Michael Joviala

Tag: 1st-2nd grade

  • 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:

  • Letter to 1st and 2nd Grade Families

    note: here’s an end-of-the-year summary for the families of my 1st and 2nd grade Dalcroze classes. I refer to a list of skills and experiences. It’s a bit long for a post, but if you are intersested, I’m happy to send you a copy.

    Dear 1st and 2nd grade families,

    The 1st and 2nd grade Tuesday Dalcroze group came a long way this year. Dalcroze learning is based on the accumulation of musical experience. We move, sing, play games and use our imaginations for 45 (or fewer!) minutes per week. In a music conservatory like Diller Quaile, a portion of that time is spent relating their experiences to skills, knowledge and understanding they will need as they learn their instruments. However, children especially will have a hard time explaining exactly what they learned or even did. I’ve attached a long list of skills and experiences they have had this year, but even I am overwhelmed by looking at it! We did all that?! Wow. It’s important to remember that the kids may have not, say, completely mastered the concept of meter, but they can probably perform a requested action (a jump, for example) on the first beat of a measure, even when the music changes between meters. They may not be able to explain what the difference between consonance and dissonance is just yet, but they have created shapes with their bodies to express the differences, which are all too apparent to them even at this young age. It’s best to keep that in mind when looking at the list of skills and experiences that I culled from my record of lesson plans for the year. It’s just a beginning.

    Demonstration classes are the most effective way to understand what goes on in a Dalcroze class, but those were difficult this year because of COVID, so here’s a description of a typical class. Hopefully that will give you a context through which to understand the larger list of skills and experiences.

    I like to start my classes with a physical warm-up, and I love to do it with them. Their class is at the end of the day, and I imagine they need to be grounded in their bodies as much as I do. For each class, I choose a movement subject, a rhythm subject and a pitch subject. I don’t always get to each, but that is the goal. (To make it easier, I sometimes try to kill two birds with one stone!) In this class, from week 19, my movement subject was isolations (i.e. moving a single part of the body by itself), meter and basic vocal exploration. Here’s what we did.

    I began by putting on some music by a young jazz vibraphonist I like named Joel Ross. This week there was nothing definite they were supposed to hear in the music, but I hoped it was set a tone of focused, creative curiosity. I began by slowly moving a single part of my body (maybe an arm, my shoulder, a foot), and gave them the direction, “Move a different part of your body at the same tempo.” When they got the idea, I let different students lead. After a while, I switched the directions: “Move the same part of your body at a different tempo.” I had a couple goals in mind. One was to expand their movement vocabulary. This can be accomplished by watching others, and perhaps by moving, say, an arm much more slowly than they are accustomed to. The other goal was to work with the concept of tempo.

    After the movement warm-up, I usually move into the rhythm subject, which often calls for more specific kinds of movement. Today the subject was meter (regular groupings of 2, 3 or 4 beats). An important musical skill is being able to keep track of the first beat of the measure, even if the groupings change. First we sat, and we tapped the floor on count 1, and the remaining beats of the measure we clapped silently. At first I called out the number of beats, but soon I was just playing on the drum as they followed the changes. When they could do this well, I switched to the piano. After they mastered this, I asked them to step only on count 1 and clap the remaining beats. It’s challenging for this age to take a single step and hold it while doing something else. By this point in the year, though, they were getting better at these kinds of activities.

    This is a very focused activity, and when I begin something like this, I know I will have to end it soon and give them something much freer. So our next movement game is what we call a “reaction” game. They were asked to move to music that suggested walking, running, skipping, lunging, etc. and at the signal (“hop”), they were to stop and clap four beats. This also gives them an experience of meter, but now I can change the tempo, the style, the dynamics, etc. to give them the experience of lots of difference kinds of music. If they are very good at this, we can alternate between stopping and clapping 4, then hopping 4, and perhaps more. This helps build their musical memories and powers of focus while still moving with joy and abandon (hopefully!).

    After all this, they earned a rest. We melted down to the floor and allowed bodies to succumb fully to gravity. I typically have a moment in each class like this to allow body and mind to recuperate. At this point in a class I will often bring them up to sitting for some board work to tie in whatever experience we’ve had to notation or terminology. This time, however, because the subject was somewhat a review, I chose to move into a bit of vocal exploration. Many of the kids are a bit shy to sing. This has been an increasing trend over the past 10 years or so, and I am at a loss to explain why. To help them to loosen up their voices a bit, I pretended to shoot a basketball, and asked them to use their voices to trace the arc of the ball, gliding up and down. I then asked students to lead this as well.

    We ended with an improvisation. I told them I would answer any question they asked, as long as they asked it with their singing voice. (This was a follow-up from the week before, in which I had sung them questions like, “What did you have for breakfast?” in a singing voice, and asked them to sing their answers back. I remember this having the desired effect. They forgot they were singing and got interested in things they could ask me. I moved on from this type of exploration after this class, but I now wish I had returned to it. I think it was paying off!

    And that’s a class! We sometimes end with a song, but not this time. 40 minutes goes by pretty quickly! By the end of the year the class was working well as a group. They had made progress in using their bodies effectively and creatively in many musical ways and I was really enjoying their ever-emerging personalities. Never a dull moment! I wish you all a good summer and hope to be able to work with your children again. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have about our work.

    take care,

    Michael Joviala

  • 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 4/4 time. Each pattern consists of quarter notes with a high note falling on beat 1, 2, 3 or 4. They walk and toss on the high note. Challenging for most. We spent some time in the beginning exploring things to do with a bean bag that can match specific tempo and dynamics requirements.
    • Lead your partner through touch.
      • Partners work to develop a set of signals to guide their partner around the room. Signals can include direction, starting/stopping, tempo, etc. I encouraged them to talk as little as possible. Pairs demonstrated for the group. The group attempted to discern and describe the signals they saw.
    • Movement Concertos
      • The student with a bean bag moves as she likes, the piano follows her with a single voice. When the piano plays with many voices, the entire class joins in the same movement. The children are encouraged to use a wide variety of tempo and dynamics as I attempt to mimic concerto form and style in my improvisation.
    • Improvisation with rhythm cards.
      • Partners sit across from each other. A holds up rhythm card, B plays rhythm following whenever A changes. All partners perform simultaneously.
        • variation: One student conducts for dynamics.
    • Metrical scarf toss
      • Quick reaction: step the beat and toss the scarf on the 2nd beat of a 4/4 measure if I call “2”, etc. (Students are hearing dotted quarters on their toss as I play.)
    • Dotted Quarter Quick reaction
      • Walk with a partner linking arms. When you hear a dotted quarter + eighth, change directions with your partner.
      • Walk alone. At “hop”, take one step backwards. (“hop” coincides with a dotted quarter + eighth.)
    • Pattern + soloist, improvisation
      • Group plays a pattern, one soloist is free to play as she likes. (All have percussion instruments.) We experimented with the form of this one, and really practiced listening for dynamics and responsiveness to the soloist.

    Those are a few of our greatest hits. I’ll give you one more update at the end of the year, which is coming up fast. Happy Memorial Day! Always interested in your thoughts and comments.

    Michael

  • 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 gestured a pattern. In our rhythm language, it was, “Running and skip and beat beat.” I asked them to speak it in as many different ways as they could (using the same words). It took some time but we eventually got a variety of dynamics and tempos. I then asked them to move freely to the music, but stop and show the pattern if as soon as they heard it. After this, we practiced simply moving the pattern. The starts with three running steps, which lead to a single skip, followed by two slow steps. It was challenging for them to get off the ground and immediately stop. There were varying degrees of success, but as a group we managed to get a gestalt of the pattern.

    They wanted to be seen moving it one at a time, so I asked them to design the space. They lined up and each moved the rhythm twice across the diagonal of the room. I decided to spend some time making what we call a ‘plastique’ out of the rhythm. In this case, this means that we choreograph how to move, who is moving when, the shape and organization of movement in the room. I did a fair amount of prompting by giving them a series of choices (e.g. “Should we move it twice or once? “Should partners move at the same time, or one after the other?”). In this way I helped them to make the many small decisions necessary to create organized movement. We tried it several times and I accompanied them on the piano.

    We ended with a quick experience/game with three rubber spots, which I placed on the ground and associated 1, 3 and 5 of the major scale with. First I moved and sang myself. Then I moved and asked them to sing. Finally, I sang while they moved. We improvised short phrases for a while, and then said goodbye. I will return to this game in the future.

     

     

  • 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 stop suddenly.
    • Drums around the room; move freely until you hear the pattern, then stop and play it on the nearest drum.
      • This required some sharp listening and more movement technique. I was able to test their abilities to discern between variations of the pattern a couple of times. They seemed to enjoy this game.
    • Improvisation: 2 groups; one plays a 3 bars of a pattern, alternating with a one bar soloist by someone from the other group.
      • This was an arrangement that I came up with, in hopes that they would suggest alternatives after a few times through. We came up with a few interesting variations.
    • Free improvisation
      • This was the most interesting part of the class for me. As students were suggesting ways to change the above improvisation, they ran into inevitable disagreements. I began to suggest that music could accommodate everyone’s wishes if they decided that was ok. We tried this successfully within a strict structure as above, and then I suggested that we all try to play together without discussing anything first. Our intention would be to play what we wanted while listening to what other’s played. There was, maybe predictably, a lot of loud playing, and I did wish for more attentiveness to others as they were doing it. However, all seemed very pleased with the results, and someone surprised that this was even possible. There is nothing particularly Dalcrozian about this concept (it comes more from the free jazz tradition), but it certainly does not go against the grain of our work. Perhaps we will be able to build on this idea in future classes.

     

  • 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 between a square and a diamond in this case? (answer was inconclusive, but seemed to have to do with visual perspective)
    • take one step in between each spot
    • place them far a part
    • place them close together

    I played a pattern (quarter quarter half) and asked them to arrange the spots any way they liked, and to move through them to show this pattern.

    There were two solutions. In one the kids stopped on the spot for the long note, in the other they kept moving, arriving at the spot during the second beat of the longest note. The spot represented a rest in one version, and the end of the pattern in the other. Both true, and highlighting different perspectives. I accompanied both versions, and one student felt certain that I was changing the way I played on the second version. I wasn’t, but her feeling changed by changing her movement. A very Dalcrozian experience!

    Chalk Talk Exploration

    They asked to draw on the chalk board. Ok: one student drew, and I followed their movement on the piano. After everybody had a turn, we switched: I played and they drew to match. This was an introduction to a dictation technique that we will return to later.

    Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong: St Louis Blues

    We ended by listening for the call and response of trumpet and voice in a classic recording of the blues we have been playing and singing for the past few weeks. Here’s the link if you’d like to hear it.

     

     

  • 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 matters, one student who was absent last week was present this week, so he had to be brought up to speed. Instead of my usual list of activities, here is a straight narrative of the day:

    We began with a quick reaction game: if you hear music, move with the feet; no music move with the hands. I long even phrases at first (8 beats of music, 8 beats of silence) and gradually worked it down to shorter patterns. My goal was to introduce some basic rhythm patterns in 4 that contain 1 beat rest. They were moderately successful at this, so I went to the board and notated them to see if they could distinguish between them. They are not quite ready for this, but they can reproduce them if I point in time to the rhythms.

    They suffered through all of this rather pedestrian teaching so they could get to what they really wanted to do: continue the story. We ended up spending most of our time trying to remember everything: which rhythms went with which characters; what the rhythms were, who was playing what.

    Each group was supposed to play as the others moved, and here I probably pushed a little too hard to get them to act like a sensitive orchestra. Give anybody an instrument and the first thing they want to do is explore it: make sound, see what it does, try this, try that… The last thing a kid wants to do is hold it silently and wait for something to start. I can get kids there, but I need to allow them time to discover first, and I did do that.

    All in all, our creative rhythms did not fall into place this time. But artistic creation is certainly like that. If nothing else they got to experience that knowing that we could try again another day.

     

    Michael