Solfa Challenge Level 3

Once my students have achieved the Solfa Challenge Level 2 they should be able to perform a collection of simple songs and rhymes, show the pulse and shape of the pitch and also record these two things in a fairly rough and ready way. In Level 3 we will expand on this and start to introduce the concept of quavers. Again, my ideas have come directly or been inspired by Cyrilla Rowsell and David Vinden’s Jolly Music.

Level 3 is split into three sections as you can see from the Solfa Challenge – Level 3 Chart

Section 1 – I can play…

I can play Patacake

I have mentioned before that some students will tap the rhythm instead of the pulse, or some hybrid of the two. I have found playing patacake can help with this. It gives a very visual and kinesthetic guide from the teacher. My own youngest son still manages to patacake the rhythm though, and gets very cross with me when I’m not in sync with him. Still, he is only 5 so there’s time.

I can play the Radio Game

This game is fabulous. Basically you have one person as the radio controller and the others as the singers. You agree on a signal (like opening and closing the hand) for the controller to tell the singers whether the radio is ON or OFF. The singers must sing the song while the radio is on and then be silent when the radio is off. Initially you may want to sing most of the song ON and just turn it OFF for the last line or few words. The tricky bit is when you turn it off and on again in the same song. The singers must continue the song in their thinking voices (silently in their heads) and start singing again at the right place. Some students will start again on the next word as if a CD has been paused, not a radio being muted.

It’s such a brilliant way of practising keeping a steady beat and working on the thinking voice.

I can play Pass The Song

I love this game and my Infant School Choir love playing it too. Basically you split into groups. In a piano lesson it might be just the teacher and the student. Without missing a beat you must perform a song, taking it in turns to sing. Start easy and sing the entire song before passing. Then try singing a phrase each, and finally a beat each. Some students will have trouble with the beat option. They will try and sing a word each. They could use their pulse pictures they will create in Section 3 below, and tap along the hearts with their fingers to help.

Section 2 – I can play on the keys

For each of the four songs we have been working with, the student plays them by ear on the black keys. You can show them how to find the right black keys for so and mi by showing them the “gaps” on the keyboard. Once they can do that confidently they can extend it to white keys starting on C, D or G. Moving to different keys not only demonstrates that songs can be sung in different keys (transposed) and also encourages them to use their ears to find that second lower pitch. Although I have had students who realised they could just count the semitones – which I guess is another useful skill!

It is vital that the students are comfortable singing the songs accurately and that they understand that the songs use two pitches. A high pitch and a low pitch. They need to build on the work they have done mapping the pitch with their hands and on paper to play them accurately on the piano. Many will just alternate pitches on each word instead of each beat (which is the case for these songs but not future ones) so coming off the bench and doing regular revision of the up and down arm movements will be required. Slowly and surely is the way to go.

I personally don’t demonstrate this activity to the student, rather I talk them through it and sing a lot to get them to their goal. If I demonstrate it, they pick it up much faster but I’m not sure that it provides the same learning opportunities.

Section 3 – I can record

Pulse This starts off very similar to Level 2. We are showing the pulse on paper but this time by writing the words in a set of 8 hearts rather than gluing and sticking. I use a technique I learned from Jolly Music.

1 – The student and teacher sing the song
2 – The student and teacher sing the song and tap the pulse on the hearts
3 – Hopefully the student can now do this on their own
4 – The student taps the hearts and sings in their thinking voice
5 – The teacher taps and the student sings in their thinking voice but the teacher stops on a heart and the student must write the word in the heart
6 – Keep going until all the hearts are full

Make sure you start by filling in all the hearts containing only one word first, then it is easier to fill in the others. If a student keeps getting it wrong you might ask them to sing aloud so you can hear where it’s going wrong. It will probably be that they are singing a single word for each beat rather then keeping with the rhythm they have learnt.

If they have filled all the hearts and missed off a word in the middle – quite a common error – you can sing their song back to them as they have notated it and see if they realise there is a word missing. Another trick is to stop with one heart to go, talk about how many words we still have to fit in, and they should realise that the final heart needs two words, not one.

Here is a pulse picture by Matthew (age 5). He changed the words to Hey hey look at me. I am Matthew can you see.

Rhythm Using the same heart beats from the pulse section we can take a look at how many sounds are in each beat. Sometimes there is one sound and sometimes there are two. I start with See Saw as there are only one syllable words to deal with. Cobbler Cobbler can require a little more explanation since Cobbler has two syllables and therefore two sounds.

Next we need to show how we can tap the way the words go, rather than the pulse. So we might have to tap a heart twice if there are two sounds. Hopefully they will know the song well enough to time the taps correctly. When I have done this with older students without the proper preparation we have had some very uneven taps.

Finally we can make crosses underneath the hearts to show which hearts have one and which have two. A confident student may wish to try adding the crosses in the hearts without the stepping stone of the words.

Now we can tap the pulse by tapping the hearts or tap the rhythm (the way the words go) by tapping the crosses. The student can see, hear and feel the difference between pulse and rhythm. An important milestone.

To be continued…

Teaching syncopation – Five Little Speckled Frogs

In the Piano Adventures Level One lesson book is the great American standard L’il Liza Jane. It contains the classic syncopated rhythm syncopa. This is usually written as quaver crotchet quaver but since the Level 1 books haven’t yet introduced quavers, it’s written as crotchet minim crotchet.

I love this rhythm and it crops up again and again so I want to teach it effectively. I believe it’s important to experience the rhythm first, before showing students how it is notated. I suspect the Piano Adventures authors feel the same way. I suspect that every child in America is extremely familiar with this song. However, in the UK, not so much!

So my hunt began. I needed a song that UK children know really well, that also contains the same rhythmic motif. Then I remembered Five Little Speckled Frogs.

This song is perfect. Most young children know it, as they sing it regularly at playgroups, nurseries and early years music classes. For those who don’t know it, it’s also a counting song (we lose a frog each verse until there are no little speckled frogs left!). The benefits of this type of song are that we get 5 repeats without the children losing interest. So any children not totally certain before, certainly will be after they’ve counted down from five to none! Another benefit is that each of the six lines starts with the syncopa rhythm!

So how to teach it?

1 – Sing it! Sing it to the student with one hand showing the five frogs, sitting on your other hand, which is the log! Here are the lyrics to jog your memory.

Five little speckled frogs
Sat on a speckled log
Eating some most delicious grubs, yum yum
One jumped into the pool
Where it was nice and cool
Then there were four green speckled frogs, glub glub
Four little speckled frogs etc…

Or you can hear it here

2 – Hopefully the student has joined in at some point during the song. If not, ask them to sing it with you or on their own if they seem confident.

3 – Ask them to focus on the first line. Can they clap the rhythm of the first line? Perhaps with you if necessary. Talk about the first half being quite jazzy and we call it syncopa.

4 – Next I will move off the bench and sit on the carpet if available. I pull out four flashcards with a variety of rhythms, including syncopa of course! Can they clap the rhythms? Allow them to choose which ones to clap. They will invariably leave syncopa until last, as it is least familiar. Can they identify which if the rhythms matches the jazzy start to the song? To download the flash cards click Rhythm Flash Cards – Syncopa.

5 – We can then have some fun choosing which two flashcards makes the rhythm from the first line. We can clap it, we can sing it, we can tap it, we can speak it with syncopa ta ta ta-a. As many different ways as possible to map the rhythm experience of the song with the visual representation.

6 – Depending on the maturity of the student I might now explain the term syncopation and how it describes a rhythm where the emphasis is on the off beat. I take the flash card with four crotchets and discuss which of the four beats are strong and which are weaker. Then we place it above each of the other three flash cards and decide which of them are syncopated. Only syncopa of course!

7 – Next I bring out the score for Five Little Speckled Frogs. I’ve written it in a very simple way. Two handed, five finger position with no hand movements, melody only. Students at Level 1 of Piano Adventures should have no trouble with the pitch recognition so all of their concentration can focus on the rhythm. Hopefully with all this preparation they will be able to play it quite easily.

8 – Finally, out comes the Piano Adventures book and they can find the syncopa rhythm in L’il Liza Jane. You can put the syncopa flash card up on the music stand for them to match if they are having trouble.

With careful practice (which I know all our students do!) they should be able to learn L’il Liza Jane fairly independently.

Here is my arranged score for Five Little Speckled Frogs. You are welcome to use it for your own students.

 

Get Set Piano Book 1 Review

I am a piano teacher and also a Kodály fan. I incorporate the Kodály Approach into my piano lessons. We sing and chant Jolly Music‘s traditional playground songs and we use actions to define pitch and pulse. I have gorgeous little mouse and snail puppets for investigating tempo and I use them to help children understand how crotchets and minims relate to each other. As we progress, the students play the Jolly Music songs on the black keys by ear. Starting with so-mi songs and moving to so-mi-la, then do-mi-so etc.

But what have we here!? A brand new tutor book? Get Set Piano by Heather Hammond (of Cool Clarinet fame) and Karen Marshall.

I saw a copy at the Music Education Expo 2014 earlier this month and liked the look of it but didn’t have time to dig deeper. Then another piano teacher asked what I thought of it. They thought it looked good so I bought a copy of Lesson Book 1 and the Pieces Book 1.

It arrived this morning and I sat down to trawl through it. To my amazement it is choc-a-block full of the rhymes and songs that I use. Including many I also use with my singing students from National Youth Choir of Scotland’s Go for Bronze musicianship scheme (also a Kodaly resource).

Get Set Piano goes much faster than some US based methods but perhaps an older beginner, especially one with prior musical training, could get on quite well with it. There is a free teacher guide online, as well as quite a few additional pieces.

What I will certainly do with Get Set Piano is have it in my bag. I think once the students have played their songs on the black keys and I have exhausted the song’s musicianship and ear training potential then I think they will enjoy seeing them in this book and having a go. We could even use them as sight reading material and see if they recognise the songs as they play!!

I am always on the look out for nicely presented, gently progressive books and pieces to make the transition from Piano Adventures to the UK exam board system. Get Set Piano Book 1 is too elementary to meet this need, but in two weeks time Get Set Piano Book 2 is published and you can be sure I’ll be first in the queue to buy a copy and that might certainly make the grade, as it were, for my students! I’ll be sure to let you know!