do it. Do I do it abruptly or gradually? At the end of a section? I’m trying to work with the music.

    Michael: Did you have those things laid out in advance?

    Dawn: Yes, I did. I had mostly decided on an order.

    Michael: That might be an interesting way to organize a set. “OK, we’re going to start with green scarf, and then business woman suit and then we’re going to fade into…” You know?

    Dawn: Yes! I noticed how you carried the music through the transitions. I trust you to do that.

    Michael: Sometimes (without the costume changes) I have the urge to stop playing, but with costume changes you would disappear completely for a period of time, and it felt like not a good time to stop playing. There would be nothing there. But we could experiment with that too!

    Michele: As an audience member, I see you come in with a fringy, stripy thing, and I accept it. But then you change to a black coat, and I think, “Are there going to be more costume changes or should I settle in with the black coat?” But when you come in with the third thing, I get it. My expectations keep subtly shifting throughout.

    Michael: When you came in in that big Martha Graham cape it immediately changed what I wanted to play.

    Michele: I was thinking about the image of cloak and dagger [ed. Names of the compositions we started and ended with.]. You were doing sort of a viewfinder thing for a while that I really loved. It felt very spy-like.

    Michael: That’s funny! You were kind of playing with identity there, weren’t you?

    Dawn: Yes, that’s what the mask work is.

    Michael: Thinking about your question, Michele, I am aware that while I’m playing I have different internal voices that might say things that I choose to accept or ignore. And sometimes the executive “I” might say, “Ok, I’ll take that suggestion, or no, I’m not going to do that.” But when I’m working with somebody, especially somebody like Dawn, the executive accepts far fewer inner suggestions or impulses. That’s why I like working with Dawn. It makes me more responsible. I am less likely to simply abandon something because a voice says, “this isn’t working.” I’m more likely to stay with it and work through whatever is happening so that I can at least accept the original impulse that arose. I try to live with it a little longer because I am now also affecting her choices. Because if I just change too quickly, especially because of a critical voice, it will be harder for her to settle into something.

    Dawn: We have a responsibility to each other, yes. It’s great to hear you describe how you listen to or don’t listen to this “editor”.

    Michele: I’m also really interested in the masks. In the school where I teach, The Writers Studio, the whole premise of teaching creative writing is that you have to create a persona. Even if the “I” is all a construct and constantly shifting anyway, the idea is that you find freedom through a little bit of artifice. A little bit of disguise get you out of the limitations that are often just nonsense in your head anyway. The word ‘persona’ refers to masks.

    Michael: I had an opportunity to do some mask work with the teacher that Dawn is working with now, Peggy Lewis. It was completely liberating! You completely become someone else.

    Michele: And in doing so you become more yourself.

    Michael: exactly!

    Michele: I ask my students if they’ve ever gone to a Halloween party completely disguised, and if it made them feel more free or less free? And they always say way more free!

    Michael: I wonder what it would be like to play piano with a mask on?

    Dawn: Is there a comparable phenomenon for music?

    Michael: Good question. Maybe music is less about identity than writing, dance and acting. I’m not sure what the corollary would be.

    Well, it’s been great to have you here, Michele. Even if just one person shows up, it has been a useful experience. And, this time, having someone appear who’s willing to engage with us has been really valuable!

    Michele: I’m so glad! It’s a comparable thing to my world. I’m teaching writing students and I’m always trying to free myself up enough to get to the good stuff! I feel like maybe that’s my life’s work is helping other people do that as well.

    Michael: Well, thank you for being here and talking with us today!

    Michele: My pleasure! Thank you!

    See clips of Loco Motors on YouTube, including the full rehearsal discussed in the article.  

    Attend the next Open Rehearsal (online and free): Saturday May 6th, 1-2pm. Details here.

    Interested in improvising music for dance? Join Dawn and myself online for an NYC Dalcroze workshop. Info here.

  • Rough Sketch

    Confession: I frequently have a hard time learning my own music.

    This is probably not uncommon for composers who primarily write music for others to perform, but I am definitely writing for myself. Lately, when I compose it is usually an attempt to personalize a musical subject that I will eventually be working with in a Dalcroze class, such as metric transformation, augmentation/diminution, polymeter, etc. With summer intensives approaching, I am excited by the prospect of having new material to bring into classes, so the pencil and my blank Utext G. Hente Verlag manuscript book are likely to come out. These pieces tend to be short and they often loop back on themselves. I try to get double-duty out of many of them in my improvising music and dance group Loco Motors (now in a pilot residency with the New York Dalcroze chapter).

    But I admit that sometimes my own compositions mystify me. Most of these pieces are not technically demanding for the performer (i.e., me). My goal in writing is clarity of rhythm and form (though they are not often very “well-behaved” as my colleague Jeremy Dittus likes to say), so that I can bring them into a Dalcroze class or use as a jumping off point for improvisation. As I compose, I am very clear about what I want to appear on the page. It is as though some hidden force within is dictating: this, then this; no—not that, this; and so on until it is finished, after which the window of creation closes.

    In these pieces I almost never use the conventional diatonic, or even modal, harmony that I use when playing for classes in these compositions, but there is strong evidence for a harmonic grammar that I don’t fully yet understand. This can make it difficult for me to actually learn (and even comprehend) my own music. If I ignore what I have written (“Oh, just keep the rhythm and the feeling but improvise the notes for god’s sake…”) it just sounds wrong. And when I return to the page, I am often astonished to find a kind of logic in the writing that I had not been aware of when putting it down. I find I have to keep it as it is or stop playing it.

    As an experiment, I decided to make a visual map of a new piece which I titled “In the Rough” (pictured above). The piece is an exploration of cross rhythms, 3×4, 4×5, etc. Without thinking too much, I just drew pictures of each measure or phrase until I got to the end. It does not follow a logical system. I wouldn’t give it to another musician and expect it to be understood. But when I played the piece just using the drawing as a visual reference, I was instantly able to play it exactly as I had written it. Why?

    I don’t have a definitive answer, but I suspect it is the same thing that makes movement in a Dalcroze class such a powerful way of learning. Translating something that we hear, see or feel internally into a completely different medium gives us a unique access to the original, a kind of (paradoxically) unmediated access. When I play while looking at the drawing, I am free from the symbolic decoding that notation sometimes locks me into. Playing from the visual map I drew, it doesn’t feel like I am recreating something, as it does when I am reading standard notation. It feels more like I am playing what was already there, inside. The drawing, more abstract by nature, is merely opening the door, allowing me access to what I originally heard in my head, and felt in my body, as I was writing.

    Whatever the reason, I’ll definitely be exploring this more in the future, if for no other reason than to be better able to understand myself.

    Have you had a similar experience? I’d love to hear about it.

    Here’s the printed music and a recording. Dalcrozians might enjoy moving it with hands and feet. Happy to send a PDF of the score upon request.

  • Tonality

    So, yes, the relationship between two tones is not necessarily black and white (see previous post). Tonality puts those two tones into a context which could consist of the many shades of gray, unrestrained technicolor or a tasteful complimentary color pallet. When I use color in a drawing I sometimes have trouble limiting myself. However, In last Sunday morning’s exploratory session with some new watercolor pencils (above) I made it a point to work within some constraints.

    My weakness for unrestrained color combinations has its corollary in sound: I am an avowed congregant in the church of dissonance. When I improvise for myself I very rarely end up using diatonic harmony (subject for an introspective future post?). I do not shy away from this in my playing for children’s classes. Though they may be only able to reproduce a limited range of tones in their singing voice, I see no reason not to expose kids to all sorts of tonal relationships, beyond major and minor. Walks can be Lydian and lunges Phrygian, and stories can be excellent backdrops for all sorts of harmonic worlds. The sun can rise with a Schoenbergian series of perfect 4ths; chromatic birdsongs à la Messiaen can stop bird-loving giants while they are hiking through diminished-scale forests in their tracks; later we can float on the open seas of freely juxtaposed triads for a feeling of the awesome power of nature.

    But when we are doing something that calls for more precision, there is no substitute for diatonic tonality. For little ones taking a solo flight out their adult’s “nest” I end the phrase on a dominant when they bend down to pick up their worm, and resolve it with an authentic cadence when they return. Every once in a while (ok, pretty often) one of the little birds just wants to keep flying. If I stay on that dominant long enough (or even back-pedal to a tonic second inversion) and stay there long enough, that little bird will get the signal: time to land. I’m going for the feeling of one of those long trills at the end of a cadenza that says to the orchestra, “It’s time…”

    Older kids are ready to recognize and respond to tonic and dominant harmonic function with an association type Dalcroze game (“this=that”). For example, during locomotor movement (walks, runs, skips, lunges, etc.) they could be asked to sit if a phrase ends on the tonic, but stay standing and reach toward someone if it ends on the dominant. Whether they are children or adults, if they are doing something at all complicated like a Dalcroze dissociation (“this equals NOT that” or “do these different things at the same time”), I will most likely play as clearly as possible with the major or minor color wheel and 8-bar phrasing punctuated with half and authentic cadences at the appropriate moments. Clarity of form through classical harmony does wonders to regulate the mind and organize body.

    Speaking of organizing and regulating mind and body, we’ve organized a special workshop series in New York City at the Lucy Moses School for plastique animée. Four Saturdays in April and May of 2023. Join us for a physical experience of tonality (among other things) that just might get you out of your head when it comes to harmonic analysis.

  • One Small Step…

    Whole and half steps are kind of like air. We tend to not pay too much attention to them unless something unexpected happens. For years they were certainly invisible to me – or rather, inaudible – unless I made a mistake in a musical passage, an easy enough thing to fix for pianists. It didn’t seem like such an important subject, just a way to label the movement between two adjacent scale tones.

    In his solfège texts, however, Emile Jaques Dalcroze put this subject front and center for beginning students, and the longer I teach the more I appreciate why. As I learned to perceive them, I learned to use them to do all sorts of things. They are the keys (pun intended) to modulation and, maybe most importantly, and they offer great potential expressive power when playing a melody.

    But inside a scale? They tend to just disappear. One of my first tasks then in the adult Dalcroze solfège class is to make them at least visible, hoping that in time they will become perceptible as well. I am working for bottom-up recognition, the kind that is instant and effortless, but to get there we may need to go back and forth between what we hear and what we know analytically for a while.

    Fortunately there is the layout of the keyboard. Though they are literally invisible on a violin, the half steps stick out like sore thumbs on the piano, at least when you are in the key of C Major. This can create a kind of C major bias for some students, old and young. (I am reminded of Anne Farber often referring to “the tyranny of Do”.) However, it’s a good place to start. To combat the notion that the black notes sound different from the white I might play a Gb major scale and ask how many black notes they heard, some students will say, “None,” and are quite astonished to learn that I was primarily playing black notes.  

    Gestures come in handy, too. By creating a simple movement association for half and whole steps (for example, paint the scale in space, keeping the hand open for whole steps and closing it for half steps), I can ask a student to sing the scale with an absolute naming system (e.g. fixed do solfège or letter names) while gesturing for whole or half steps. As she sings, I can play exactly what she gestures, even if it is in conflict with what she is singing. This technique is a bit like mild electroshock therapy, but it can be startingly effective. This technique is supercharged by starting and ending the scale on different scale degrees (one of Dalcroze’s most brilliant pedagogical inventions).

    For young children we’ll need a different approach. This is definitely one of those “teachery” subjects that invite eye glaze or outright rebellion if pushed too much (I can see watery eyes even from adults if I spend too much time on this). With elementary-age students I start with the keyboard, again no matter what instrument they play. I look for ways to physicalize the pattern of white and black. I play a game based on the American sidewalk game ‘hopscotch’ I call ‘hop-scale’. We move across the room imagining the chromatic layout of of whole and half on the keyboard, jumping with two feet when we would land on a black note, and one foot for white. I have them speak the letter names, thinking with sharps when we ascend, and flats when we descend. The trick is remember the two sets of adjacent white notes. The pattern is just off-center enough to keep students from going on auto-pilot until they really know the map.

    We can do a version of this for adults, too, by having them sing the chromatic scale, but step only on the notes of the C Major scale (or any other key, even starting on any scale degree). If the students are seated, have them clap, snap or gesture on the notes of the scale. Another way to bring this perception into awareness is for me to play a whole or half step on the piano. If it is a whole, they will sing the two notes and put the gesture in the middle, if half they sing without the rest. When I do this, I try to make it feel like music, rather than the atonal randomness of my own college ear-training classes. It is in the context of a melody that the power of the half step becomes tangible, especially when I put them to use in a modulation. Which is just what they do in “real life”, outside of the ear training classroom.

  • Picturing Music

    I’ve been thinking about representation lately.

    No, I don’t need a lawyer. I’m talking about how we ‘picture’ music. As an experiment last week, I asked my kids to draw a picture of rhythms we were working with during the session. I didn’t ask them to use notation. Some of them are too young to know any notation anyway (the older ones have basic reading skills). I just said, “Draw a picture of the two’s on one side and the three’s on the other,” which had been the focus of the day’s activities.

    A few drew groupings of lines or shapes, but most simply drew whatever it is they liked to draw. There were human figures, airplanes, even a well-shaded piece of fruit. I asked them to hold up the side that matched the music they heard, and I improvised music in two or in three. In most cases, I would have been unable to discern which drawing was which by merely looking. I needed an explanation from the artist. When it seemed to me to that there was an identical piece of fruit on both sides of the paper, the student explained to me that the one with more empty space was for the two’s. Of course, the words ‘draw’ and ‘picture’ naturally send kids into a particular mindset. Interestingly, this mindset is usually representational in some way. We don’t always draw what we really see.

    Our minds are built to associate meaning with symbol, and musical notation takes advantage of this proclivity. All of the words and symbols on this page are mostly arbitrary. We have agreed on their meaning, and so I am able to communicate with you. It has without question made possible some profound and glorious combinations of sound throughout its history, and yet I find myself wary of placing too much emphasis on it in my teaching. Notation creates a hierarchical grid that is not part of my experience of so much of the music that I make and that is important to me. Making things worse, the names in American English are highly problematic. Four-quarter time? Sure, makes sense. One quarter is 1/4th of a measure of four beats. So how can one “quarter” note stand in for 1/3rd of a bar in three-quarter time? And on and on. (In naming their rhythm units after knitting needles, the British have an advantage here.)

    I experience a rich interplay of pulse levels and even meters when I listen to, for example, a Sonny Rollins recording. There is great pleasure to be found in the play of two’s and three’s (on many levels) as my perception shifts from one to another. The musicians communicate through a dynamic, flexible and somehow simultaneously precise and ambiguous rhythmic language. Of course, students learning a Haydn Sonata need to be able to decode the shift from eighths to sixteenths to triplets and then to thirty-seconds, but I am loathe to lock them into that too soon via notation.

    When a quarter becomes the de facto representation of a beat, something is lost. Anything can represent a beat: a quarter, an eighth, an apple… In the Dalcroze classroom I try to split the difference between my natural inclination to avoid reducing music to representation too soon and my responsibility to make sure my students are prepared for their music lessons. I want to create musical experiences that will be solid, tangible, lived, felt and authentic. If I am doing that, I can feel more at ease showing them a quarter note and telling them that it represents—or can represent—a beat.

    I made the drawings some time ago to help myself visualize a couple poly-meters and cross-rhythms. Some will be easy to see, some less so.

    But I’m ok with that.

  • Come Play With Us

    I’m leading drop-in online guided improvisation sessions in February 2023 on Saturdays, 1:00-1:45pm Eastern. To learn more about it and find out how to join, click here. No improv experience necessary and only you (and whoever is in your house!) will hear yourself.

    A few past attendees were kind enough to write descriptions of what the sessions are like. I’m sharing them here. This time, I’ll post videos of myself playing through the prompts here. Join us!

    “I loved the guided improvisation classes with Michael last year! There were many new ideas to try out in my improv that I had never considered. The use of visual reactions via a powerpoint presentation helped spur creativity and kept the class moving without too much dialogue. Participants were muted for the improvisation, and the anonymity helped me to feel safe in taking creative risks. I’m looking forward to another session this winter!” Katie, Denver

    “As a working musician trying to find the right work-life balance, I took the online guided improvisation sessions with Michael to give myself time to check in with my mind and body. The instructions are easy to understand. I am given enough time to play for each one. It requires me to stay focused and actively present during the session as the instructions flow from one to the next. I feel calm and refreshed afterwards. I like to use this as a warm-up exercise to improve focus and concentration in my personal practice.” Tina, New York City

    “Michael’s online guided improvisation sessions are a true musical gift. Each time I’ve participated, he’s crafted unique prompts that encourage the participants to explore their instrument in new ways. By participating online, I found the freedom to express without any self-consciousness, and his thoughtful prompts provide a structure where I otherwise might have floundered. It is a really wonderful way to help craft a personal practice and I look forward to every opportunity I have to participate.” Liz, New York City

    A sample prompt

  • Ensemble Skills for 1st-2nd Grade (Part 4 of 4)

    This is the final part of a series on skills, goals and objectives for 1st-2nd grade Dalcroze classes. The lists from the previous posts on movement, rhythm and pitch would not have been out of place in many other introductory theory, ear training or music or movement fundamentals classes. I regard this final category, ensemble skills, as just as important as the others, even if they are not the outright focus of the class. Items that appear on this list are an attempt to answer the question, “How do we make music with others?”, especially music that we create ourselves through real-time composition, a.k.a. improvisation.

    When I went to the list I shared with parents last year, I was surprised to find it was much shorter than I expected. In my mind, learning how to function in a performing group are foundational skills for musicians that can provide a lifetime of enjoyment in music-making. Yet there were only eight things on the list, and I could easily imagine a list of 8 different things. How could that be?

    As I sat with this discrepancy, I thought about what each of these items have in common. Unlike the other lists, they are less concerned about what music is, and more focused on how it is made. They are relational: they focus on the quality of connection with other musicians, and the ability to retain and express individuality within a larger group.

    These items fall squarely in the ‘musicianship’ category on the syllabus, as opposed to the ‘music theory’ end of the spectrum. They are skills musicians need whether playing improvised music with others or playing “pre-composed” music (e.g. performing a string quartet or an orchestral work). Developing these skills is a lifelong process, but I try to make space for them in each class. There are many ways into the woods, so this is simply the form the work took last year. Instead of just bullet points, I’ve included a bit of background for each.

    Play something that has a beginning, middle, and end

    I can hear you thinking, “Doesn’t everything have a beginning, middle and end? How hard can that be?” True, beginnings are not hard. Middles take care of themselves. It’s the end that seems to be a learned behavior (and not just for children). Endings are different from merely stopping. Endings are intentional. They make space for the next thing. They can question or answer. They can merely pause. They can be abrupt or gradual. They can be expected or they can surprise. But in my experience, this is learned behavior needs to be encouraged at every level of improvisational study and practice.

    Make clear choices of dynamics, tempo and texture

    Most students come in with a primary or favored mode of expression: loud and fast, say, or careful and deliberate. In class we might call attention to these tendencies in the form of simple observations. “Mark played fast and loud.” “Jenny played soft and slow.” After a while, I’ll try to find ways for students to try on someone else’s mode of expression. Imagery and story are very helpful for young children, but so is cultivating careful and close listening, naming and acknowledging so that children are exposed to a wide variety of possibilities while having their own choices validated.

    Play something similar

    Remember that Sesame Street feature, “One of these things is not like the other”? I loved playing that game. It highlighted not only what was different (1 fruit and 3 vegetables!) but also what was the same (all something that you eat!). This is a very useful concept for creating music. When we are playing together we can learn to both stand out as ourselves while fitting in to the overall dynamic of what’s happening. Not a bad life skill, either.

    Play simple ostinatos under an improvisation

    The group plays a repeated pattern (perhaps with some combination of beat and twice as fast or slow), and a soloist is free to play as she likes. At first, most kids will either play something completely disconnected from the music or play the irresistibly compelling thing the group is playing. I’m fine with either of those at first because I am mostly interested in helping the group to stay together in a simple repeated pattern. Can we maintain it without speeding up or falling apart? Can each child resist the urge to unleash his or her wild energy on an instrument for the sake of the group? It takes a while to cultivate this, but when it happens, it’s the same magic feeling humans have been addicted to for time out of mind.

    Follow a conductor in a group

    Again, subverting your will to the will of someone else (a composer, say, or a conductor) is sometimes what music is all about.  I find children are often more than willing to watch and take direction from each other, usually much more excited about it than doing so with me, yet another adult telling them what to do. When they lead each other, I love watching them sense the power behind (at least momentarily) investing someone with authority.

  • 1st – 2nd Grade Skills, Experiences and Objectives Associated with Pitch (Part 3)

    Well, “next week” turned into two months! The teaching season has heated up, but I’m finally continuing my curricular lists for 1st-2nd grade. This time the focus is on pitch. Rhythm skills for kids this age are a lot more predictable for me than pitch skills. Some kids have an easy, natural relationship with their singing voice, while others seem to struggle with the kind of self-consciousness that plagues older kids and adults in relation to singing. However, many of the pitch skills are about perception, which does not necessarily require the singing voice. Here, kids seem to be on more equal footing. Also, as I look at this list, I notice that these are mostly skills rather than experiences. I think I know the reason for that, but perhaps that’s for a future post. Suffice it to say for now that all of these skills are taught through – you guessed it – experience. Here’s the list:

    Voice

    • slide up and down through the range of your voice
    • improvise phrases in a singing voice
    • match a pitch

    Melody

    • recognize and respond to melodies that change directions frequently vs melodies that move in one direction
    • Melodic Contour
      • distinguish melodic lines that ascend/descend/stay in place
      • discern the high note in one-measure patterns

    Scale

    • Major Scale
      • Sing scale degrees 1-5 with letter names or numbers in the key of C
      • Differentiate the tonic (scale degree 1) from other pitches in the scale
    • Chromatic scale
      • learn the pattern of white and black notes on the piano
      • be able to name the notes ascending using sharps from C
    • Minor scale
      • experience the expressive posibilities of music in the minor mode
      • distinguish between musci played in minor and major
      • sing simple melodies in the minor mode

    Harmony

    • hear, identify and sing 1-3-5 of the major scale in different combinations
    • explore the concepts of consonance and dissonance

  • 1st-2nd Grade Dalcroze Skills and Experiences: Rhythm (Part 2 of 4)

    Second in a series of posts describing what a typical class might cover during the year.

    Now we get to the heart of the matter. This is a formidable list, and not all that different from a list I might make for adult classes. Does this mean the children will master each of these things? No. But then again I don’t think I’ll ever master (“master”?) them either! In the Dalcroze approach we aim for spiral learning. We visit musical skills, concepts, phenomena over and over in different ways to accumulate many different kinds of experience and to allow each subject area to acquire personal meaning.

    Some of the items on the list we may only work with once or twice (beats divided into 4, or dotted quarters, for example). Others I’ll manage to work into almost every class (synchronizing locomotor movements to the beat of improvised or recorded music, for example). I hope that my students eventually have an expansive catalogue of experiences for these musical subjects. It’s much more than learning to read notation, though that is indeed one of the goals. Yes, I want them to recognize that the symbol of a quarter note is one way to represent the beat (actually there are many other ways!), but more importantly that they know that a steady beat in music has the potential for so much expressive power: beats can speed up, slow down, be strong, be light, pause, disappear and reappear in unexpected places, and on and on. And that’s just the beat! Here’s the list:

    • Dynamics:
      • express dynamics in different parts of the body
      • associate different types of weight with a range of dynamics
      • combine any tempo with any dynamic
      • change dynamics on command
        • slowly
        • suddenly
      • lead a change of dynamics
      • associate language and notation
    • Beat:
      • be able to synchronize different locomotor movements to the beat of improvised or recorded music
      • stop and start on command at the same tempo
      • synchronize to
        • another
        • the group
        • music
      • do something for a specific number of beats: up to 8
      • express beats in different parts of the body
      • relate a beat to notation (the bottom number of a time signature)
    • Rests
      • Perform specific actions during beat-long rests in different parts of the measure (simple meter)
      • Experience different expressive possibilities of longer rests in music
    • Division (durations smaller than the beat) in simple (beat divided into 2’s) and compound (beat divided into 3’s)
      • differentiate one set of divisions of 2 or 3 from the basic beat
      • step the beat and clap a division of 2
      • move divisions of 2 from a beat played on the piano
      • recognize notation with quarter note as beat
      • recognize notation with a dotted quarter as beat
    • Subdivision in simple meter (beats divided into 4)
      • recognize aurally
      • play simple patterns with beat and division
      • recognize notation with quarter note as beat
    • Multiples (durations longer than the beat)
      • perform an action for a specific number of beats
      • Recognize notation for multiples of 2, 3 and 4 with quarter as beat
      • step beat while clapping a multiple of 2, 3 or 4; same with hands and feet reversed.
      • Hearing beats, perform an action lasting 2, 3 or 4 beats.
      • Match durations in movement or on an instrument that lasts 2, 3 or 4 beats
    • Meter (groupings of beats):
      • duple, triple, quadruple in simple (beat divided into 2’s)
        • distinguish between the three groupings aurally
        • recognize and understand time signatures of x/4 (top number of a time signature)
        • Step beat and clap downbeat
          • change between meters (2/4 3/4 4/4)
            • on command
            • in response to the music
        • Express meters of 2, 3 and 4 in movement in place
      • Compound duple (beat divided into 3’s)
        • move to beat, division and trochee (skipping) rhythms
        • respond to music that changes between compound duple and simple duple
        • move to music containing subdivisions in compound (e.g. sixteenth notes in 6/8)
    • Rhythmic Patterns
      • Simple meter patterns: anapest (short short long), Dactylic (long short short)
        • be able to identify aurally, step and play on percussion
        • recognize in notation in at least one way
      • compound meter patterns: trochée and iamb (long short and short long)
        • identify aurally and respond appropriately in movement
        • play on percussion
        • see examples of notation

    For more lists see: , ,

  • Skills and experiences for 1st-2nd Grade Dalcroze: Movement (Part 1 of 4)

    The focus for this list is movement. In each Dalcroze class, I give a short warm-up at the beginning. The focus is usually on some kind of movement technique, and I often use the warm-up to provide an introduction to the musical subject of the day (for example beat and division, syncopation, simple triple meter, etc.). Of course, movement happens throughout a eurhythmics class, and some of the items are core movement objectives that we aim to visit and refine throughout the year.

    Skills and experiences associated movement:

    • Execute any kind of locomotor movement with grace and ease
    • move isolated parts of the body with ease
    • change between
      • isolated parts of the body to whole body movement
      • top half and bottom half of body
      • symmetrical and asymmetrical positions
    • move
      • with spatial awareness
        • hi/low/front/back
          • using oppositions
        • of pathway
          • curvy
          • straight with quick turns
      • with different lengths of stride
      • with awareness of the room and the group
      • with spirals
      • with awareness of how joints articulate in the body
      • with expansion and contraction
    • vertical vs horizontal space
    • Releasing isolated parts of the body vs. activating parts
    • Figure 8 in different planes (horizontal, vertical, sagittal)
    • using body weight to push, roll, turn and tumble across the floor.
    • using gravity to create momentum (e.g. with swinging arms)
    • use hands and feet separately and simultaneously in simple ways
    • use gesture to express a wide variety of tempos and dynamics, in place
    • move effectively
      • independently
      • with a partner
      • in small groups
      • with the whole group
    • Create and remember sequences of movement (up to 5)
    For more lists see: , ,