We've broken up questions in meter, rhythm, scales and intervals to make it easier to create a test that fits the level of your students. Now you can also set grade weights for test sections. And you can schedule due dates and visibility options for tests connected to classes!

Teachers will see the new question types when creating a new test. This update will not affect tests created prior to December 2023.

Test Content Updates

Meter & Rhythm

The Meter & Rhythm test section breaks questions down further by note values, simple meter, compound meter, and complete or incomplete final measures with pickups:

Scales

Scale questions are grouped by number of accidentals, major scales and minor scales:

Intervals

Intervals have two separate test sections – "Interval Construction and Identification" and "Interval Manipulation." Interval ID questions are categorized into major/minor diatonic, perfect, double accidentals, and non-diatonic intervals. Interval Manipulation questions include inversions, compound intervals, and enharmonic intervals:

New Test Settings

Additionally, test settings now allow for adjusting test section weight and section passing scores, in addition to the time limit* for each section:

*To remove time limits from test sections, enter an excessive amount of time in minutes (for example, "1000:00"). Do not enter a time limit of "00:00." This will allow 0 seconds for the test section, causing all answers to be marked wrong immediately upon starting the section.

Due Dates

Managing your assessments in uTheory is easier than ever! Tests connected to classes now have due date and visibility options, allowing you to schedule tests in advance:

Enabling a test due date will prevent students from taking and submitting a test after the deadline has passed. Any previous test results will remain visible to the student, unless the test is hidden.

Students will see test due dates next to their available tests in uTheory:

As always, if you have an idea or feature request, drop us a line at hello@utheory.com.

We recently examined top theory resources to save time for busy educators. Books, websites, apps, podcasts, blogs, and vlogs – there's a lot of information out there! Read on for our current top picks for music theory pedagogy resources, from books to websites to podcasts and more.

Practice Space

Practice Space is a web-based music practice platform that connects teachers and students. Streamline your students’ practice by easily sending a clear agenda of what to practice during the week. Create assignments with multi-media attachments such as videos of performances, PDFs of music, audio recordings and backing tracks, and links to other resources such as uTheory lessons and skills practice. See it in action:

Books

The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy by Leigh VanHandel

Today’s music theory instructors face a changing environment, one where the traditional lecture format is in decline. The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy addresses this change head-on, featuring battle-tested lesson plans alongside theoretical discussions of music theory curriculum and course design. With the modern student in mind, scholars are developing creative new approaches to teaching music theory, encouraging active student participation within contemporary contexts such as flipped classrooms, music industry programs, and popular music studies. Get the book here.

The Routledge Companion to Aural Skills Pedagogy by Kent Cleland and Paul Fleet

The Routledge Companion to Aural Skills Pedagogy offers a comprehensive survey of issues, practice, and current developments in the teaching of aural skills. With an international array of contributors, the volume captures diverse perspectives on aural-skills pedagogy, and enables conversation between different regions. It addresses key new developments such as the use of technology for aural training and the use of popular music. This book will be an essential resource and reference for all university and conservatoire instructors in aural skills, as well as students preparing for teaching careers in music. Get the book here.

Teaching Music Through Performance Series

This best-selling series of books and recordings has quickly become the indispensable resource for music educators searching for the best possible music at all levels. Each volume provides directors with the tools they need to help performers move beyond the printed page to musical awareness and understanding, with analyses of select pieces and insights from national leaders in the field. The series include band, choir, orchestra, jazz, and young ensembles. Get the books here.

Podcasts

Notes from the Staff

Notes from the Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Note Doctors

Note Doctors is a podcast all about music theory and music theory pedagogy. Each episode features an interview with an innovative music theory instructor. The podcast is hosted by three university theory instructors: Paul Thomas, Jenn Weaver, and Ben Graf. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Her Music Academia

What does it mean to be a music researcher? How does a musician use music as a medium to foster community? Featuring interviews with other musicians, scholars and artists, host Lydia Bangura seeks to ask interesting questions about music and execute important and relevant music research. Join Lydia as she reads, writes and chats her way through a music PhD program. Listen to her podcast here, and read her blog here.

After Sectionals

After Sectionals features three Texas band directors – Darcy Williams, Jenna Yee, and TJ West – talking about band openly and candidly: what works, what doesn't, and everything in between. Some episodes are taken directly from class rehearsals while others are an invitation to talk shop – and smack – in the office after sectionals. Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Choralosophy

The Choralosophy Podcast takes choral musicians underneath the issues related to the choral art form with a philosophical approach to both technical and intellectual aspects of teaching, singing and performing. You can find the show on your favorite podcast platform and here on this site.

Music Tech Teacher

Practical, actionable music technology tips and lesson ideas for music teachers – all in a podcast! The Music Tech Teacher podcast is a show especially for music teachers who’d like practical tips for using technology in music education. Hosted by Katie Argyle from Midnight Music, each episode features tips, lesson plans, ideas and tutorials from the show’s host – an experienced music technology in education trainer, speaker and consultant. There are also regular interviews with real teachers who use technology in creative and productive ways. Learn more here.

Websites

SMT-V: The Society for Music Theory Videocast Journal

SMT-V is the open-access, peer-reviewed video journal of the Society for Music Theory. Founded in 2014, SMT-V publishes video essays that showcase research in music theory in a dynamic, audiovisual format, presented so as to have the potential to engage both specialists within the field as well as interested viewers outside the music theory community. The journal features a supportive and collaborative production process, and publishes several videos each year. Watch here.

uTheory

uTheory is an online platform for teaching and learning music theory, rhythm and ear training. With engaging video lessons, individualized practice, and proficiency testing, uTheory creates the constant learn it–practice it–develop it loop that we see in the very best teaching. Teachers can assign lessons, practice exercises, and customized tests, while uTheory does the grading. Students receive immediate feedback in lessons and practice exercises, and teachers get detailed assessment data on each student.

uTheory is fully cloud-based, and runs in a web browser on a computer, chromebook, phone or tablet, with no software or app to install. Empower your students to become independent musicians who read fluently, gain rehearsal time without sacrificing theory instruction, teach theory more efficiently with self-directed learning and individualized practice, and set students up for success in advanced music studies.

Create your free teacher account at utheory.com/teach for access to all of uTheory’s lessons and exercises.

Midnight Music

Make a meaningful impact in your classroom without the tech-overwhelm! Midnight Music's mission is to demystify music technology for music educators world-wide with world-class resources, professional development tools, and expert support. Explore the blog, free training, courses and podcast (see above - "Music Tech Teacher") here.

IMSLP: International Music Score Library Project

The International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP), also known as the Petrucci Music Library, is a subscription-based digital library of public-domain music scores. The project has uploaded more than 630,000 scores and 73,000 recordings of more than 195,000 works by 24,000 composers, available for download. Browse here.

CPDL: Choral Public Domain Library

Like IMSLP, The Choral Public Domain Library (CPDL) is a sheet music archive with choral and vocal music in the public domain or otherwise freely available for printing and performing. Access the library here.

NAfME: National Association for Music Education

The National Association for Music Education is a collaborative community that supports music educators and advocates for equitable access to music education. NAfME provides publications and resources for music education, communities and professional development for music educators, advocacy tools, and student opportunities. Join here.

uTheory Printable Resources

uTheory also offers free printable resources featuring music fundamental topics, rhythm concepts and practice, and even staff paper for note taking. Explore and download here.

Do you have a resource that didn’t make the list? Let us know about it at hello@utheory.com!

Research in music cognition suggests that for most common aural skills, we process notes by their relationship to a tonic or their position in a scale rather than actually hearing adjacent note to note intervallic relationships. In this episode of Notes From The Staff, Greg and David look at this research on how we hear and the role that intervals play in that hearing. They talk about why classic techniques for teaching intervals can actually undermine students' reading skills, and look at ways of teaching intervals that instead complement and strengthen students' aural skills.

Why not use 'Here Comes the Bride' and other common melodies to recognize intervals?

We hear music based on how the notes relate to a sense of tonic, not based on the pitch relationship of immediately adjacent notes or even of vertical notes sounding together.

"Here Comes the Bride" comes along with context because it's sol-do-do-do (5-1-1-1). When a student comes across a sol-do leap in dictation and thinks, “Does that sound like ‘Here Comes the Bride’?” it sure does. But there are six perfect fourths within our diatonic collection, and they don't all feel like sol-do. If a student encounters a fourth that is not sol-do, it does not sound like ‘Here Comes the Bride.’ Additionally, they’ve brought with it the context of the starting note being sol, even though it's not actually sol in the current key, and the following note being do, even though it's not actually do in the key, and they’ve had to erase the tonal context to sing that perfect fourth, which is problematic.

What should we do instead? Teach intervals in the context of keys, and also give students tools for hearing intervals in non-tonal contexts. Here are six highly effective exercises that grow students’ independence in identifying intervals:

1. Intervallic walks:
   
2. Triadic walks:
   
3. Scale patterns:
   
4. Coded melodies:
   
5. Remingtons in canon:
   
6. Nadia Boulanger's interval distances:
   

Listen to the full episode on Interval Ear Training at utheory.com/notes.

Notes From The Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Subscribe to Notes From The Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

When we think about teaching music theory, do we consider the roles of short term, long term and working memory or schemas? What are the implications of memory for how we teach? What is a schema? In the latest episode of Notes From The Staff, Dr. Leigh VanHandel, author of The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy, talks about the science of memory and learning and how it can help us better structure our teaching. Here are four things to know from the conversation:

1. Long term memory is knowledge that’s readily available for retrieval and doesn’t need to be rehearsed all the time.
2. Short term memory holds a certain amount of information for a short period of time, such as when remembering a phone number long enough to write it down.
3. Working memory is manipulating information from short term memory, such as repeating a phone number you just heard backward.
4. A schema is an interconnected network of all the things we know. When a new piece of information comes in, our brain organizes it into categories and builds connections to other relevant information.

Knowing the function of each type of memory, should we have students memorize theory material until they’ve built a repertoire of terms and facts? That might be impressive, but science says it’s not the most effective. We can tell any learner, even a non-musician, that A Major has three sharps. That person will then know that A Major has three sharps, and they’ll hold that information in their short term memory (or maybe even long term memory if repeated enough), but that student will have no context for what the information means. Our students need a network that allows them to connect A Major to other knowledge about scales and key signatures to understand the significance of sharps in a given key. Although we want our students to eventually have immediate recall, we need to teach them to build strategies for understanding new concepts, developing a schema.

To hear further details about learning and memory, and specific examples of how this informs teaching strategies, listen to the full episode of Notes From The Staff.

Notes From The Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Subscribe to Notes From The Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

We recently chatted with Dr. Stefanie Dickinson, who shared some of the music theory games in her chapter of The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. From her list of games for reinforcing pitch, harmony, rhythm and more, Stefanie tells us about the favorites she uses in her classroom and how they’re played. Here’s a quick peek at two of her games, “Interval Train” and "Triad Bingo."

Interval Train

Divide students into small groups or teams. Invite one student from each group to the board. Give the students a starting note, direction and interval – for example, “G, ascending major third.” After each team has notated the first interval, the next players come to the board for a new interval, and so on, for a series of 5-12 intervals. The group(s) that get the correct final note win.

Triad Bingo

Prepare traditional Bingo cards with the letters B I N G and O across the top, and a five-by-five grid of boxes, aligning the columns with each letter. Place a single chord in each box. Vary the chord qualities; for example, under the O column you may have F major, D minor, C augmented, E minor and B diminished triads. As you play, call out a letter and chord quality, such as “N minor.” Students will place a chip on the minor triad box in that column, if one exists. The first student to create a line of five chips declares “Bingo!” and wins if all answers are correct. Feel free to get creative - you could play this game with intervals, too!

To hear her music theory games explained (and one bonus game from Greg!), listen to the full episode of Notes From The Staff.

Notes From The Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Subscribe to Notes From The Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

We chatted with Dr. Melissa Hoag on making music theory fundamentals musical, fun and relevant. She shared these six tips from her chapter "Putting the Music in 'Music Fundamentals'" in The Routledge Companion to Music Theory Pedagogy. To hear each one explained (and more), listen to the full episode on Putting Music in “Music Fundamentals” with Melissa Hoag:

Repetition Counts

In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus’ study of learning and memory resulted in the forgetting curve hypothesis – the moment you learn something, you have a 100% chance of getting it right, but if no attempt is made to retain the information, that chance quickly plummets with time. Each time we review a fundamental, or ask a question on a test, it’s a moment of learning that brings the students back up to 100%, and the curve falls at a more shallow rate with each moment of review. If fundamentals never leave, if we review and reassess topics already addressed, we significantly decrease the rate of forgetting, and conversely, increase the rate of retention for those topics.

Consistency and Rigor Matter

Hold the students to a consistent, high standard, and they will meet it. But if you only hold students to mediocracy, they will only meet that. Right from the start, be specific and consistent. Sharps have to be centered on the correct line. They don't need to be beautiful, but accurate. Students know if they don’t have a good grasp of music theory, and they don’t want to feel unprepared.

More Assessment Opportunities are Better than Fewer

Give students lots of assessment opportunities, rather than one behemoth, terrifying do-or-die test situation. Repeated chances means ample opportunities to raise a grade, demonstrate strengths and find and improve on weaknesses.

Prompt Feedback and Specific Grading Are Important for Learning

Try to turn things around by the next class period, so students have time to get feedback to improve before the next assignment is due. Better yet, turn to technology, like uTheory, for automatic grading, immediate feedback and individualized practice, so students don’t have to wait two days to find out whether they've written that scale correctly.

Involve Students in Finding Examples

Using music that your students are listening to is a great way to engage them. Ask your students for their current favorite music, and take a few minutes to listen and analyze it as a class. Better yet, tell students what to listen for, and invite them to bring those examples to you. It takes just a few minutes out of class, but it really helps the students feel engaged and know that you care about what they're interested in. And it's also a really easy way to diversify what you're teaching, or at least keep up with popular music.

Have Fun!

Use puns. Be silly. Use games. Be approachable. Use diversity of repertoire. Don’t just read, write and drill without applying it to real music. Invite the students to engage their own musicianship. We want students to discover how interesting and fun music theory is. Allow students to find the joy and excitement that comes with learning music theory.

Notes From The Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Subscribe to Notes From The Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's been a busy summer for uTheory! Read on to learn about coming updates, which bring the most requested features, rolling out throughout this school year. And be sure to catch the final episodes of Notes From The Staff, Season 1.

Looking for more information on teaching with uTheory? Visit utheory.com/teach, request a quote, or create a free teacher account today!

Coming Soon

We’ve got updates coming soon, and they're our biggest yet! Here are some new features that you can look forward to over the course of the coming year:

• Primary clefs – your violists will learn theory in alto clef, flutists in treble
• Games
• New comprehensive curriculum that ties together rhythm, ear training and theory
• Clearly organized units
• Overall greater customization

Best of all, uTheory will still write all the questions, grade the work, give students immediate feedback and provide teachers with detailed progress reporting and assessment data. And it will run in any web browser on any device.

Read more about the updates coming here.

Experiments

uTheory experiments are games and exercises that we're polishing before including in lessons and assignments. Try them out and let us know what you think at hello@utheory.com!

Click here to play.

Notes From The Staff

That's a wrap on Season 1 of our podcast, Notes From The Staff!

In this laughter-filled episode, David Newman shares his music theory and aural skills teaching songs, as well as some of the stories behind them. And in the final episode, Leah, David and Greg reflect back on favorite moments from the season, and chat about coming features for uTheory.

We're honored to interview such prominent leaders in music education and theory, and look forward to the next season coming in September. Listen atutheory.com/notes or wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode!

Tune in here.

uTheory Licenses

Want unlimited access to uTheory for your students? Request a quote or purchase a license online! uTheory licenses can begin on any date of your choosing.

Request a quote.

As always, if you have an idea or feature request, give us a shout at support@utheory.com.

In the history of educational psychology, there’s plenty of evidence that supports learning through play. But the American culture, and a focus on testing in schools, has distorted our idea of play and the benefits of play in education. We talked to Jed Dearybury, author of The Playful Classroom and The Power of Play for All Ages, about how bringing play into classrooms – no matter the age or level – leads to deeper, more engaged and more joyful learning. Here are five quick points from our conversation.

Play allows us to let go of self-criticism and fear.

Students (and teachers too!) can get lost in the flow of playfulness and let go of self-criticism and fear, thanks to the feel-good chemicals released in the brain when engaged in play.

A playful classroom is an empathetic and compassionate classroom.

Students in an empathetic, compassionate classroom feel free and safe to take learning risks, rather than do exactly as the teacher said, because they know their ideas will be embraced and accepted.

Students take ownership of learning in a playful environment.

Once we give students the freedom and permission to take learning risks, they will level it up with their own ideas, fostering a sense of pride and ownership.

Play gives teachers the freedom to listen in and focus on students.

If we're delivering a PowerPoint, we're focused on the PowerPoint. Are the words spelled right? Is the pacing appropriate? But when we’re right there beside the students, we get a first-hand account of their academic ability and social skills, for a better understanding of their strengths and opportunities for growth.

Being playful helps create an emotional connection to the learning.

Scientifically speaking, if we have an emotional connection to the learning, we remember it better. For example, the alphabet. Most of us have an emotional connection to the ABC song, because someone probably cheered and sang along as we learned it. When we ask someone to say the alphabet, they'll probably sing it, even as an adult.

Listen to the full episode of Notes From The Staff to hear Jed describe the power of play in greater detail, and the steps you can take to build a playful learning environment.

Notes From The Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Subscribe to Notes From The Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

We’ve got an update coming soon, and it’s our biggest upgrade yet! Primary clefs, games, clearly organized units, new curricula and overall greater customization are just some of the new features that will begin to launch this summer.

Best of all, uTheory will still write all the questions, grade all the work, give students immediate feedback, and provide teachers with detailed progress reporting and assessment data. And it will run in any web browser on any device.

If you think uTheory is great the way it is now (and we know a lot of teachers who think so!), not to worry – you’ll be able to use uTheory as you already have, even after the update.

Here’s some of what we’re looking forward to:

Learn Tab

We're consolidating all assignments in one central location: the Learn tab. Lessons, practice assignments, mastery assignments, tests, quizzes, and checkpoints, along with due dates, point value, progress and grades, will now all be visible in one place. You'll be able to organize these into sequential units, or distinct areas ("Rhythm" and "Ear Training," for instance). From the learn tab, teachers can view, add and edit assignments, and even re-order assignments with a simple click and drag. No more questions from students about what to complete next!

Practice Assignments

Teachers will be able to create customized practice assignments with specific parameters. In addition to making a skill available for students to practice, teachers will be able to:

• Define the number of questions in a practice assignment
• Add a minimum amount of practice time
• Set the number of points the assignment is worth (if graded)
• Customize the practice content and types of questions
• Choose a date to make the practice available to students, and a due date
• Assign practice to a class, group of students, or even individual students

So, if you’d like your students to practice identifying the major key signatures of C, F and B-flat, you can create a practice assignment for the major key signatures of C, F and B-flat with identification-type exercises only. And you won’t need to write a single question or grade any student work – uTheory will take care of that!

Sequence

Another popular request from teachers: changing the order of assignments! Teachers will be able to change the order in which assignments appear by clicking and dragging, and can add or remove assignments, all right from the Learn tab.

New Comprehensive Curriculum Option

In addition to uTheory's current curriculum, which is designed to get students ready for college-level music theory and ear training fast, we're introducing a new curriculum that's designed to be used over a multi-year period, to allow students time to gain real fluency in music theory, rhythm and ear training concepts.

We think this comprehensive curriculum will be a great fit for anyone who gets to work with students over a longer term period. We hope this will be especially useful for high school and middle school ensemble directors and private lesson studio teachers.

Primary Clef

The new curriculum comes with the ability to configure a primary clef on a per-student basis. Now trombone players will be able to learn the basics of music theory, rhythm and ear training in bass clef, violists in alto clef, and sopranos in treble clef all at the same time in the same class. Treble, bass, alto, and tenor clefs, and the grand staff, will be options for a student’s primary clef. All questions, lesson videos and exercises will appear in the chosen clef through roughly the first year of study to ensure fluency, after which other clefs are introduced.

Spiral Approach

The new curriculum is built for fluency. It will offer a spiral approach, introducing concepts gradually with ample opportunities to revisit topics. Lessons will cover smaller chunks of content than the original uTheory curriculum, with more time for review, repetition and creativity. New games (such as Solfege Sally) will bring play into the music theory learning process.

Roll-Out and Feedback

These new features will begin to roll out this summer. It will be a seamless transition for existing classes, students and tests, though you'll have the option of adding content from the extended curriculum as it becomes available to your existing class. Or you can continue to use uTheory just as you do now.

We’d love to know your thoughts! Please send us any questions, comments or requests to hello@utheory.com.

Here's what's happening at uTheory – we've got more free printable resources, new episodes of Notes From The Staff and a summer learning opportunity! As always, feel free to reach out for a quote, feature request or to share feedback at hello@utheory.com.

Counting Resources

Check out the latest additions to our printable resources:

• Eighth Note Syncopation
• Ties in Simple Time

If you're looking for a specific resource, please write to us with your request.

Browse all resources here.

Do you have students who could use a jumpstart for college or AP Theory? uTheory and Oberlin Conservatory are partnering this summer to offer Music Theory Jumpstart online from June 2 through July 29. Students will work with conservatory faculty and use uTheory to prepare for college-level music theory. Learn more about OC Global here.

Register for Music Theory Jumpstart here.

Notes From The Staff Episodes

Dalcroze Solfege Games - uTheory's creator, Dr. Greg Ristow, shares some favorite games for teaching solfege drawn from the Dalcroze approach to music education.

Funding Your Program - Leah Sheldon, uTheory's head of teacher engagement, shares tips for going beyond bake sales to build a sustainable fundraising model that can support a vibrant music program.

Hexachordal Solfege and Theory Pedagogy Trends - Dr. Megan Kaes Long of Oberlin Conservatory talks about the earliest system of Western solfege, hexachordal solmization, and recent trends in music theory pedagogy.

Power of Play - Jed Dearybury, author of The Playful Classroom and The Power of Play for All Ages talks about how bringing play into classrooms--no matter the age or level--leads to deeper, more engaged and more joyful learning.

Listen at utheory.com/notes or wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss a new episode!

Tune in now.

uTheory Licenses

Want unlimited access to uTheory for your students? Request a quote now for your group license purchase! uTheory licenses can begin on any date of your choosing.

Get a quote here.

As always, if you have an idea or feature request, give us a shout at support@utheory.com.

What are rhythm counting systems? How do we use them? Why might we choose one over another? In this episode of Notes From The Staff, we break down the plethora of approaches into groups, and share examples from our own teaching experience. Read on for a quick overview of each group, and listen to the full episode for a deeper discussion.

Analytical/Metric Subdivisional Counting Systems

Analytical counting systems – 1-e-&-a, 1-ti-te-ta, du-ta-de-ta, ta-ka-di-mi – break down the rhythm and analyze the relative durations, often helping us get quickly between sound and notation. These types of counting systems give students, even young students, an opportunity to build a rhythmic vocabulary and to have a deeper understanding of rhythm listening, reading and writing.

Eastman/1-ti-te-ta Counting System:

Traditional American/1-e-&-a Counting System:

Gordon Rhythm Solfege:

Takadimi Counting System:

Mnemonic Rhythm Systems

Mnemonic rhythm systems assign words or syllables to rhythm patterns. In the Orff approach, for example, students and teachers draw inspiration from their surroundings to assign words to rhythm patterns, focusing on creative and musical play. Similarly, the Dalcroze method connects rhythm patterns with motions, drawn from the students as they learn to feel the different patterns.

Mnemonic rhythm systems provide exposure to a variety of rhythm patterns and meters, even before students can read and write notation. These systems allow easy facilitation of imitation and repetition, and lend themselves to creative work in improvisation and composition.

Duration Systems

Duration systems label notes by how long they are. The Kodály method, for example, assigns the specific syllables "ta," "ti-ti" and "ti-ri-ti-ri" (or "ti-ki-ti-ki") to quarter note, pairs of eighth notes, and groups of sixteenth notes.

Speaking, hearing and reading music as a language, fluently, are the shared goals of counting systems. Check out the Rhythm Counting Systems episode of Notes From The Staff to hear more explanation of each counting system, and tips on using each from our own experience teaching rhythm from preschool to college.

Notes From The Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Subscribe to Notes From The Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Dalcroze method embodies learning through playful, purposeful movement. In this episode of Notes From The Staff, uTheory's own Greg Ristow shares some favorite games for teaching solfege, plus a bonus example of teaching rhythm, drawn from the Dalcroze approach to music education.

Bodyfege

Bodyfege is a partner activity in which students echo, and sometimes lead, a four-beat melodic pattern. Each degree of the scale has a corresponding motion:

C-to-C Scales

Singing a Dalcroze scale is somewhat like jumping into a scale that is already in progress. In the Dalcroze solfège method, these scales are the primary tool used to teach sensitivity to scale degree function. The C-to-C scales, also known as Do-to-Do or “Dalcroze scales,” are typical scales, but sung from C (C# or Cb) up an octave, and back down:

The goal of the Dalcroze scales is to hear these as scales beginning from a degree of the scale other than tonic.

Doop Canon

Doop Canon is a musical, Dalcrozian way of teaching rhythm that allows students to feel the relationship of different note values:

Dalcroze Eurhythmics solfege training develops a sense of the feeling of each degree of the scale, and builds the skills that allow them to translate immediately between the degree of the scale and the note name. In Dalcroze pedagogy there's no fixed version of any activity; each game is an invitation to create a new variant to fit the students you have at that moment. And, Dalcroze games enable students to learn from each other and help each other find the right answer. Listen to the games in action on the full episode, Dalcroze Solfege Games.

Notes From The Staff is a podcast from the creators of uTheory. Join us for conversations about pedagogy, music theory, ear training, and music technology with members of the uTheory staff and thought leaders from the world of music education. Subscribe to Notes From The Staff on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts.