{"id":13359,"date":"2023-03-06T18:21:19","date_gmt":"2023-03-06T23:21:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/?p=13359"},"modified":"2026-03-31T15:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T19:05:56","slug":"one-small-step","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/one-small-step\/","title":{"rendered":"One Small Step…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Whole and half steps <\/strong>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 \u2013 or rather, inaudible \u2013 unless I made a mistake in a musical passage, an easy enough thing to fix for pianists. It didn\u2019t seem like such an important subject, just a way to label the movement between two adjacent scale tones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his solf\u00e8ge 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But inside a scale? They tend to just disappear. One of my first tasks then in the adult Dalcroze solf\u00e8ge 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cthe tyranny of Do\u201d.) However, it\u2019s 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, \u201cNone,\u201d and are quite astonished to learn that I was primarily playing black notes.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 solf\u00e8ge 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\u2019s most brilliant pedagogical inventions).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For young children we\u2019ll need a different approach. This is definitely one of those \u201cteachery\u201d 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 \u2018hopscotch\u2019 I call \u2018hop-scale\u2019. 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201creal life\u201d, outside of the ear training classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 \u2013 or rather, inaudible \u2013 unless I made a mistake in a musical passage, an easy enough thing to fix for pianists. It didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[128],"tags":[113,121,117,131],"class_list":["post-13359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dalcroze-reference","tag-children","tag-children-subjects","tag-dalcroze-practice","tag-subjects"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9ohMj-3tt","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":389,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/register-and-scale\/","url_meta":{"origin":13359,"position":0},"title":"Register And Scale","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"December 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Translating musical phenomena into verbal language can be tricky. Most adults are familiar with the use of the words high and low as applied to musical pitch. Specifically, these words refer to the frequency of the musical tone: higher tones have a more frequent wavelength than lower tones. When physicalizing\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media-cache-lt0.pinterest.com\/upload\/198932508510249459_qWozSji5_c.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":19086,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/invisible-subjects\/","url_meta":{"origin":13359,"position":1},"title":"Invisible Subjects","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"June 20, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometimes, to see the whole, we need to look at the parts. But suppose some of the parts are difficult to see? This is one of the things that makes Dalcroze education so notoriously hard to describe. In one sense, the curriculum for the Dalcroze classes I teach is very\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":478,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/7-9-dalcroze-12417\/","url_meta":{"origin":13359,"position":2},"title":"7-9 Dalcroze: 1\/24\/17","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"January 28, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Here\u00a0are this week\u2019s 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":472,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/7-9-dalcroze-121416\/","url_meta":{"origin":13359,"position":3},"title":"7-9 Dalcroze: 12\/14\/16","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"January 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Here\u2019s what we did: All move freely; I choose one person\u2019s movement to play after which the class guesses who I was playing. This was by request. I like this game because it encourages the kids to move in their own way. Make a shape with 3 or 4 people.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":510,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/7-9-year-old-dalcroze-4417\/","url_meta":{"origin":13359,"position":4},"title":"7-9 Year-old Dalcroze, 4\/4\/17","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"April 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"This week\u2019s 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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":470,"url":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/7-9-year-old-dalcroze-12616\/","url_meta":{"origin":13359,"position":5},"title":"7-9 Year-old Dalcroze: 12\/6\/16","author":"Michael Joviala","date":"December 10, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Back Telephone The traditional game of telephone (whisper a phrase around the circle and see if it comes back the same) only with rhythms gently tapped on the back. We tried 2 rhythms and both came back perfectly. I used the second rhythm to introduce the 4 sixteenth note rhythm\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Dalcroze Reference"","block_context":{"text":"Dalcroze Reference","link":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/category\/dalcroze-reference\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13360,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13359\/revisions\/13360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joviala.com\/jovialaworks\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}