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Expanding and Contracting Beats in Duple Meter
In a measure of two beats, the length of beat can change from as low as two divisions (e.g. two eighths with a quarter note beat) to 6 divisions (e.g. 6 eighths with a dotted half note beat). I call the number of divisions right before each change. You could: Simply step, gesture or conduct…
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Musical Subject: Beat
I enjoy working with the subject of ‘beat’. The phenomenon itself is so fundamental it can be a challenge to define it. It’s like asking, “What is air?” We can all produce a quasi-scientific definition of the air we breathe, but our experience of it could not be more fundamental to our existence. Yet it…
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Patterns with 4 beats and 1 rest: Inhibition Game
Step and clap the patterns that you hear. At the signal “hands”, stop the hands and move only the feet. When you hear “hands” again, restart the hands. Same with “feet”. Having trouble following? Use the piano: the left hand is associated with your feet, the right hand with your hands. This is known as…
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Changing meter: Reaction game
This is the first of a series of posts for adults interesting in practicing eurhythmics on their own. The following is a known as “Reaction Game” in Dalcroze parlance. In a reaction game, a signal (auditory (musical or non-musical), visual, verbal or tactile) tells the participants what to do to explore a given musical subject.…
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7-9 Year-old Dalcroze: April
Life caught up with me in April, so this is the first update for class activities in over a month. Here is a brief list of some of the things we have explored and games we have played over the past several weeks: Toss the bean bag on the high note. Kids hear melodic patterns in…
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7-9 Year-old Dalcroze, 4/4/17
This week’s activities: We first reviewed the notation and language for some basic rhythms for compound (ternary) meter: dotted quarters, 3 eighth notes, quarter-eighth. I put the symbols on the board, and asked one student to stand in front of the one he/she wanted to hear and see moved. After this quick reaction game, I…
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7-9 year-old Dalcroze: 3/28/17
Here’s what we did: Tempo and dynamics Follow ( 2 dotted quarters, 3 eighths, 1 dotted quarter) In this classic Dalcroze exercise, the class moves a pattern through a variety of tempo and dynamics changes. The three eighths required us to develop some technique, as the students found it difficult to run for three and…
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7-9 year-old Dalcroze: 3/21/17
What can you do with 4 spots? The question is quite open, but the kids took it in the spirit intended (uses were restricted to ways to arrange and move through them). Here are some of the ways they discovered, and questions they explored: arrange in square, step only on the spots what’s the difference…
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7-9 Year-old Dalcroze: 3/6/17
This was another very unusual class. The story from the previous week was very strong in their minds, and they desperately wanted to continue it. That kind of intense student engagement is very hard for me to resist, so I relented, not having the least idea about where it would turn out. To further complicate…
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7-9 year-old Dalcroze: 2/28/17
This was an unusual class in many ways. The girls’ love for dramatic story telling prompted almost an entire class devoted to the development, rehearsal and enactment of one story. The class loosely followed some goals I had already set up, which was to work with 3 different rhythm patterns that are found in the…
Writing about music and music education from a Dalcroze perspective: