Articles about Dalcroze pedagogy organized by age.
Early Childhood:
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Reinforcing the Classwork at Home
The Dalcroze classes are now in full swing (ok, pun intended), and the kids have heard and experienced music with a variety of tempos, rhythms, and dynamics. They have been encouraged to express those changes in movement. Children naturally learn in many different ways. Some like to watch in class and ‘do’ at home. Some…
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For Parents: Classes for 4-5 year-olds
Parent: “What did you do in class today?”Child: “I was a cat.”Parent: “Oh.” It is difficult for young children to express exactly what they are ‘learning’ in a Dalcroze classroom. What happens in the room after we take off our socks and shoes and close the door? Of course, in the mind of the child…
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Curriculum Focus: Attention
One of the most important aspects of the Dalcroze work is the training and development of attention. There are many different forms of attention: focused, sustained, selective, divided, alternating have been identified by motor learning researchers. Like many other motor activities, music utilizes all of them, and in the Dalcroze class we attempt to foster the…
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Exploring Meter
A primary focus areas in the beginning of the year is the subject of meter (with subtle differences this is also known as ‘measure’ and ‘time signature’). Meter can be defined as the grouping of beats into 2’s, 3’s and 4’s. (They can be larger, too!) Usually the first beat of the group is felt…
Early elementary:
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7-9 Dalcroze: 1/10/17
Here is our first class of the New Year: If I move, students are still. When I stop, students move freely. Simple instructions (affectionately known as ‘opposite day’), but devilishly hard to execute for this age. The urge to mirror is very strong in us. I made my phrases in tempo and predictable. Each student…
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7-9 year olds: 1/17/17
Spinning Kids of a certain age often like to spin when they come into a classroom. I’ll leave it to the psychologists to explain why, but sometimes I’ll start where they are. So today I began to play music that matched their spinning. I gradually changed the music and pointed out that it no longer…
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7-9 Dalcroze: 1/24/17
Here are this week’s activities: Make a straight line with one hand and a circle with the other. Not easy for anyone to do, and most were not able to accomplish this. However, it allowed us to become acclimated to our temporary room which contained a large wall mirrored wall. I allowed them to look at…
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7-9 Year-old Dalcroze: 1/31/17
This week, a guest poster: Laca Tines. She is a student in our methods class (you may have seen her observing), and a wonderful early childhood music teacher herself. As part of our class, she was asked to write an observation report. I thought hers was keenly observed, and asked for her permission to post…
Late elementary:
Adult
note: during the pandemic, when we were looking for ways to keep ourselves moving, I made some posts for adults to practice their eurhythmics skills. For more about teaching Dalcroze to adults, view ‘by subject‘.
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Subtraction
Read more: SubtractionIn the Drop-in Wednesday morning class series, I realized that I had been doing a mathematics run. The first week was about addition. The next was about division. So last week, I decided to try subtraction. (Can you guess what is coming this week?) We worked with a series of 8 beats that gradually whittled…
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Ostinato of 3 + cross-rhythms
Read more: Ostinato of 3 + cross-rhythmsAs fall approaches we begin to think of bonfires, homecoming games and ostinatos with cross-rhythms. No? Ok, me neither, but how about some ostinatos with cross-rhythms anyway? I was hoping you’d say that. I recorded a slow meditative track with an ostinato (repeating pattern) of 3 against cross-rhythms of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.…
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Picturing Music
Read more: Picturing MusicI’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…
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One Small Step…
Read more: 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…
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Rough Sketch
Read more: Rough SketchConfession: 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…